FR MOVIE REVUE: THE PASSION OF CHRIST (post your comments here)

2/24/04 | FR MOVIE REVIEWERS

[Liz]

Thanks for a thoughtful review. As for the violence, Mel has said he used "escape hatches" in order to relieve the tension he knew audiences would be experiencing.

[GraniteStateConservative]

I'll post this on the original thread. It's already on thread 2.

I just saw it. 1:30 matinee. It was probably 95% filled-- like you'd see at a 7pm showing of a popular movie.

First, the movie is a tear-jerker, as everyone has already said. My head hurts when I tear up so I try to keep myself from it, but I couldn't pull it off during the movie. I first teared up during the scene when Peter watches Jesus' interrogation and he denies that he knows him.

Second, the movie isn't as gory as the hype. I saw both Conan movies recently and they were worse than this. The worst thing is the bird pecking the eye out of the third crucified person on the hill. That could have been edited to not be as graphic as it was and it still would have gotten the point across. Even the part where the whip gets caught in Jesus' eye or his face is very brief. The blood doesn't ooze in a nauseating fashion like in horror movies really in this movie. It sort of looks like Jesus was painted red-- not that the look is hoakey, just that it bothered me as far as the gore as much as seeing someone covered in dried red paint.

I'd have added just a few more scenes of Jesus before the last hours. There are several, but a few more would have been even better.

As far as why the movie is as graphic as it is, I'd say that you appreciate a sacrifice or a gift more if you know EVERYTHING regarding what it took to give it. There's an inspirational song called, "Above All" and it uses the phrase "like a rose trampled on the ground." Before this movie, many people might think that's an okay analogy, but afterward, you really realize how indescribably different that this was from a rose being trampled or a sheep being lead to slaughter. This is the total physical sacrifice in about every way imaginable method and way possible of the greatest person, the greatest gift-giver ever. Indeed, this is like trampling on an innocent child and much, much more, not like trampling on a rose.

The thief tells Caiaphas that Jesus is praying for him, but he says, "Listen, he prays for you," not "Listen, he prays for you, Caiaphas." I think that was on purpose, because it's like the thief is talking to all of us. When Jesus prayed that day, he prayed for you and me, not just one person or all the people involved that day.

This is a very powerful movie. Two thumbs up.

[GraniteStateConservative]

I'm not entirely sure I'll see the movie in it's theatrical run, I may end up just waiting it out for the DVD.

The surround sound at the theater (to capture the music and the mob sounds and such) and the grandness of the story and the scenery would make me suggest you see it now and not later, at home.

[BigSkyFreeper]

Good point. Although my DVD player does have 5.1 surround output, I've currently got a 3 speaker (left/right/sub) setup on my 31" TV. I may reconsider seeing it at the theater and buy the DVD when it comes out.

[sarasmom]

I saw the movie yesterday.
This is not a movie to be enjoyed, in the same way one enjoys "Its a Wonderfull Life",but it will probably be as enduring a classic, though not for TV.
I dont think it was too violent or too graphic, although it was both violent and graphic, hense the R rating.
I did tear up often, and I dont usually cry easily.
The accusations of anti-semetism are completely bogus, IMHO.
I think the movie perfectly portrays mans inhumanity to man.
Although I am not a Christian, I am thankfull I had already read the book and knew the ending.
I think I will see it again,but I dont think I will buy the DVD.
I have waited a year for this movie, and I was not disapointed.

[af_vet_1981]

Obsessed is the word, isn't it? I have read through the whole thread and the only distraction I've had is af_vet_1981's obsession with Mel Gibson's father and Mel Gibson repudiating his father. It's not enough that Mel Gibson has said the Holocaust occurred, nothing will satisfy af_vet_1981 until Mel completely disassociates from his father or forces his father to retract his beliefs.

I don't compromise with Holocaust Denial and Antisemitism. I can see that troubles your soul.

[Sally'sConcerns]

I can see that troubles your soul. No, my soul is untroubled.

