I know that Christ suffered. But knowing that Christ suffered is a million miles away from slo-mo close-ups of pieces of flesh being ripped off of his back. Violence in movies is tricky. It is hard to do it well. I would say that the first scene in Saving Private Ryan is some of the most effective violence I have ever before seen, on film (and I couldn’t stand the rest of the film, but that opening can’t be beat). That’s the real problem I have with most war movies and violent movies in general: the over-used device of slow motion to depict the action. I don’t like it. When it was first used, in Bonnie and Clyde, it was startling and new. But now, it is a lazy shortcut. When people talk about the problem of “glorifying violence” in movies, I think most of that has to do with the tendency of violent scenes to be done in slow motion. Violence that happens in real time, like in Saving Private Ryan, or like the last scene in Taxi Driver, is terrifying. Nothing glorious about it at ALL.
Roger Ebert said that Passion was the most violent movie he had ever seen. I agree.
The first scene, in Getshemene, was gorgeous. Everything bathed in blue, the moon, the fog, the sleeping disciples, Jesus praying and weeping, in Aramaic. There were no colors in the scene, except blue and black. I thought it was a beautiful way to begin.
There is an androgynous Devil who haunts the film, showing up at random moments, staring up at Jesus on the cross from the crowd. This devil is obviously a woman, but her face is unplaceable, angular, severe, her eyes huge and knowing. A black cloak is over her head … so you see no hair, nothing to indicate it is male or female.
I liked how it was done, first of all. The devil moves through the crowd, as though he/she is just another bystander … and yet obviously Gibson had put the actor on some kind of rolling dolly … so the actor glides smoothly through. It’s a very good effect.
I don’t know. I’m afraid of the Devil. Is that the Catholic upbringing? Maybe. The devil in Gibson’s film is how I have imagined him. Cold, knowing, amused.
I cannot reiterate enough how violent this movie is. Watching the film is almost completely an unpleasant experience.
I am sure that that is Gibson’s point.
Gibson: This man died for our sins. You think his passion was a picnic?
Me: I GET that, Mel, I GET that … but I’m talking about a MOVIE, and how an audience responds to a movie … and I wanted Jesus to be put out of his misery about half an hour into the flick. The suffering became too LITERAL. It was lingered over, glorified, dwelled upon.
I came home, and got out my Bible, and read all 4 versions of the passion in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
A very interesting exercise.
In some versions, the temple is rent in two when Jesus dies. In other versions, that is not mentioned. Mel Gibson has the temple split in half following Jesus “giving up the ghost”.
But in NO versions does it say: “And they beat his back with metal spikes until his skin literally came off in huge chunks.”
In John it says, “They smote him with their hands.”
Obviously, “They smote him with their hands” is different from “They smote him with metal spikes“.
In Matthew, I think, it says “And then they scourged him.”
I’m assuming THAT was the version Mel went to for the scene of Jesus being beaten by the Roman soldiers. It was one hell of a “scourging”. I find it hard to believe that someone could even survive what was depicted up on the screen.
What did I like?
Me being me, I liked the small moments. Not the apocalyptic crowd scenes. But the little human moments, the more casual moments … the character-revealing moments.
I liked the flashback of Jesus and Mary, long before he left home. He was building something in the back yard, and she came out to bring him water. I loved how the relationship was imagined. She was concerned about him, she was motherly and he was trying to tease her out of it. He splashed water in her face, and they both laughed.
I loved that.
My favorite part was when Simon, in the crowd, was compelled by the Roman soldiers to help Jesus with his cross.
The actor playing Simon was marvelous although it’s hard to even talk about the “acting” in a movie such as this. Let’s just say, this guy was perfectly cast. He was swarthy, and manly and the scenes of he and Jesus struggling through the streets, and Simon’s dawning horror at what was happening – I was very very moved by that. Very.
It’s the small human moments that make a film great, and not just a damn pamphlet.
I don’t know how to talk about the film anymore because the violence was so overwhelming. What ends up happening with violence like that, at least for me, is that my brain shuts off. I distance myself from it. I don’t feel anything. I was not overwhelmed with compassion for what Jesus suffered. Or if I did have compassion, it was extremely intellectual. Half the time, I had to keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see blood spraying out of Jesus’ back and up onto the faces of the laughing Roman soldiers. I cut off.
One thing I DID get from that scene, though … and I’ve heard it mentioned by other reviewers … was a deep-down gut-level horror at what man is capable of. The horrors that man can do. The horror of man’s inhumanity to man.
