oooohhhhhhhhhh, 
You’re not the first person to comment about that. In a review for a documentary called “The Plow that Broke the Plains”, I actually used the words posit and dude in the very same sentence. The professor thought it was very funny and the bonus points she gave allowed me to break the 100% barrier.
I disagree with you about Caviezel’s performance, but I’m pretty much with you on the rest. (Wow, that’s twice this week I’ve had to agree with Diogenes in a thread). I laughed at your run-in with the fundies. Hee!
Triskadecamus, I don’t know if I mentioned it in another post, but the scene where Peter denies Christ is where I nearly lost it myself. That hit me more than any of the violence or scenes with Mary. Probably because I can identify with Peter, whereas I don’t have much in common with Mary. My wife, however, was very touched by Mary’s ordeal.
moejuck, I was also disappointed with the resurrection. It seemed kind of tacked on. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t originally planned to be included.
Jesus Christ II: Back for More. Coming this summer!
I agree. I just thought it was an amusing coincidence in light of this thread. I couldn’t help think about how vindicated Gobear would have felt.
To be fair, I don’t think Caviezel had a very broad palette to work with. Most of the movie was him being tortured. I thought he handled the flashback scenes very weel. I particularly liked the scene with his mother when he was building a table. I wish there had more of that kind of thing in the film. It really lit up in those flashbacks.
I just came back from seeing the movie. A few notes to share:
Violence: Yeah, I know being flogged and crucified is no walk in the park, but I found the violence gratutitous to the point of pornographic. I really don’t think I needed to hear flesh ripped off, or see Jesus being speared and his guts gushing out or see some guy’s eye pecked out after he taunts Jesus (and after Jesus tells God to forgive them). I’m no longer a Christian, but beating me over the head with his suffering isn’t going to turn me back into one anytime soon.
Anti-Semitism: To me, anything dealing with the crucifixion of Jesus is inherently anti-Semitic. Why? Because the Gospels are anti-Semitic, plain and simple. With that caveat in mind, I found that the movie did not live up to the anti-Semitic hype it got. I was expecting far worse (ie, the crowd responding to Pontius Pilate, “Let his blood be on us and our children” or throwing in the Wandering Jew on the road to Calvary) than what is usually shown in your made-for-TV crucifixion movies. As the other posters have noted, there were a few lone voices of opposition by the temple priesthood. I also recall a scene where a Roman soldier calls the guy who helps carry Jesus’ cross a Jew in a hateful manner. However, I would like to know if those scenes were written in AFTER people accused the movie of promoting anti-Semitism.
3)Pontius Pilate: I didn’t find that the character deviated much from other crucifixion movies I’ve seen. I don’t know about The Last Temptation of Christ, but in Jesus Christ Superstar, Pilate was also protrayed as reluctant executioner, as well as in my Bible stories book when I was a kid.
Things I liked about the movie:
-The Latin and Aramaic. The main reason I saw this movie.
-The scene where Jesus saves Mary Magdalene from being stoned to death by the sexually repressed temple priests.
-The acting was decent for the most part.
-The cinematography was great.
-The fact that I didn’t pay to see it. 
Things that I didn’t like about the movie:
-The gratuitous and sadistic violence.
-Mary Magdelene is my favorite character. Yet her role is so miniscule in the movie. She had like five lines in the entire film.
-Not all of the dialog was subtitled. I would have liked to known what the Roman soldiers’ playful banter was all about as they were beating the bejesus out of Jesus.
-The fact that it deserves a well-earned rating of NC-17, but is only rated R (won’t anyone think of the children???).
Things I learned from the movie:
-Jesus was a lousy carpenter.
-If he were alive today, he would support gay marriage.
IANA Xian, but I really like JCS, and will step in to clarify that a little. While Herod in JCS had sort of an Elton John thing going on, I don’t think “effeminate” is the right phrase. He was, after all, lying around in luxury being hand-fed fruit from sexy scantily-clad women. That film was meant to depict an a performance of the rock opera in present-day (1970’s) Israel. Thus the tanks, the guns, and so on.
The depiction of Herod and his lackeys in that film, I believe, is meant to symbolize the leisure class, the “turn on and tune out” group, the 70’s model of hedonism – the spoiled rich brats who could afford to run off to San Francisco and do nothing for a whole summer but screw and do drugs. I think it is this aspect of Herod’s character, and of the ruling classes of that time, that is being conveyed in JCS, it’s part of the theme of the picture. If they’d made that film in the mid 80’s, they might have had Herod and his people at a cocaine party.
I’m not going to comment on the biblical or historical accuracy of the film, since my knowledge of both had grown somewhat moldy (and was probably not very great to begin with). However, I will say that I found the film very moving.
