Has anyone else heard about this? I can’t recall the title of it, but it’s about the last 12 hours of Christ. AND IT’S NOT IN ENGLISH AT ALL. It’s going to be in Latin and Aramaic, WITH NO SUBTITLES. I feel like this is a ridiculous idea, but on the other hand people enjoy the opera without understanding a single word of what’s going on.
Does anyone else agree that audiences will walk out frustrated?
Frankly, I’ve doubted that the movie would ever make more than a token film fest appearance or two, if it even gets made. Despite Mel Gibson’s name, the movie just will NOT get any studio support, and people will NOT want to see it in any numbers, IMHO…
hrh
Wait for the DVD, and maybe they’ll have it fixed for the hearing impaired. We’ve both started using that if the DVD itself doesn’t offer it (using the closed captions option for the TV).
It’s gotten so that about half the time you miss dialog unless you do use the CC.
I bet deaf people will enjoy it more than the ones who don’t speak Latin and Aramaic.
Wonder if it’s timed so you could use an album to play along with it, like “Dark Side Of The Moon” with “Wizard Of Oz.”
Such a Hollywood vanity project.
Mel has finally gone mad with power.
There have been several threads about this movie already. It’s already been shot so question of its being made. It already has been.
The movie is called Passion and supposedly it’s only about the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life (i.e. trial and crucifixion). People should be familiar enough with the story that they’ll know what’s going on. I don’t think a lot of folks are going to be asking, “What’s that big T they’re nailing him to.”
Personally, I like the idea. Imagine being able to go back in a time machine and watch the actual event (assuming it happened, of course). You wouldn’t have subtitles for that but you would be riveted by it anyway. I think that Gibson is trying to achieve a certain verisimilitude and I think it’s a gutsy thing for him to do. I’m sort of looking forward to this. Of course it helps that I have a few years of college Latin under my belt but I suspect that most of the dialogue will be Aramaic.
One thing about that sense of accuracy that Gibson is shooting for, though…it kind of undercuts that goal when he casts an Anglo actor to portray a Middle Eastern Jew.
It’s been Done Before Here. Great novel.
I personally cannot wait to see this film. Any film that handles that period of time is immensely fascinating to me. I was blown away by The Last Temptation of Christ.
Cartooniverse
It’s just a modern silent film. I don’t really have a problem with the lack of subtitles. But then there are certain genres of foreign movies I watch without subtitles already so maybe I’m more open to it (foreign horror and martial arts films I frequently watch even if subtitles are available).
But it really pisses me off that Latin and Aramaic are used, but no Greek. Koine Greek was the lingua franca of that era, used much more in Judaea than Latin. With already this sign of lazy attention to historical detail, I don’t have much hope that this will be a decent movie.
UnuMondo
Is this true? (I’m asking, not stating). My understanding was that Greek was the language of the educated, the literate, and perhaps the business classes (where it really was a lingua franca), hence the writing of the four Gospels in Greek (or possibly three, if one accepts the unproven tradition that one, I forget which one, was in fact written in Aramaic and then translated to Greek). Aramaic was spoken in everyday use by just about everyone, and Latin was certainly the language of the Roman occupiers. Hebrew was more or less restricted to Temple use. There’s no evidence that I know of that Jesus spoke Greek. He, like everyone else at that time and place, might well have picked up a bit of Latin, and probably some Hebrew as well, but He certainly spoke Aramaic as a rule.
The area was somewhat Hellenized but there is no evidence that Greek was the common language of peasants. It may have a been a second language for some. It was the language of the educated and the upper class but the extent to which it was spoken by the “hoi polloi” is still somewhat of an unsettled question.
All four of the Gospels were composed in Greek, btw. There are no extant records of any kind of Jesus’ words in the original Aramaic except for a couple of fragments in the Gospels.
In any case, since this movie is made from the gospel stories and is only about the trial and crucifixion, there is no need to portray any Greek. The Romans would naturally speak Latin and the Sanhedrin would naturally speak Aramaic at the trial. There is no point in the passion narratives at which Greek would be expected or required.