I think the reviews are all I'll ever know about this flick.
Quote of note:
…it shouldn't be surprising that what's immediately most evident about "The Passion" is its complete sincerity. This is Gibson's personal vision of the greatest story ever told, a look inside his heart and soul. Gibson even personally provided, according to composer John Debney, the despairing wail that accompanies Judas' suicide. When the director writes in the introduction to the film's coffee-table book that he wanted his work "to be a testament to the infinite love of Jesus the Christ," there is no reason to doubt him. Which makes it even sadder that "The Passion of the Christ" does not play that way.
A narrow vision and staggering violence
By Kenneth Turan
Times Staff Writer
February 24 2004
Combining the built-in audience of the Bible, the incendiary potential of "The Birth of a Nation" and the marketing genius of "The Blair Witch Project," the arrival of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" feels like a milestone in modern culture. It's a nexus of religion, celebrity, cinema and mass communication that tells us more about the way our world works than we may want to know.
The film left me in the grip of a profound despair, and not for reasons I would have thought. It wasn't simply because of "The Passion's" overwhelming level of on-screen violence, a litany of tortures ending in a beyond-graphic crucifixion.
And it wasn't because of the treatment of the high priest Caiphas and the Hebrew power elite of Jesus' time — a disturbing portrait likely to give, I feel sure unintentionally, comfort to anti-Semites.
Instead, what is profoundly disheartening is that people of goodwill will see this film in completely different ways. Where I see almost sadistic violence, they will see transcendence; where I see blame, they will see truth.
In effect, aspects of Gibson's creative makeup — his career-long interest in martyrdom and the yearning for dramatic conflict that make him an excellent actor, coupled with his belief in the Gospels' literal truth — have sideswiped this film. What is left is a film so narrowly focused as to be inaccessible for all but the devout.
Those factors have made "The Passion" a film that will separate people rather than bring them together. Normally these kinds of disagreements don't matter, but with a film like this, "You just don't get it" confrontations have sad echoes of savage conflicts that have lasted for centuries. It has the potential to foster divisiveness because of the way it exposes and accentuates the fissures in belief that otherwise might go unnoticed. We all know where the road paved with good intentions leads, and it is not to the gates of heaven.
Posted by P6 at February 24, 2004 06:39 AM
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Comments
Someone I know went to a screening of the movie (sponsored by a local church) and said, "It is pure violence, sadism and gore that I could not imagine". He said that the strongest feelings he had in response were anger and disgust at the violence in the movie. He thought that some of the Christians in the audience were moved by it but as a Muslim he was not moved at all by it, but only shocked at the gore.
Posted by Al-Muhajabah at February 24, 2004 11:26 AM