Also, though very violent (the scourging scene was quite long), I didn’t find the film as violent as I expected based on the media coverage. Though, I must admit, I never seem particularly impressed with the violence in films which are trumpeted as being very violent. That said, the violence in The Passion was much more impactful; it had meaning behind it (unlike most films made today).
As for the charge of anti-Semitism, I found the film realistic in how people (even to this day) can act in such situations. I expect the people who go crazy with blood-lust (most of the Jews surrounding the priests) to be right where the action is, following Jesus all the way to the crucifixion (and taking a few pot-shots when they can). But I found that, as Jesus carried his cross out of the city, you saw more and more Jews who cried foul and wept at what was transpiring.
Anyhoo…
On a lighter note, I often tend to make MST3K-type comments to myself or my friends whenever I see a film. How many such comments and when they get said depend on the movie - i.e. how involved I am with the story; how good/bad certain aspects of the film are; how uncomfortable I am at certain moments (I tend to embrace levity during “scary” movies).
That said, I didn’t make many audible comments while viewing The Passion, since the theatre was much more quiet that usual, and the subject so unsettling. However, a few things did pop into my head as I watched. Interestingly, these comments seemed both mildly blasphemous yet really funny…
When I first saw Jesus, I thought, “You know, that Jesus is a fine looking man.”
When Jesus stepped on the snake, I thought, “Watch out Jesus, PETA might come after you.”
When Jesus healed the soldier’s ear, I thought, “Hey, Jesus is playing Got Your Ear!” (That’s what it looked like!)
When Jesus ate bread with his disciples, I sang (not aloud), “I love the subs!”, ala those Quizno’s rat-things.
At one point, after falling, when Jesus got back to his feet, he seemed to have a piece of straw stuck to the side of his face by his mouth. I thought, “Hey, this is no time for a smoke, Jesus.”
Anyhoo…
Oh, yeah. And those two kids who first taunt and attack Judas? They really creeped me out. The hairs on my neck actually stood up. (I agree with Nick Nunziata of CHUD.com. Mel Gibson could make a really scary horror film.)
Lots of movies have messages, without having to repeat that message over and over and over and over just so we’re sure we get it now. No, wait: now? You get it?
The thing is, brutality can work to much greater effect when it is understated, not overstated (the ear cutting scence in Resevior Dogs vs. all of Kill Bill). And spending so much time on it made there less room for other important things. The thing is, Jesus is not even close to the top 100 of most suffering dudes of all time. That’s not what anyone thinks is the point: it isn’t a goth poetry contest to see who has suffered the most. The suffering is supposed to be about something, and this movie spends far too little time being about anything to make the brutality mean what it’s supposed to mean.
Mary was the real emmotional meat of the picture, which befits a movie by a passionate Catholic: Mary is the humanizing, comforting figure.
But if I am ever in the mood for nasty, pornographic suffering with no meaningful account of what it was all for, well, somebody already made Requiem for a Dream. I still think that the 70s Jesus movie is a better and more complete picture of Jesus. It doesn’t hold a candle in terms of production values though.
As for anti-semitism, the picture was basically playing out the standard Gibson-bad guy with a range of deluded cronies and followers mold through the Capihas, which makes things murky. The worst and best that can be said is that it is as anti-semetic as the Gospels are anti-semetic, though Gibson does seem to flesh things out with non-textual choices that both make the Jews in general look both worse than the text supports and more forgivable as a group and less monolithic.
I don’t think anti-semetism can really mean what it did in the days of the original passion plays. It lacks the same context, and the same ridiculous cultural imaginations. The real issue is no longer who is responsible for Christ’s death, but rather simply one of the Jews and their leaders being convienient props to stand in for the idea of mobbed fools who deny the Christian message, hypocrites who break their own laws to do it, and people who are either nasty or repent of their evil deeds by converting or proto-converting. They are essentially the Jews from the Jack Chick tracts, who exist as foils for smug conversion, but not as objects of hate or revenge.
Is this a fair portrayal of the actual Jews of the time? I doubt it. Is there room for Jews who do not believe in the message, but are still good people? Maybe, and that maybe is enough that I don’t think that the ADL should be making so much noise. But I also don’t respect the boosters of this movie for so affrontedly denying and scoffing at the issue. It’s there and it’s troubling. But it’s an important, interesting, complex trouble, nothing like the one-note trouble of the Godwinite type what the word “anti-semetism” conveys at full force.
Andrew Sullivan echoes some of the things I thought:
Oh, my overall impression: powerful bit of movie-making in parts, severely clumsy in others. The look of it, the feel of it, was great. If you were to forget for a moment that the movie will be big simply because so many religious forces have hitched their carts and pocketbooks to it, then I think it would still stand on it’s own as something that belongs in books about cinema, BECAUSE it is so troubling, so monotonously brutual, and… in some ways, so odd. It may not be a good film IMHO, but it is probably a “great” film, and I like the sorts of issues its bringing up into civil society that people are all discussing.