This is not a new concept, obviously, and is not the first time I have realized this, but the violence of the scene, as I said, was so relentless, that my heart shut down, completely, and my head was left to respond. And what I kept thinking was, “My God. Look at what man is capable of. Look at how cruel Man is.”
I don’t know how to address the anti-semitism, because I’m not a Biblical scholar. I definitely found Mel Gibson’s portrayal of Caiaphas very problematic. Especially in conjunction with Pontius Pilate. Caiaphas, in the Bible, though, is very much like the Caiaphas in the film. Pilate is presented in the film as a pretty reasonable guy, pretty compassionate. That’s not exactly what I “get” from Pontius in the Bible, although he does seem like a relatively reasonable man. After all, he’s the “I wash my hands of you” guy. Gibson made it seem like Caiaphas pushed a reluctant and basically nice Pontius to crucify Christ.
Again, when I went back and read the 4 Gospels last night all of their lines in the film were pretty much word for word. (Gibson obviously went back and forth from one Gospel to another, which is also problematic.)
Pontius’ lines in the film were taken directly from the Bible.
But let me say this, about the anti-semitic charges:
Yes, Caiaphas was a high priest. He supposedly represents the “Jews”. He was a pretty unsympathetic character.
However, EVERYONE in the film was a Jew, and their characters ran the gamut. Simon was a Jew: he showed tremendous compassion for a fellow human being, regardless of the fact that Jesus was being executed as a criminal. The women crying along the route, the woman who came out and wiped his face … Jews, all of them. There is much diversity there, in the portrayals.
I can understand why Gibson is taking a lot of heat, though. Caiaphas is pretty much irredeemable, especially in comparison with Gibson’s version of Pontius Pilate, a kind of mild-mannered gentleman.
On a completely trivial note: Pontius Pilate is a babe. And that’s all I’m sayin’.
I’ll never forget the film. There are certain images emblazoned in my mind. Mary Magdalene’s dirty face, with pale streaks of tears on her cheeks … Judas’ painfully chapped and bloody lips as he stares at the torment of his former friend in the temple … the blueness of the garden, the fog, the full moon … the one centurion who had compassion for the man on the cross, and handed him up the sponge doused in vinegar for Jesus to drink – I liked that actor, too … the performance of the actor playing Simon – wonderful job, dude, whoever you are … and all of the actors speaking Latin, Aramaic and other languages … as fluidly as if it were their native tongue … pretty amazing.
But the violence. It’s raw. It’s definitely raw.
Argh…do I see it first or read what Sheila said first? I’m so torn.
I had to write down my own thoughts about it before I checked out what Bill and Steve said – even though we all talked about it like maniacs last night.
I wanted to be able to just talk about what I got … very hard with a movie like this!
One thing you do need to know, Emily: Pontius Pilate is a babe. At least in the Lexicon of Sheila O’Malley.
I would suggest seeing it before you read what I wrote. When are you planning on going?
Not soon enough, if there’s babe-age, too! Probably this weekend.
I’ll just bookmark this post until after.
Emily -
When you see the guy you’re probably gonna make fun of me … just like you did with my wife-beating Hobbit soccer-player … but I can’t help it. He’s a babe in my eyes. :)
I’ll wait for the book ;)
On the phone with my mum last night:
Mum: Are you going to see the new Mel Gibson film?
Me: It sounds interesting. But I don’t know. It’s not really getting me interested.
Mum: Yes, but it’s the real thing, it’s how he died, it’s all his suffering.
Me: Yes, but it’ll be incredibly violent and I am afraid that I won’t be able to sit through it. Are you going to see it?
Mum: I want to, but not in a cinema, in case I get too upset.
Me: Yeah, the violence…that’s what worries me.
Thanks for your thoughts, Sheila. I think I’ll wait until it comes out on video. The violence is the thing I feared most and from your description it sounds pretty damn violent.
You’re going to “Passion of the Christ” based on Pontius Pilate being “a babe”- and here I was reluctant to make “Monica Bellucci is hot” jokes.
Maybe Sullivan was right, and the film WAS pornography.
Yes. I should keep in mind that you also find Oompa Loompas alluring. I won’t get my hopes up.
Stephen -
Oh, let the pornography fly!! Monica Belluci is hot, and Pontius is a babe.
Now Emily -
I am laughing out loud. I said I found Oompa Loompas “disturbingly sexual” – not alluring … Oh lord. Still laughing.
Pontius Pilate looks like he stepped off a Roman frieze.
“Disturbingly sexual” is even worse. That’s okay. I’m very forgiving of my artistic friends who happen to be perverts. It’s a natural part of their psyche for many of them.
