Posted on 03/31/2004 9:55:42 AM PST by quidnunc
The headline on the Washington Post review sums it up: Passion Is A Gory Take On A Gentle Teachers Violent End. Somebodys confusing their Gospel with Godspell. A few days before the violent end, the gentle teacher had been hurling tables around in the temple. And, even if you overlook the rough stuff, rhetorically Christ was as forceful as He was gentle.
Thats the real argument over The Passion Of The Christ. Its not between Christians and Jews, but between believing Christians and the broader post-Christian culture, a term that covers a large swathe from the media to your average Anglican vicar. Some in this post-Christian culture dont believe anything, some are riddled with doubts, but even the ones with only a vague residual memory of the fluffier Sunday School stories are agreed that theres little harm in a Jesus figure whos a gentle teacher. In this world, if Jesus were alive today hed most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally-friendly car with an Arms Are For Hugging sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams. If thats your boy, Mel Gibsons movie is not for you.
Indeed, though Mel is Catholic, his Passion is a hit thanks to evangelical Protestants those who believe the Bible is the literal truth and not a useful narrative culminating in what the Bishop of Durham called a conjuring trick with bones. Instead of Jesus the wimp, Mel gives us Jesus the Redeemer. He died for our sins ie, the violent end is the critical bit, not just an unfortunate misunderstanding cruelly cutting short a promising career in gentle teaching. The followers of Wimp Jesus seem to believe He died to license our sins Jesus loves us for who we are so whatevers your bag is cool with Him.
Strictly as a commercial proposition, Wimp Jesus is a loser: the churches who go down that path are emptying out and dying. Those who believe in Christ the Redeemer are booming, and Mel Gibson has made a movie for them. If Hollywood was as savvy as it thinks it is, it would have beaten him to it. But it isnt so it didnt. And as most studio execs have never seen an evangelical Christian except in films where they turn out to be paedophiles or serial killers, its no wonder theyre baffled by The Passions success.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
It amazes me that one thinks this a good way to study the Bible, yet any other book is supposed to be read from cover to cover in order to make sense.
If you haven't done it this way, you might miss something.
His comment: if Jesus were alive today hed most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally-friendly car with an Arms Are For Hugging sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams.
Mr. Steyn has that one wrong. In the Bible, the Messiah will be returning WITH A SWORD.
If he is here, he is one of those soldiers in the Middle East, protecting a child from being blown to little pieces, at risk of his own life.
His dying was not necessarily what made His time here special, it was the rising three days later, IMHO...
Before you go tearing apart the good guys it might pay you to invest in a reading comprehension course.
THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
The headline on the Washington Post review sums it up: Passion Is A Gory Take On A Gentle Teachers Violent End. Somebodys confusing their Gospel with Godspell. A few days before the violent end, the gentle teacher had been hurling tables around in the temple. And, even if you overlook the rough stuff, rhetorically Christ was as forceful as He was gentle.
Thats the real argument over The Passion Of The Christ. Its not between Christians and Jews, but between believing Christians and the broader post-Christian culture, a term that covers a large swathe from the media to your average Anglican vicar. Some in this post-Christian culture dont believe anything, some are riddled with doubts, but even the ones with only a vague residual memory of the fluffier Sunday School stories are agreed that theres little harm in a Jesus figure whos a gentle teacher. In this world, if Jesus were alive today hed most likely be a gay Anglican bishop in a committed relationship driving around in an environmentally-friendly car with an Arms Are For Hugging sticker on the way to an interfaith dialogue with a Wiccan and a couple of Wahhabi imams. If thats your boy, Mel Gibsons movie is not for you.
Indeed, though Mel is Catholic, his Passion is a hit thanks to evangelical Protestants those who believe the Bible is the literal truth and not a useful narrative culminating in what the Bishop of Durham called a conjuring trick with bones. Instead of Jesus the wimp, Mel gives us Jesus the Redeemer. He died for our sins ie, the violent end is the critical bit, not just an unfortunate misunderstanding cruelly cutting short a promising career in gentle teaching. The followers of Wimp Jesus seem to believe He died to license our sins Jesus loves us for who we are so whatevers your bag is cool with Him.
