Mel Gibson's movie is totally sadistic...

Cafe Society
1

As an agnostic Jew, I watched the entire movie this afternoon. It is a visceral downer. The persistent sadism evident through the whole course of the movie was gut wrenching. How a mother could watch facelessly her son tortured is unbelievable.

There are plenty of violent movies but persistent cruelty and the effect on the audience is what appears to me to be the movie’s goal.

The Jews are made to look like lookie-loos as one would watch a tragic accident in progress without attempting to interfere.

Would be interested in reading your reviews.

2

Lots of 'em in this other thread over here. The actual reviews from people who’ve seen it start about halfway down the first page.

3

The sadism is made even more apparent by the fact that many of the crucifixion practices portrayed in the film have no historical or archaeological basis in fact. Crucifixion was a brutal form of execution employed by the Romans, but they didn’t pull the victim’s arms out of their sockets to align their hands with pre-drilled nail holes or anything!

4

I thought the character of Mary was the emotional lynch-pin of the movie. I almost cried at her scenes when Jesus was carrying the cross. Wonderful performance. She comes across as very stoic, someone used to a very harsh, brutal life, but who clearly loved her son. Early in the picture, I thought she was a little too reserved, but I think they did it that way so the actress has some where to go with the character. She needed to be able to turn up her distress at every new torture inflicted on her son, and there were a lot of them. She had to start way, way down here, so she wasn’t completely over the top by the time they nailed him up.

I think that’s exactly what the goal of the movie was. Christians believed that, in dying, Christ took on the sins of all mankind. This is not supposed to be an easy thing for him to do. His physical torment is symbolic of the suffering he feels when ever we sin. When we see him suffer the agonies of crucifixition, we are meant to understand that that pain is nothing compared to the agony we cause him everyday by sinning.

I didn’t see anything remotely anti-semetic in the movie. The mob calling for Jesus’s blood isn’t supposed to representative of Jews everywhere, it’s representative of mobs everywhere. If, as I posited above, the torture and execution of Jesus is representative of the sins of all mankind, than the people inflicting the pain and humiliation on him must be representative of all man. The point of the movie isn’t that the Jews killed Jesus, it’s that we all killed Jesus. The Jews just happened to be the ones closest at hand when it happened.

5

It is difficult for me to understand how a mother could feast her eyes on persistent continuing torture to her son and then watch him die.

Mothers, where am I wrong with the above?

6

I don’t think this is true, or else it demonstrates to re-write and ignore large strains of Christian theology just to laud a single movie. The movie may use physical pain as a coy way to reach us modern people, who are singularly obsessed with it, but humiliation is in many ways far more theologically important. The whole point of crucifixtion is humiliation, and that is what the Gospels focus on: God willingly suffering not just pain (which, really, would have impressed almost nobody in those days) but ritual degredation and humiliation. Jesus is litterally turned into something truly and horribly ritually unclean: a corpse. That is a very literal read on taking upon himself the sins of humanity and overcoming and overturning them in the end.

7

In my mind, the movie is both better and worse. It goes out of its way to place as much of the blame on the Jewish leaders as possible: moreso than the Gospels do. But it also gives Jews as a whole a bit more depth and diversity. I agree with Andrew Sullivan that Gibson is careless and thoughtless when it comes to things like introducing us to Caiphus by having him conspiring over money with Judas.

I also have to say that I am finding this “we all killed Jesus” line more and more shady. While I believe it is, in itself, sincere, I think it conceals what is merely a slippery shift in focus: unreppentant Jews aren’t considered responsible as in a court of law anymore, but they are now an excellent puppet symbol of the enemies of Christianity and Christ’s message in general. Just because we are all responsible doesn’t mean that despise and resent those people people who are not “getting the message” before or after the crucifixation. Given that many people see the making and viewing of this movie in a political context as a blow against liberals and secularists, it’s definately troubling to me.

8

People didn’t interfere with Roman executions. It was… unhealthy. But people did come to watch them. I don’t know why: people like seeing others humiliated and hurt. But thats hardly unhistoric.

