_Passion of Christ_
Out of context: Reply #107
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Hi. I am amazed at how much discussion this movie is generating here. What can I
say? The Passion is indeed one of the stranger anomalies to arise in the film industry in recent times.I saw the flick on opening night so I'll post my reactions.
First thing I'd like to address is the issue of whether 'The Passion' is propaganda, art, both or neither.
Consider this 1. Gibson made this movie with his won resources (around 30 million bucks) 2. This movie is a deeply personal expression of his spirituality and it seems he was not tailoring it to any specific consumer demographic 3. hence the controversy around the movie. No distributers would touch it except for a rather obscure one, Newmarket. Yet the man persevered nonetheless 4. he was faithful to his origional vision of the film.... despite all of the bad press and lobbying by the ADL 5. He managed to have the likes of Monica Belucci trained in 1st century aramaic, quite the feat 6. a truly avante-garde movie full of extreme violence, creepy supernaturalism, and accurate historical reconstruction has been hailed by the majority of the bible belt and fundie xtians in North America
Conclusion: the film is a work of art.
Now for the BLOOD.
Catholics and Jews who have a deep understanding of thier religious roots know what this is all about.
Consider the passover meal (last supper). The last supper is a jewish ritual to commemerate the Hebrew deliverance in Egypt from the Angel of Death. Hebrew families took a lamb, prepared it for a meal, and marked their doorposts with the blood so that they might be spared the Death.
At Jesus' passover meal, he drew a symbolic analogy between his own impending 'slaughter' and the lamb of the Passover. That is why he said, "this is my Body, this is my Blood'. The apostles weren't cannibal's, they were being told that their Master was going to be the new Lamb of the Passover and a new deliverance of humanity from Death.
Later in the film, notice that when Jesus is tortured, blood is being spattered everywhere and on everyone. People naively assume that this is just gratuitous pornographic violence. No, what it is expressing is that the 'lamb's' blood is being shed on all humanity, even the sadisitc roman brutes who get it square in the face. This two hour sanguinary mosaic is a metaphore as well as a documentation.
The name of Gibson's production company, 'Icon' reveals what he is ultimately trying to do here: paint an icon in real flesh and blood. It is a 21st century version of medieval
christian iconography and he does it well. The blood and gore is a backdrop for our thoughts, he gives us time (lots of time) to reflect on the meaning of the violence. He not making a movie with the stale, boring hollywood template, no, this movie is mpore in line with the challenging and thought provoking films of Tarkovsky (Andrei Rublev, Stalker) and Bergman (Seventh Seal). So sorry if people were not sufficiently 'entertained'.This movie is truly avante-garde and breaks new ground in cinematography. I could go on for pages here so I'll end with this:
Love the movie/hate the movie, whatever. At least admit that Gibson hasn't insulted our intelligence.