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March 5, 2004/Adar 12 5764, Vol. 56, No. 24
Jewish actress makes mark in 'Passion'
NAOMI PFEFFERMAN
Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles
Romanian actress Maia Morgenstern is Jewish, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and a resident of Bucharest, where she fields the occasional anti-Semitic remark. Which is why European reporters raised eyebrows when they learned the imposing actress was playing the Virgin Mary in Mel Gibson's controversial "The Passion of the Christ," about Jesus' final hours.
Critics have denounced the hyperrealistic drama as a modern version of the medieval passion play, blam-ing Jews for the death of Jesus. But Morgenstern, 41, doesn't view the film as anti-Semitic.
Yes, the villain is the Jewish high priest, Caiaphas, she said from her Bucharest home; but he clearly represents the regime, not the Jewish people.
"Authorities throughout history have persecuted individuals with revolutionary ideas," she says.
Morgenstern feels "The Passion" opposes such oppression. "It is about letting people speak openly about what they think and believe," she says. "It denounces the madness of violence and cruelty, which if unchecked can spread like a disease."
Morgenstern's family experienced such violence during World War II. Her grandfather disappeared after being arrested in his native Transnistria; her father survived Nazi and Stalinist labor camps.
Morgenstern experienced her own share of anti-Semitism while growing up in Bucharest. When she was 9, a classmate called her "Jidan," a slur for "Jew": "But I was absolutely innocent, so I came home and asked my mother, 'Who is a Jidan?'" she says.
In her late teens, she auditioned for the Jewish State Theatre and began performing plays in Yiddish; the following year, she entered the prestigious Bucharest Film and Theatre Academy and landed her first film roles.
Morgenstern eventually became a star of Bucharest's National Theatre and more than 30 Eastern European films; in Maria Meszaros'"The Seventh Room," she played Edith Stein, the Jew who died as a nun in Auschwitz and was canonized in 1998. Between scenes shot just outside the camp gates, Morgenstern - who shaved her head for the role - perused Nazi records and discovered her grand-father had died in the camp.
"That greatly affected my performance," she says. "It gave me a sort of motivation that I could somehow fight violence through the weapon of my art."
Apparently it was Morgens-tern's performance as Stein that drew Gibson's attention; but she was so busy rehearsing a Gogol play that she initially ignored several voice mail messages from his casting director last year. She assumed the filmmaker was scouring Eastern Europe for an actress to play a minor role and didn't take the query seriously. Even after the casting director finally reached her, "I didn't think my chances were high," she says.
She changed her mind when Gibson - whose work she had admired - promptly mailed her the script and flew her to Rome to meet with him.
When she walked into his preproduction office at Rome's Cinecitta studios, her first impression was "of a man who was utterly enthusiastic and confident of his artistic vision." He didn't ask Morgenstern to read from the script, which was written in Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew, but rather chatted with her about her Gogol opening.
"We started a conversation like two actors, and we were talking and talking until the casting director interrupted and said, 'I have to know, what is your decision about Ms. Morgenstern?'" she says. "And Mel Gibson replied, 'Of course I'll take her - now please keep telling me, Maia, how was your opening?'"
Afterward, the actress was whisked away to the wardrobe department, where she says, "Everyone was so disappointed with me at first. They said, 'Oh, she has short hair, what a pity.'"
Gibson, unperturbed, simply had them make her a wig.
When Morgenstern arrived for the shoot in November 2002, she found Gibson to be a director "who knows exactly what he wants. He makes no compromises with his art, and he respects actors very much."
Gibson agreed with her interpretation of her role as "essentially the question of a mother losing a child." He was gracious when she discovered she was pregnant with her third child in the middle of the four-month shoot.
Over the course of the production, Morgenstern emphasized, not a single scene struck her as anti-Semitic. Characters such as Mary and John are sympathetic Jews, and Gibson "allowed me to make suggestions based on my Jewish culture," she says. In the scene in which Mary learns Jesus has been arrested, it was Morgenstern's idea to whisper the Passover question, "Why is this night different from all other nights?"
When visiting reporters asked why a Jewish actress was portraying Jesus' mother, she replied, "I played Clytemnestra in 'Oresteia,' and it didn't mean I killed my husband. And as far as I know, Mary was a Jewish lady, so I think it is very normal."
After Morgenstern returned home in 2003, she says she read a New York Times article about the "Passion" contro-versy, but remained re-latively isolated from the conflict. She was unaware of charges that Gibson's father was a Holocaust denier, for example, or that Gibson told the New Yorker "modern secular Judaism wants to blame the Holocaust on the Catholic church."
Morgenstern says she wants "this film to be seen by many, many people."
"Despite the blood and the violence, it's a beautiful film. I believe it brings an important message, a peace message."
"The Passion of the Christ" is currently in local theaters.
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