The Passion of Christ revisited

Saw the movie yesterday

Overall it was pretty good. I did notice a few things though:

The Roman leadership was portrayed in a MUCH better light than the Jewish leadership. Pilate aqctually seemed quite noble. While Ciphas seemed to be absolutely ruthless.

They cut the "his blood is on our hands and our children's hands" line. I know a lot of Jewish organizations complained about that line, and how it is in only one of the Gospels. However, I thought they left it in and was surprised to find that they took it out.

Did anyone notice that one Jewish "mob" was screaming for his execution when he was being judged, but another, larger, Jewish group was in tears as he was carrying the cross to his crucifixtion.

Monica Belucci should not have been in the film. Not because of her acting, she is just way to beautiful for a movie like this. I found myself constantly drifting into "impure" thoughts about her. Everytime she was on screen I was hyper aware of the fact that this was Monica Belluci, and not Mary Magdelene.

These are just some thoughts from my first viewing of the Passion.

Jon

 

Well, as I mentioned earlier, I was not going to view the movie. I now have no choice.

A church member gave my wife and me two tickets to see the movie so now, we will go this week, perhaps tomorrow evening.

It will be interesting to watch it being mindful of all the comments on here.

 

Just back from seeing film

Compelling...Captivating...Stirring...Chilling…Heart wrenching

 

Re: Just back from seeing film

My thoughts exactly. I can't understand how anyone could tear themselves away from the movie to go to the concession stand or even to the restroom.

 

Still boring

Could be because I'm not Christian. I found the torture scenes to just be repetitive and overdone.

 

Re: Still boring

Violence is violence. Sitting through 2 hours of continuous torture was simply an unpleasant experience. If the movie was an ordinary drama many of the same good churchmen would be screaming murder. Those would be the same people complaining of violent videogames with animated characters.

 

Re: Re: Still boring

Absolutely. The very subject matter renders the movie untouchable and the violence justified. Something I do find interesting is that realistic torture is okay but Jesus is still wearing a loincloth when cruxified, which is not realistic. Violence is justified but nudity, even when accurate, isn't.

A good filmmaker knows when to cut away from the violence, to allow the audience a breather in order to actually make the next scene more intense. That didn't happen here, which lead to boredom and a numbing of this viewer's reaction.

I do admire Gibson's bravery for making the movie but I think he needed to do a better job of editing.

 

I've been investigating on-line full-text journals, and happened upon something called the 'Journal of Religion and Film', out of the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

The relevance for this thread is that they have a whole special issue devoted to 'The Passion of the Christ' with lots of papers (including some from the SBL) on the subject:

http://www.unomaha.edu/~wwwjrf/2004Symposium/Symposium.htm

Here's the journal's home page:

http://www.unomaha.edu/~wwwjrf/