Strictly as a commercial proposition, Wimp Jesus is a loser: the churches who go down that path are emptying out and dying. Those who believe in Christ the Redeemer are booming, and Mel Gibson has made a movie for them. If Hollywood was as savvy as it thinks it is, it would have beaten him to it. But it isnt so it didnt. And as most studio execs have never seen an evangelical Christian except in films where they turn out to be paedophiles or serial killers, its no wonder theyre baffled by The Passions success.
The picture opens in the Garden of Gethsemane with Christs arrest, in the midst of which a servant of the high priest gets his ear lopped off and, in the melee, is quietly healed by Jesus. (This is from Luke; the other three have the lopping but not the healing.) For Gibson, this is the point: Christ had power over His captors but didnt use it, and His sacrifice is our salvation. To that end, the directors come up with a structure that folds flashbacks of Jesus life into the two hours of scourging and crucifixion, presumably to remind us that its through the violent end that the gentle teaching becomes universal truth.
Sometimes this works very well: the Last Supper This is my body, this is my blood is intercut with the pulpy wounds of the real body, the rivers of real blood, and has a rare intensity. The idea of embracing Christs life within His death is smart moviemaking, and a suppler director would have done more with it. But Gibson is something of a stolid storyteller and his picture settles into an almost mechanical rhythm: flaying flashback beating - flashback nailing flashback. Jim Caviezel is a physically conventional Jesus, whose lean, rangy body seems to have been selected on the basis of how it looks when battered and bloody. Hes okay in the pre-arrest scenes, except for a strange decision to do the Sermon on the Mount as a Richard Gere impression, all rueful smiles and fussy hand gestures.
The dialogue is Aramaic and Latin, but theres not a lot of it and actresses like Maia Morgenstern (Mary) and Monica Bellucci (Mary Magdalene) seem to have been chosen for their anguished facial gestures and ability to reflect Christs pain rather than their command of language. Miss Bellucci, the sexpot schoolmarm in Malena, is the nearest thing to a big name in a cast of unknowns. Its surely the right idea not to have famous faces distracting from the story (as they did in the old-time Hollywood biblical epics) but its less effective than it might be because, even though theyre played by obscure actors, almost everybody looks exactly like a central-casting version of whoever hes meant to be Caiaphas, Pontius Pilate and his missus; Barrabas is a scurvy, tongue-wiggling cartoon.
Thats another limitation of Mels movie. Although theyre speaking Aramaic and Latin, its real language is Hollywooden. So, for example, one of the flashbacks shows Jesus the carpenter making what seems to Mary like a tall table. Jesus explains that its for a rich man who likes to eat sitting down on chairs and mimes the position. This will never catch on, says Mary. More problematic are the troll extras from Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings who haunt Judas, and a weird figure who stalks Jesus and looks like a cross between Nosferatu and Jessica Lange in All That Jazz. Worst of all are the Roman soldiers who torture Jesus and laugh and spit and jeer like corrupt banana-republic cops in an action movie. Regardless of whether thats a slur on one of the great empires of our civilization, it serves Gibson poorly: the sins that Jesus died for are our everyday ones, not the worst excesses of an Amnesty International report. A brisker, more professional soldiery would have made the point better.
But thats nitpicking. Mel Gibson was driven by his own passion to make a movie that speaks to millions of people. As I said a couple of weeks back, if its not the Jesus movie youd have made, then go make your own. I saw it on a Monday night full house a rare event in itself and the crowd was rapt and eerily hushed, except for the occasional sob. Its true that if you dont believe that Christs death on the cross is the central event in His time on earth then Mels telling wont convince you and the film will look, as it does to Christopher Hitchens, like an S&M flayfest. One can regard this as a criticism of Gibson. On the other hand, all manner of movies Star Wars, X-Men leave you cold if youre not already a devotee. For millions of people, Mel Gibson shows them their Jesus and their salvation.
This is what Steyn believes a liberal feel good Christian perceives Jesus would come back as.
I wonder about saying this, but all things in the Bible are done in circles. Circles of Scale. A parable or prophecy can represent a heavenly order, an Earthful order, and a personal order.
Gee, Guy in a White Hat riding a Horse, Steadfast and True, ruling with an Iron Fist.
NOPE, doesn't remind me of anybody.
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