|
|
Mar 24, 2004
The Passion of the ChristI have been reluctant to write a review of The Passion Of The Christ. So many people have loved this film, and it has had a great impact on them. I don't want to say anything that may take away from that impact. But, I think it's probably arrogant of me to really think that my opinion is going to strongly sway anyone, so, here it goes. My reveiw is based on question posed by John Wentz in his review. Be sure and check it out. So what did you think? I really wanted to like this movie. I tried really hard. After all, it was my duty as an evangelical to do so. And it wasn't that I disliked it. But, I thought it was ok. Not great, not bad. Just okay. Emotionally, it never drew me in. I'm not sure why. I think there were 2 factors involved. First was the hype. Hype just kills movies for me. Take the Lord of the Rings Trilogy as an example. I didn't expect to like them. I didn't see the first one until 6 months after it came out, in a $2.00 theater. I loved it. I saw it again a week later. So by the time the third one came out, I was excited. After I saw it, I was disappointed. Why? I think it was the hype. Same with The Passion. The second thing that hurt it was my education. I have done a lot of gospel studies and have really looked into the crucifixion. This affected me in two ways. One was that I was nitpicking the details of the entire film. Secondly, the things that were supposed to shock me never did. Did anything surprise you? No, and I think that was the problem. Were you repulsed? No. John's point on this was pretty good, but I think that we have come to a point where movie violence and real violence are easily differentiated. Also, one problem for me is that I never really connected with the character of Jesus. The film presumes that we know the backstory, so we start with Jesus in the garden. The problem is that despite knowing the story, I never connected emotionally with the character of Jesus. More importantly, through my study of crucifixtion, I really didn't think the violence of the film was even close to what the real thing was like. The beating was probably fairly accurate. Often people did not survive the Roman beatings. But the torture of the crucifixion itself was not well depicted. These people had to fight for every breath while hanging on the cross. What moved you the most? There were 3 scenes that really drew me in. The first was when Mary came saw Jesus carrying the cross and had the flashback to when Jesus was a child and fell down. Good stuff. The second was Simon's speech defending Jesus. The third was when Jesus said "Father forgive them," which in my opinion is one of the most powerful lines in the entire Bible. How do you think people who don?t believe in Christ will react? The problem with this question is that it presumes that all non-christians will react the same way. If Christians don't all react the same way, then non-Christains likely will not either. However, as I stated earlier, this film presumes a knowledge of the back story, and I think to get emotionally drawn in, you really have to understand the main character and the injustice that was taking place. Did you think it was anti-semitic? The one thing that got lost in this debate is the fact that there are really two separate questions here. The first, is the movie anti-semitic, I would answer no. First of all, blame is not really presented as an issue in the film at all. It's never the point, and the Romans and the Jews both really get a lot of the blame (and I felt the Romans came off a lot worse than the Jews). Secondly, there were Jews that were sympathetic to Jesus (and even a Roman or 2). There was never an effort to charactarize one group or another. There is a second question that I think goes more to the point of the debate; Will the movie cause anti-semitism? While the movie itself is not anti-semitic, historically anti-semitic violence has been linked to artistic depictions of the passion. So, I think there is at least some possibility of this happening. There has been at least one incident, with the church in Colorado that posted on it's marquee "The Jews killed Jesus." But, for the most part, I don't think that it will be the case. First of all, the passion plays played upon existing anti-semitism. In other words, I don't think any of these depictions recruited any new anti-semites. I could be wrong. Secondly, and I have never seen them, but my guess is that these passion playes went out of there way to really portray Jews in an excessivly negative light. This was not the case with the movie. I doubt it really sparked any anger toward the Jews. In fact, anger was not the emotion that Gibson tried elict. The fact is, the anti-semitism debate was never about anti-semitism. It was an attempt to discredit Gibson and his film. If you look at some of the other criticisms the film has gotten (violence which is normally applauded in these circles, and the amount of money Gibson is making, which normally nobody complains about) you get the sense that people don't like this film for some other reason. People were calling it anti-semitic without ever seeing it. The attempt to remove the blame from the Jews has been around for a while (Read Jesus, A Revolotionary Biography by John Dominic Crossan for more info.) I think people used this to try and discredit a film they fear for other reasons. Final Words There were a lot of innacuracies (ie the way Jesus was nailed to the cross) and weird stuff (the bird poking out the thief's eyes) that helped mess this film up for me. These probablly didn't affect others as much as it did me. So, as I said, I though it was good, not great. But like I said, I know for others, it was a great film that had a great impact, and for that, I'm glad it was made. posted
by Unknown @ 11:23:00 AM |
