Here is my review
PASSION OF THE CHRIST
In times of great change, people's religious beliefs often become polarized, veering toward either extreme fundamentalism or very personal experience. Over the past few decades, a spiritual movement has arisen that encourages people to look inward for truth rather than relying on external authorities. Now Mel Gibson has countered with the Passion of the Christ, a powerful but bombastic film that restates, in excessively graphic terms, fundamentalist Christian beliefs about how the death of Jesus atoned for the sins of mankind. The film chronicles the accusation of blasphemy from the Jewish high priests to the trial overseen by Roman governor Pontius Pilate and Jesus' eventual crucifixion at the hands of the Romans at Golgotha, while restricting the message of his teachings to a few unconvincing sound bites. We are shown, in explicit detail, Jesus being whipped, scourged, mocked, spat on, getting spikes driven through his hands and feet, and left to die on the cross. Use of the original tongues of Aramaic and Latin add realism, while special effects such as female demons, satanic children, and a sinister figure screaming at the heavens lend a dark and surreal touch, but seem strangely out of place.
The film opens in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus (James Caviezel) is praying alone, fearful of what he knows is his fate. A black-coated Satan hovers around tempting him to surrender while his disciples have fallen asleep and Judas (Luca Lionello) collects his thirty pieces of silver from the temple guards. The film heats up when Jesus is arrested and hauled before the Sanhedrin High Priest Caiaphas (Mattia Sbragia) to stand trial for blasphemy. In the crowd are Jesus' supporters, including John (Hristo Jivkov), Mary Magdalen (Monica Bellucci) and Mary, beautifully performed by Maia Morgenstern. In touching sequences, the relationship between mother and son is shown in flashbacks from the time Jesus was a child to the present when she runs to help Jesus as he slumps to the ground.
Unfortunately, every character other than Jesus and his followers is portrayed as bloodthirsty, hysterical, and corrupt, with the exception of Pontius Pilate (Hristo Naumov Shopov) who is depicted, contrary to biblical accounts, as a suffering saint, perplexed and shocked by the crowd's brutality. Whether or not the film is overtly antisemitic is questionable, but passion plays have for centuries reinforced the notion of collective Jewish guilt for the death of Jesus, and have created a climate for antisemitic acts. At the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1988, bishops issued recommendations urging producers not to show "a teeming mob" calling for Jesus' death. These recommendations are violated in Passion of the Christ, which shows a vacillating Pilate giving in to a bloodthirsty Jewish mob demanding Jesus' crucifixion.
This is followed by ten minutes of exaggerated blood-soaked violence, as Jesus is tied to a post, whipped with a stick, then sadistically flayed again with a whip that has metal barbs at each end, his flesh torn out by the hooks. When he is finally nailed to the cross in slow motion hammer strokes, we breathe a sigh of relief because emotional numbness has taken over and we know the end is close. Gibson self-servingly describes his film as "the most authentic and biblically accurate film about Jesus' death," and says that he used excessive violence to help us to better understand the sacrifice Jesus made for humanity. This completely ignores the fact that the biblical accounts of the trial are contradictory and do not contain details of the punishment except to say that Jesus was "scourged."
Whether it "is as it was," or as it never was and never will be, I found Passion to be heavy handed, emotionally draining, and lacking in spiritual feeling. Caviezel's performance is lacking in presence and conviction. Jesus spoke with clarity and eloquence about man's unbreakable connection to his creator, and saw the potential for humanity to live the truth without guilt. In the Beatitudes, Jesus blesses those who hunger and thirst after justice. His intended result was not to incite anger but to enhance our capacity for love and forgiveness. If the purpose of Gibson's film is to stun audiences and encode images deep in our psyche, he has succeeded, yet his legacy may be to damage interfaith relationships and our view of religion as a way of bringing people together.
"They must find it hard, those who have taken authority as truth, rather than truth as authority" Gerald Massey
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