[eyespysomething]

I am compelled to post my thoughts from another thread:



We talked about the movie in our young couples fellowship Wed. night. I am reletively new to Christianity, and being unfamiliar with the Bible, promptly came home and read the Gospels. I didn't even know the four books, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, were what was considered the Gospels. So I read the Gospel story of the crucifixtion, all four. Last night we saw the movie. I started crying about 2 minutes into the movie, and didn't stop until after it was over. Not really crying, but tears running down my face. It was in my heart, the love God has for us, and it trancended the movie, the movie was like a picture book to go along with the bible. I don't think Jesus said anything that wasn't scriptural. I flinched at the beatings, cried with Mary, wanted to yell ABBA with Jesus. I have tears in my eyes right now. I have not lived the life Christ wants me to live. I have a lot of thinking to do about my life.

I would advise people to read the Gospels before seeing the movie if possible.

My eyes have been opened.

[Liz]

Wonderful review. Thanks for sharing your personal story.

[kjam22]

Yeah.... it's a powerful, powerful movie. I saw it yesterday afternoon with a group from my church. We as christians owe it to christ to know all we can about the gospels and to be ready to answer the questions that others will have after seeing this movie. I'm convinced that is our part in this phenomon.

Being in Aramaic and or latin really worked well for me. I mean... if it were in english, the writer would have to construct a ton of dialogue that isn't found in the text. When we read the bible we know that the important dialogue was written down, but we also know that a lot wasn't. And that is what the movie gives us. Not all of the talking is subtitled. So you hear dialogue but you only read parts of it as the bible dictated.

A great movie. I'm praying for a sequel titled "The Resurrection of the Christ".

[hamilrob]

Re. "The Passion of The Christ"

I really should sleep on this movie before I react to it, but who can sleep after seeing something like this? I can say nothing harsh against this movie. It did what it set out to do. It painted as true a picture of suffering as any mind could have imagined. It kindly downplayed the "who" and focused on the event itself. We are given en enough asides and flashbacks to know "who", but are made to focus mainly on the pain, the cruelty, the agony, and the death. It was as real as real can be.

It was Hollywood effects more than acting, yet the acting was never larger than the movie. It is hard to imagine how a man could have stood up to all that abuse, and this is where you have to use your imagine and inventiveness. If he was God or the Son of God, then of course he could stand up to all that abuse without collapsing into a coma. The brutality was entirely too intense for this man to have survived all the way to the cross. I seriously doubt that ANY man could have stood up to all that beating, bleeding, wounding, stress and pain without simply passing out. The resulting infection and shock alone would have done him in. BUT he was God, as they say, and he had to get through it, or the story would not have ended in His becoming the savior of the world.

This is what I kept saying about fictionalized depictions of apparent truths. There is very little hard evidence in the annals of recorded history concerning what actually happened to Jesus, so this movie comes in to fill in the blanks. I actually saw people crying and sobbing as they left the theater. What power fiction has! What influence can be drawn from the magic of Hollywood! Mel Gibson just ran roughshod over the Gospel story. He just went ahead and wrote his own tale of the crucifixion. The disciples weren't supposed to be awake at the time of the arrest. He answered my question about the content of his Gethsemane prayer by having Peter and two other disciples stand there awake. They beat him all the way to the courtyard. Where did all this hatred come from? The Romans didn't know who this man was. Why did they hate him so immediately after his capture?

Given the reluctance of Pilate to condemn Jesus, where did the venom and hatred for his flogging come from? Why so much joy taken in beating nearly to death a man whom the Roman Governor said had done no wrong? If they were just trying to appease the crowd, why half kill the man? This action does not play out. The severity of his beating, the elongation of it, the brutality of his walk to Calvary, all the while accompanied by laughing, mocking Romans who had just seen a murderer released for this blameless man who spoke a few blasphemies about a God they had no stake in. Did they hate the Jews that much? If they feared an uprising from his followers, why did they beat him so mercilessly? Their own feared Governor to whom they were unflinchingly loyal declared that Jesus had done nothing to deserve death. Hell, the story of the healed ear had to have surfaced somewhere during all that mistreatment. It just doesn't play... all that brutality.