[quote]
was a brutal form of execution employed by the Romans, but they didn’t pull the victim’s arms out of their sockets to align their hands with pre-drilled nail holes or anything!

Right. That happened after they raised the cross up. The arms would be distended and dislocated from the stress.

She had exactly 2 options: watch and be with her son, or run away and not watch. Neither of them is particularly desirable. I don’t think she could

People, I think you are going to have to accept the fact that there weren’t exactly many angels in the movie, or in history. People did and still do all the things in the movie (not specifically crucifixtion, but I don’t think crowd-insitigated-stoning is morally better).

9

My take was Mary *had * to keep watching - especially the crucifixion. Like she expected Jesus at anytime to leap down and overthrow the Romans or something - it looked like she kept hoping against hope that He wouldn’t have to actually die. Which made her performance absolutely stunning.

10

Apos: I’d say the pain and the humiliation of his execution were more or less interchangable for the purposes of the movie’s symbolism. The pain is probably more resonant with modern audiences, for whom that sort of physical agony is far removed, but for whom public humiliation is not only common, but apparently a desirable goal to be avidly pursued (as evidenced by the popularity of reality TV).

As for the anti-Semitism, all I can say is I didn’t see it. If someone is predisposed to see anti-Semitism, then there are scenes that can be read that way, but I think that such an interpretation would be purely the result of the viewers own filters, and not the fault of the film itself. The Jews are portrayed as human, in the context of a movie about a religion that views all humans as inherently flawed, sinful creatures. There are villainous Jews in the film. There are also heroic Jews in the film, not the least of which being Christ himself. If someone goes to this film and comes away thinking it validates his anti-Semitism, that’s no more the fault of Mel Gibson than someone who reads Catcher in the Ryan and goes on to kill John Lennon is the fault of J.D. Salinger.

11

Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten.

(Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

12

I haven’t seen the film yet and so I cannot speak fully to its anti-Semitism.

As a Christian, I was brought up with a full understanding that my relgious heritage is Judeo-Christian. We didn’t have just the New Testament in our homes. We had the Old Testament too. There was never a time that I didn’t understand that Jesus and his family were Jews. My favorite Bible story was about Esther who had the courage to admit that she was a Jew in order to save the lives of others.

I truly believe that this is the way that most Christians view Judaism.

On the other hand, I can understand why Jews would have a whole lot of trouble believing that. Considering the longview of history, the attempt to exterminate Jews during my lifetime, and the contempt with which they are treated by some who carry the name Christian, I can’t blame them for seeing anti-Semitism even where it may not be intended. That is especially true if they consider Mel Gibson’s father’s beliefs. All we have is his word that that is not what Mel believes.

I don’t see a lot of angry Christians coming out of those movie theaters. I see people, most likely Christians, who have been faced with how horrible a death their Savior suffered. If you knew that someone died to save your life and you were finally able to see a reasonably accurate, convincing and graphic reenactment of that very event, wouldn’t you be moved beyond words too?

Christians view his death very personally. I think that most of us believe that he loves us so much that he would have gone through all of that just for any one of us – non-believers included.

The church in Colorado made the news with its stupid sign about how the Jews killed Jesus. I wish that every church in the country would put out a sign that says “Jesus was a Jew” just to reassure people that most of us understand.

In the making of the film, whose hand held the nail as it was driven into the flesh of the Christ? It wasn’t a Jew. It was Mel Gibson’s own hand. His left hand which he felt represented the sinister side of himself.

Finally, for whatever it is worth, the word excruciating comes from the word crucify because it is such a hideous way to die.

Pax

I am the Nazi…I am the Jew…I am the Christian…I am the Palestinian…

13

Really, what could she have done? Saved him? Sure, one unarmed piece of chattel (remember women’s status back then?) would take on one Mr. Roman McSpearwielder or fouteen to save Junior. Her choices were to abandon him, or be present with him until the end. Her personal anguish and horror didn’t matter one bit before the needs of her son. If my child was suffering and the only thing I could give him was my presence, I sure as hell would be there for every single stroke of the whip.