Oh, and I don’t know if this is true, but I heard on a radio talk show that Gibson IS in the movie (or at least his hands are). He is supposedly the one who actually drives in the nails.
So, Christianity is a primitive, sado-masochistic blood cult? Because that’s certainly the message Mel drilled (repeatedly) into my head. I found the unrelenting focus on the mortification of the flesh to be just as lurid as porn’s focus on the pleasures of the flesh. Fundie pornography, in other words.
It didn’t have to be that way but, in narrowly focusing on the last hours of Christ’s life, I feel the movie failed to provide adequate spiritual context to his suffering for our sins. They’ve skipped the first and second acts and gone straight to the third. This may be adequate when you’re preaching to the converted but it don’t think it’s good movie-making.
On the other hand, the cinematography was excellent, the acting good and I enjoyed hearing Latin & Aramaic spoken.
True, but Superstar was a rock opera meant to serve as entertainment rather than theology. Andrew Lloyd Webber never claimed that he was going for accuracy. I doubt that the pharoah of Egypt in Joseph’s time greatly resembled Elvis but it’s still a great scene in Dreamcoat, but had the same scene occurred in The Red Tent it would have seemed idiotic.
As to how Herod Antipas would have acted and appeared: he was educated in Rome, owned a mansion in Rome, married a woman raised in Rome (his niece/sister-in-law Herodias) and owed all that he had to Rome. His family was Edomite (i.e. of Arab stock, the name derived because they claimed descent from Esau/Edom) and had only been Jewish (and that nominally) for a century (they converted at the point of a sword, then got hold of the sword), so he probably wasn’t terribly devout (though his father did rebuild the temple as a very expensive placation to a people who hated him.) He would probably have seemed as Roman as Pilate and worn a purple fringed toga and a diadem with a court that reflected Mid-Eastern culture and Roman luxury.
Though most certainly rich and probably debauched (though again, his taste most definitely seems to have been hetero), it would be hard to believe he was pampered. He grew up in the household of an old and wildly paranoid father who killed thousands of people (including three of his own sons, one of his wives [and her entire family- brother, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles]) and built elaborate retreat-fortifications all over his kingdom in order to avoid being deposed. After his father’s death Antipas saw his full-brother Archelaus deposed by Rome, so he knew quite well to watch himself. He was a political creature who managed to survive as king for decades before finally being deposed by his nephew/brother-in-law Herod Agrippa (who was completely Roman in culture and actually a very close friend of the Emperor Claudius, hence the success of his coup.) Herod died in exile in what is now France; his wife/niece Herodias, who was the sister of Agrippa, was offered a divorce and the opportunity to keep her [second] husband’s vast properties in Rome, but surprised everybody by accompanying the old man into exile instead, so at least to some extent the marriage seems to have been a lovematch.
(Herodias’s daughter Salome, born of her first marriage to her uncle Herod Philip, later married another of Herod the Great’s sons who just to confuse things was also named Philip. [Herod the Great was obsessed with the life of Alexander the Great and thus the names Alexander, Philip, Olympias, Roxane, etc., were dominant in his family.] Her child from this marriage was so inbred that he was simultaneously the grandson, great-grandson, and great-great grandson as well as several degrees of cousin and nephew of the family founder Herod the Great. Salome later married one of Pilate’s successors as procurator of Judea.)
Disturbing.
This was not a movie to me, it is a realization. I went in all excited to see it, and came out extremely sad and humbled. I shuddered during the movie, I was startled, and I was sobbing. There are more things that are bloodier, but this is different. I don’t know how to describe it.
I was suprised that I could actually understand a lot of the Aramaic from studying Hewbrew and Greek. I think the Hebrew was the reason I could understand it. I am not fluent or anything, but I was happy that my studying was paying off in a way.
The subtitle were easy to follow, although I don’t think they even needed to be there.
*The Passion of Christ * made me realize what disgusting and selfish beings we are, and how we do not deserve what He did for us. It aslo made me angry and sad at how selfish people will continue to be.
After watching this, I was sick to think that I complain about stupid, remedial stuff. How dare me, how dare anyone. I have nothing to complain about.
It made me realize how disgusting we are to compromise Him and His word for our own selfishness.
It was a funeral. Emotionally draining.
I am sorry Jesus.
As someone raised Baptist, I know one is supposed to respond to the tale of Christ’s suffering as JerseyDiamond did (& I do respect your opinion) - but realize that not everyone sees it this way. Does anyone else remember the immortal words of singer Patti Smith - “Jesus died for somebody’s sins - but not mine.”
It’s horrific.
First, some exposition on me: I was raised in the best protestant 7th Day Adventist tradition, fundamentalist. Now, I guess the best you could say is that I’m a Christian (and even that’s shaky on days). My beliefs are not mainstream. Saw the movie last night.