The only motivation for all that torture had to have come from the general idea of suffering implanted in people's minds during the years of Christianity. Mel Gibson had a point to make about suffering, so he had no need to establish a motive for the over dramatized brutality. He seemed intent on establishing his theme of suffering over and above all basic plot requirements regarding the provision of motive for action. King Herod laughed Jesus out of his house. He took him for a fool, not a man deserving of that level of torture. My God, how would they have treated a man who might have tried to assassinate Pilate? How would they have treated a man who might have poisoned the Roman Guard, or broke into the treasury? There was just no motivation whatsoever for that harsh treatment, and this underscores the idea that much of what actually happened to Jesus Christ comes from a record of hearsay, conjecture, and legend. He just HAD to throw in the earthquake, but wisely left out the rising of dead people from their opened graves.

After all of that, the most important part of the story, the Resurrection, is limited to shadows and a brief glimpse of a hole in a hand. The one act by which the Christian Faith is reckoned is given as a mere hint. I was ready for that. I have directed many presentations of "Jesus Christ Superstar" and "Godspell", and neither one of those mega Broadway hits said very much at all about the Resurrection. It seems that the Passion of Christ is the theme in most depictions, and the Resurrection really doesn't apply, except that it would have venerated Jesus in the end. I suppose also that the intense coverage of the beating and brutality underscored the idea that he did indeed die. The spearing in the end with the blood and water coming out was to be expected. It is not a story told in the Synoptic Gospels, but nonetheless, there it was.

This was a miracle man who walked a miracle mile. The truth of Jesus Christ has no value outside of Christianity. Christianity defined what this truth was. No other comparative work of literature is available to corrobate the truth as set out subjectively in the Gospel Story. Even the insertion in Josephus' "History of the Jews" regarding "Christus" is widely thought to be a forgery. This movie is a powerful tool in the woodshed of Christian propaganda. No one unexposed to the extensive research of scholars who have shed more than enough doubt on the historicity of Jesus can get through this movie untouched. This movie will turn hardened hearts to the Faith. This movie will encourage people to accept what happened to Jesus as true. This movie is hard evidence that dramatized fiction can do the work of insufficient historical evidence. This movie underscores why the Gospels are so divergent in their takes on this story, because it is not reality that engenders the Faith of Christianity, but story telling. This movie told a story and used all the power of Hollywood technology and script license to tell it they way the director wanted it told.

Now I have seen Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ", and I have not altered one bit my position regarding the historical uncertainty of the facts put together to make this movie. I was somewhat entertained, but about halfway (or less) into the movie, I was ready for it to come to an end. The point was made, and made, and made, and made. It seemed there was not enough to the story to make it interesting, so the dramatic and bloody brutality had to carry the weight of this deficit. It is a movie about brutality. Man's inhumanity to man. For a believer, it is the great gift of life given by Jesus through his suffering and death. For a skeptic/critic like myself, it was a night out and a good reason to sit up and write instead of going to bed.

[Liz]

May I commend your review, and express my sincerest thank yous for sharing your thoughts with us.

Of course, you had no such intention, but you very thoughtfully raised many of the questions Mel Gibson said he intended to raise with the film, in the hope that people would look for the answers. I counted 8-9 questions in your review....very good questions, I might add.

As for the violence portrayed, understand that Mel had ro speak with a very loud megaphome to reach those who are hard of hearing.

You should also remember the film witnesses what in Roman times was a civil punishment.......crucifixion..... that in the centuries after Christ is revered as a religious experience.

Yes, Christ's Resurrection was shown too briefly but there is a reason for that: Mel has said it was added after the fact. The thrust of The Passion was to depict the last 12 hours of Christ's life, and that alone. However, Mel's artistic sensibilities prevailed and I suppose to the artist, the narrative seemed more complete with depictions of the Resurrection.

The manner of the depiction of violence (that you alluded to) was also a dramtic device since Mel has said he used brief sequences in quick succession in order to allow "escape hatches" for viewers.

Lastly, as to its significane, please permit me to suggest that the following words sum up the historical Christ as no others can:

One Solitary Life

Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never owned a home. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself...

While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed upon a cross between two thieves. While He was dying His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth – His coat. When He was dead, He was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen long centuries have come and gone, and today He is a centerpiece of the human race and leader of the column of progress.

I am far within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that one solitary life.

This essay was adapted from a sermon by Dr James Allan Francis in “The Real Jesus and Other Sermons” © 1926 by the Judson Press of Philadelphia (pp 123-124 titled “Arise Sir Knight!”).