The Passion of the Christ (Widescreen Edition) | James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern

The Passion of the Christ (Widescreen Edition) | James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern | Great and True

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The Passion of the...

	The Passion of the Christ (Widescreen Edition) James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern 20th Century Fox, 2004 average customer review:based on 1995 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Visual depictions that hammer at the conscience.

This is easily the most violent and graphically stunning movie I've ever seen. I'd bet that it's not likely to be topped by anything anytime soon. Not from horror. Not from dark fantasy. Not from sci-fi. No, this one will pledge it's vision into my skull for a long time even if I never watch it again.

The "Passion" is probably partly based on less extreme Passion plays that are featured around the world as a commemoration of Christ's death. It is clear, though, that Gibson went for the throat with this film. There is no question here. You either sympathize with the devastated Christ or you have no soul. That's the message of this film. The plight of Judas Iscariot is no less powerful than that of his Master becoming the victim of circumstances that he could not forsee in his greed and power hungry heart.

The fleshed out depictions of the spiritual forces of evil add a wickedness to the story that draws a clear disinction between Christ and the great Accuser, Satan, who is played by a woman to give the ancient rival of God a clearly feminine cast. Not sure why Gibson felt that was necessary, but it is visually stunning.

The beating of Christ, however, is the most gruesome feature of this film. No one below the age of 17 should be allowed to see it. It is so real and cruel that it makes one wonder if the human race is worth saving at all, if it cannot do any better than this. The wounds are horrid. The blood is all too convincing.

After this, the crucifixion is almost anti-climatic. Almost. Gibson manages to stage the culmination of the story with gruesome and dour aplomb. He manages to make Christ seem and feel real against any doubt that might capture the heart. Excellently acted and directed this movie is one for the ages.

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Great and True

Don't listen to the liberal Arthur's review below. He's your typical left wing smear merchant who flood amazon's reviews and slam Christians and President Bush. So, disregard all the 1 star reviews by the left wing loons and read this. They provide no evidence and only throw out labels and name's. A typical Left Wing Tactic.

This movie is as close as a movie has ever been made to what really happened to Jesus Christ. The movie is good. I say anyone at the age of puberty should see it. It's true, straight from the Gospels and some of the Old Testament, with some info from the Catholic Church to give it some more story which probably did happen or was consistant with what did happen.

Now for my 2 gripes...Jesus was nailed through the wrist, not the hands. I figured that Mel Gibson would have got that right with all the research he did. My second gripe is for all the 2 hours of blood and gore, which was necessary, there is no reward at the end. It just ends abruptly. There should have been a bit more, or a prequel and a sequel. Watching this film one would learn nothing about Jesus except he was crucified. You need to go in with some knowledge of History regarding God.

So, it's a must see, right along with 'Jesus' starring Jeremy Sisto, which is to this day the best account and up to date movie about Jesus life.

Oh, and this movie grossed 10 times more than it should have thanks to the left wing media slamming it left and left. BACKFIRE! LOL

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Some Thoughts on Violence and Experimental Theatre

I'd like to begin my thoughts on this film by briefly discussing another film made over 20 years ago.

If anyone has ever seen the movie _My Dinner with Andre,_ he or she might recall how Andre goes on for some time about his disillusionment with the then-current state of theatre. Andre begins to talk about "experimental theatre."

Specifically, Andre reveals (to the nebbish-y Wallace Shawn) that he had considered giving a bloody, severed head to an audience so attendees could pass it around during a performance he directed.

Yes, at first doing this seems absurdly ridculous and flip, but Andre goes on to give his reasons for doing so.

Andre believed that people had become desensitized and ultimately removed from real human suffering, through viewing, in a superficial way, the many violent acts on television and in the movies. If my memory of the movie serves me well, Andre said people have become "robots," viewing "robot entertainment," eating "robot" food, etc. ...detached from real, organic "human"-ness.

And so we come to the _The Passion of the Christ._ Many reviewers say they don't like the graphic suffering in it, and that's certainly their prerogative. I don't like the graphic violence in a movie I reviewed on Amazon [_Kill Bill_].