It’s incredibly violent. And midieval. And for me, because every strike and blow and drop was so lovingly captured, it was way too much, too over the top. Because Jesus isn’t fleshed out as a character, because the majority of the performance is so one note, the movie simply becomes a two-hour depiction of one man’s extreme brutalization. It had little meaning for me. If Gibson meant to make a powerful movie, there are better ways to do it.
There are no surprises. Mary Magdalene is the prostitute she’s been confused with, which I found unfortunate. Pilate’s the pushover portrayed in the Gospels. Gibson’s learned little as a director - there’s the same “walking through the crowd” scenes we saw in Braveheart, which, while artful and effective (I suppose), just makes me think “oh, there’s that technique again.” It pulled me out of the experience.
It doesn’t seem realistic. I understand that there are incredibly brutal people the likes of which I cannot understand. But I doubt that so many are capable of such cruelty as depicted in the film. While I accept that the flagellers would be as brutal as depicted, and as gleeful in their craft, I doubt the common soldiers escorting a condemned man to his death would be as callous and violent as they are shown to be. Especially to a man who’s hamburger. Or I could accept that they would be that callous and violent, if they were callous and violent equally to all the condemned. That is - there were three men crucified that day. Yet the other two condemned carry only the crossbar (which is historically accurate), so why make only Jesus carry the whole cross? Or why not give him just the crossbar too? The other two men arrive at Golgotha in pretty good repair (granted, they probably weren’t scourged beforehand), with few contusions. So why is Jesus so brutalized en route? Why aren’t these other two as well? I understand Gibson’s motivation and point - to him and to Christians, Jesus isn’t “just another man” - but he would’ve been to the Romans. Because Jesus is separated, because he’s not treated as common, this lessened the realism for me.
Mary, John, and the Magdalene are too accepting. I realize that this is part of the subject matter and its limitations, but if Mr. Snicks were being treated in such a manner, I’d be moving heaven and earth to try to stop it. I’d run in there to cover him while being scourged (and yes, get scourged myself), I’d be as disruptive as I could, I’d run for any official that would listen, I’d do anything. They’d have to kill me or put me in prison to get me to stop. I also realize that this is part of 2000 years of progress - I don’t behave as Mary and the Magdalene would, and if I were in their time I might behave just as they did. But you’d think someone would at least try to step in.
There are things I liked - I thought Judas was very well done. My brand of Christianity was always quick to demonize him, to say he deserved his end. Whether or not you agree with this, he also suffered. And the movie shows this. And it’s very good. I liked the Marys. And although not historically accurate, I liked Pilate. I liked the flashback, especially Jesus’s table - more of this type of thing would’ve made a better movie by showing more of the man’s humanity. I liked the languages.
It’s unfortunate. Sadly, the movie makes the same mistake most of Christianity does: let’s focus on the death and forget about the life and the message. And miss the point of all three entirely.
Snicks
Well, it was definitely better than the other stuff currently playing in wide release (Barbershop II to name just one).
Audience: The majority were upper-middle-class Catholics (based on the neighborhood demographics). Well more than half the women in the audience were sobbing uncontrollably.
Anti-Semitism: My hunch is if Gibson truly was a Jew-hating clod looking to stir up trouble, he would have fought tooth and nail before deleting the scene in which Caiaphas tells his followers,
I wish he could have expanded on the ‘ruthlessness and evils of religious intolerance’ message instead of aiming it solely at the Jews & Pagans.
Jesus: Unlike DMark’s assertion that clips show him as a good-looking, Caucasian with a nice haircut and six-pack abs, I thought he looked non-ethnic, average and borderline paunchy.
Symbols: As previously mentioned, [ol][](The Nordic-looking, blue-eyed) Satan holding the child demon was a mirror image of Leonardo DaVinci’s Madonna Litta.[]In one of the last scenes of Christ on the crucifix, in the close-up of his bloodied face and eyes, He looked like a slaughtered lamb or somewhat cervine. It’s a stretch, but I sensed a subtle “Lamb of God” symbolism on the screen.The blurred vision of God as a teardrop fell to the ground gave the feeling of a cleansing sorrow.[/ol]
Somebody please answer this question
Somebody please answer this question
Somebody please answer this question
And while you’re at it, could the experts please tell me what they thought about the accents of the actors, and whether they were relatively authentic?
I can’t comment on the Aramaic but the Latin was sort of all over the place. Each actor seemed to pronounce it however he/she wanted. Pilate probably had the most Latin dialogue and used more or less Vulagate pronunciations (which was incorrect historically) but he also sort of mumbled a lot of the lines and din’t really enunciate that well. I noticed in the credits that Gibson used a lot of Italian actors (and I believe he shot the film in Italy) so I wonder if I was hearing Latin spoken with thick Italian accents. That was the impression I got from the inflections and cadence.