February 28, 2004

• Ok, everyone else mentioned The Passion of The Christ in their xanga's, so I figure I'll tell you all how I feel about it. Firstly, I loved it. It was definitely a good movie. One of my favourite scenes is when Jesus is carrying the cross, and he stumbles (he does this many times) and Mary gets close enough to him to speak. She kisses his tortured figure, tears streaming down her face. He looks up at her, obviously in an incredible amount of pain, and all he can say is "I will make all things new." The hope and motive Jesus was expressing there, during a very painful exercise was excellent. I almost cried, and I've never cried in a movie before.

  
  

  Adversely, however, I do have some complaints. Close to the end, when the sky becomes dark, the ground starts to shake, and according to the biblical account, it is time for the curtain in the temple to be split in two. They have the whole temple splitting, and there is no curtain in the shot. I've always loved the symbolism of that event in the bible. What Jesus did on the cross gave all people the ability to enter into the presence of God. The ripping of the curtain is a destroying of the barrier between the place where everyone could go, and the place where only a high priest could go. The movie changed that all together. Several times in the movie, and mentioned with emphases, was the fact that Jesus was going to destroy the temple and rebuild it again in 3 days. He said it himself, and the Pharisees used it to mock him when he was on the cross. The idea is that Jesus is the presence of God on earth, and that he would be destroyed and rebuilt. the movie seemed to be making that statement a very literal one, trying to overextend an analogy that just wasn't in the bible.

  
  

  Other then that, I wasn't sure all the violence was realistic. I mean, this is probably the most violent movie I've ever seen. I understand, and I think it's fairly plain in the movie, that the pain is used to show the spiritual battle that was going on behind the scenes. However, in reality I think if someone was hit repeatedly with that weapon in the stomach, and it did anything near what it did to his back, his stomach would be spilt all over the floor. He would have died during the torture. No doubt it was a bad torture session, I read many things that tell me so, but I think Gibson went a little overboard here. The only other thing was the repetitive nature of the cross carrying scenes. Jesus falling over and over took up more of the movie then all the rather compacted events that played out at the beginning of the movie. I, again, understand that the purpose is to show more pain, and this is to show more passion, and more evil, but I think we get the idea after the whipping scene. It seems to take away from how the story is told, and the way the movie flows, mainly because they wanted to show more pain.

  
  

  Anyway, despite how I might be coming across here, I loved the movie. Go see it if you haven't.

  • 4:46 am
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