However, it is my opinion that "body count" violence is gratuitous and tarted up to look like the sort of "art" that the Hollywood crowd loves to prattle on about at cocktail parties.

Conversely, there is evidence that the violence portrayed in _Passion_ probably DID happen. Read ancient Roman history. Bloodlust was commonplace. "Criminals" were crucified; archaelogical evidence confirms it. (e.g., try to get ahold of the book, _The Bible as History,_ and read the section on crucifixion and flagellation). Read Tacitus's _Annals_: there is a reference to Jesus Christ's crucifixion. It is not a cruci-"fiction," as some might dismissively say.

Moreover, the _Passion_ is *supposed* to evoke pathos, one of the noble aims of drama since ancient Greek theatre. And if you stay with the film, the experience should ultimately lead to catharsis. If it didn't for you, then that's a legitimate complaint.

This is not a "snuff film," as some might say. (Just because one of the cartoon characters on _South Park_ says it is, doesn't make it true.) If a lie gets told enough times, it becomes the truth. No actual murder is committed to film for the purposes of "entertainment" any more than the violence in _Schindler's List_ or _Saving Private Ryan_ is "real" here in any sense other than theatrically.

Further, I believe that dismissing _The Passion of the Christ_ as a "snuff film" is a form of denial, indicating an inability to face reality.

It's also a sign of immaturity. No one who has seen death or violence up close comes to _The Passion of the Christ_ with wide-eyed naivete.

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Not Quite the Religious Experience I was Expecting ...

A couple of thoughts:

First of all, the fact that the movie was in Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew drove me crazy. I really dislike subtitles, I (personally anyway) find them distracting and they tend to force me away from paying attention to other parts of a film that I like to look at.

There was no story-telling at all. Now granted, since it made money hand-over-fist, this may be a moot-point in a lot of ways. However, if you were coming from a family that wasn't particularly religious, I couldn't help but think that you'd have no idea who the characters were or what was going on.

I had heard people mention that they had thought that `Braveheart' was a warm-up for what Gibson did on TPOTC. I disagree with that on every possible level. `Braveheart' was a better film, and not by a small margin.

I had also heard mentioning of "The Media's" over-hyping the violence in the film. I didn't think this was at all overstated. If anything, it was more violent then I expected. Now, being such a fan of horror, action, and science-fiction movies, I'm the LAST person in the world to complain about a movie being violent or bloody. I do think though, that it hit a point where the brutality in the movie ceased to have a point in forwarding the story. It almost seemed to be violent, just for the hell of it. Yeah, I know, and then I get to hear the argument "Well, that was what he really went through." Well there's a difference between conveying the point that he was tortured and seeing every minute of Christ BEING tortured. I felt (in several instances) that Gibson had made his point and just continued to, visually, beat-up his audience. With a running time of over two hours, you probably very easily could have trimmed about five or ten minutes off and given your audience a little bit more of a mental break. Although admittedly, is edition of the film does make some of these scenes a little easier ...

Monica Bellucci is an OUTSTANDING Italian actress that's given virtually nothing to do.

I LOVED the scenes with Mary reflecting back on her life with Christ as a child and a young man, but there aren't NEARLY enough of them. For me, they were the only points where I felt emotionally invested in the movie. Other then that I felt like I was watching a one-legged man in an a$$-kicking contest.

I honestly didn't see where the film was anti-Semitic. I thought it was clear that the Jewish hierarchy simply felt that its authority was being usurped and that it was the actions of several individuals in power that started "the conspiracy against Christ" (for lack of a better term) and not an indictment of the ENTIRE Jewish faith. To be fair though, I'm not Jewish. I might very well feel completely different if my upbringing was that of another faith.

As far as being a "traditionalist" movie, I didn't think there was enough script to make a judgment. It didn't appear to shoot off in any bizarre directions, and I never found myself saying "Hey ... that didn't happen like that." What exactly would a "non-traditionalist" film look like?

So on the whole maybe two and a half or three stars out of five. It will certainly give people something to talk about (which in of itself probably isn't such a bad thing) but I didn't find myself the least bit moved or fulfilled on a religious level.

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