14

Its fair to say that none of us were there watching the original scene.
Of course there were good Jews and evil Jews present.

This movie flashed over and over to the lineup of Jewish priests who were unrelentless in seeing that Christ was punished.

From what I have been reading from theologists of both Christian and Judeac persuasians, Pontius Pilate did try to be reasonably fair as far as Jesus is concerned but in no way at any time appeared to be the fair and just leader that this movie portrayed…

But in my mind, Gibson carefully planned the camera shots, the editing and the dialogue to make Pontius Pilate a relatively fair huiman being and the Jewish priests the “bastards” who insisted over and over again that Jesus be scourged and sadistically punished.

Very simply, after all is said and done, the Jews were the evil guys and Pontius Pilate, the Roman, the fair and good guy…the playing field was not made level.

15

How were they evil? His death had been prophecised. It seems to me they hardly had a choice in the matter if the prophecies were to be fulfilled.

16

Good grief: do you really think an anti-semite like, say, Martin Luther, was unaware that Jesus was Jewish, and was only able to sustain his anti-semetism by this unawareness? Do you really think that merely being ethnically semetic was all that mattered for the “you killed Christ” trope? Sorry, but anti-semetism was much more complex than that. The carry through in “blood” is not merely one of legal guilt visited on later generations, but that the same attitudes lived on through the Jewish people that continued to reject Christ’s message, continued to hold themselves in spirit with the people that the Christians believed killed him and tried to kill his message.

Being ethinically Jewish is not the same thing as representing faithful Judiasm, a religion which is symbolically destroyed at the end of the film, but whom unrepentant Jews who continued to deny Christ continued to believe.

17

I don’t think anybody would give a crap about a sign. Nor should they. The behavior is what makes a difference. Likewise, if not for the lengthy history of Christian anti-Semitism, nobody would’ve cared that one church in Colorado put up an offensive sign. It’s the behavior represented by the sign that scares Jewish people, and they’ve got some reason to be worried about that even when it’s just a sign.

That’s not to say all Christians, or even close to it, hate Jews. But trying to make a big deal of publicly saying ‘we don’t hate Jews’ really won’t solve anything.

18

You’re contradicting yourself.

The movie is not nearly as simple as you suggest, and if you really got this out of it, then you either fell asleep or walked out during the last 2/3 of the film, starting with the Scourging.

The Romans (note the plural) were the clear-cut villains. Pilate himself was a little more sympathetic and complex, but most of the Roman soldiers were clear villains, almost cartoonishly so, right down to the evil slo-mo laughs. The brutalized Jesus and most of them didn’t care… many of them even seemed to enjoy it.

On the other hand, there were Jews who spoke out in support Jesus at his “trial” early on, and more significantly, there was Simon, explicitly stated as a Jew in the film, who helped to carry the cross for Jesus when He couldn’t go any farther himself, and who defended Jesus against the mob at the risk of himself.

I fail to see how anyone could see this film and call it anti-Semitic. An anti-Semitic film would be a blanket criticism of Jews in general, and this movie was clearly not that. It was quite a bit more complex than that.

19

Of course, but they were brute peons, not the ones driving the action. Torturing Jesus didn’t mean anything to them: they’d do it to anyone just as happily.

I agree it’s complex, and I don’t think calling “anti-semetism” so loudly is appropriate. But at the same time, those who flatly deny that there is anything troubling here are fooling themselves. Not troubling for society, not dangerous in terms of inciting violence, but intellectually and theologically.

20

An artful propagandist does NOT make his desire obious enough to achieve a black and white answer.

I stated above that after all the input and output in reference to the Jews and the Romans in this movie, the subliminal message is that the Jewish priests pushed Pontius Pilate over the edge.

Why have so many millions of people from all over the world for 2 thousand years including today still believe that the Jews killed Christ.

Did this movie change in any way their opinions? My take on this is that the Jews said Kill Christ and the Romans just carried out their wishes. And the brutal sadism demonstrated by the Romans did not change this attititude.

Admittedly I am not a gospel historian. But Mel Gibson had the ability to soften this general attitude and he did not.