Emily – after you see Pontius, you may never trust my opinion about “babe-age” again.
I’ll reserve judgement until I see him, but I would like to say that I find the name Hristo Shopov to be very silly.
I’m not going to be able to see it. I hardly always give credence to Andrew Sullivan, but a number of the more critical reviews convince me that I would not be able to handle it, and that there’s no reason for me to put myself through it. Perhaps I found Leon Wieseltier’s piece in The New Republic most convincing:
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040308&s=wieseltier030804
…even though Monica Belluci IS hot. ;-)
Dave j -
Yes, I read that piece as well. Because everyone has been talking so much about this film – for myself I felt the need to see it. So my opinion could be based on a first-hand thing. Most reviews have expressed what I feel – across the boards. Ambivalence, admiration, disgust …
But nobody has come out and said, “Pontius and Mary M. are hot. Go see them and drool.”
I have not read the extended entry, but I want to share with you my first thought. Spoiler? Sheila, we know how it ends!
Patrick -
HAHA!!
I’m really torn on this movie. On one hand, I feel I really ought to see it. I want to, I’m curious about it, and I feel it is something I should do. On the other hand, I can handle violence, a fair bit of violence, but excess violence I don’t care for. But I know if I don’t go, it’ll bug me that I didn’t, and if I see it, I want to see it in the theater. So, I’ll probably go sometime in the next week or so, maybe catch a matinee next Friday, assuming I don’t wimp out.
Dave J -
One of my over-riding responses to the entire movie is its literal-ness. There is not a moment of poetry or philosophy. What Jesus actually SAID to warrant his crucifixion seems relatively unimportant to Gibson. What is important to Gibson is the torture and the blood.
I have never been that literal, when it comes to my religious beliefs. I could have been a mystic in another time. And so – in a weird way, in a very personal way – I found this to be not a religious movie at all. It inspired no feelings in me at all in that regard.
And to the complaint that Gibson has cast “semitic-looking people” that fit into the stereotype – I think that if he HADN’T hired Semitic-looking people, he would have been criticized that he was trying to Anglicize the Jews and Anglicize Jesus and make him into the typical blonde blue-eyed surfer-boy.
He hired people who looked Middle Eastern.
But again – what I am really left with is Mel Gibson’s literalism. Especially after re-reading the Gospels last night.
“Literalism” that overwhelms all else, it seems to me, even admittedly only through your others’ hearsay. I suppose what got me in Wieseltier’s review was the idea that this was so obsessive with the physicality of Jesus’s death and with a rotting world that it was the expression of a man who hates life, who regards all worldly pleasures as evil and thus celebrates and glorifies cruelty, torture and death without the slightest bit of criticism.
This suggests to me that if there are classically anti-Semitic caricatures present in the film, that’s inordinately secondary to something much larger and deeper that’s simply missing from Gibson. To him, it’s all about this wonderful blood and pain in what Wieseltier called a “pre-theological,” folk religion version of Christianity. It sounds like Sullivan was right to call it pornography in the original literal Greek sense of the word: flesh-writing.
I mean, of course I’m a Jew and this is sniping from the sidelines, but what does your faith say really separates Jesus from all the other victims of Roman crucifixion? Surely not that he suffered more than any of the others–to suggest that he did would be to deny that he was fully human as well as fully divine, the Arian Heresy–but that, unlike the rest of them, he rose from the dead. Yet my understanding is that Gibson treats the Resurrection as basically an afterthought.
Maybe I’m crazy, and maybe I don’t have a right to an opinion without having seen it. I don’t know. But I know that, having read enough, I wouldn’t be able to bear watching it.
See, and I was strangely attracted to John…
The Resurrection is definitely an afterthought, in Gibson’s movie. The real point (as is obvious by the title chosen by Gibson) is the suffering of Christ.
What makes Jesus different from other crucifixions? That he was the Son of God, that’s all. He was a man, a human, so he felt the agony of the torture, obviously but I don’t think his suffering was any greater than others. Crucifixion is obviously a horrible way to die.
But in Gibson’s film – the two thieves crucified on either side of Jesus are not as completely wrecked, phsycially, as Jesus was. They had blood from the wounds in their hands and feet, but their bodies were not covered in flay-marks.
Gibson loves blood and guts and torture and martyrdom. (Ie: Braveheart)
Oh and Dave J-
With all of this, I really can’t say I recommend the film. I really can’t.
However – it is definitely helpful to have seen it, if you want to talk about it and the ramifications of it.
“Gibson loves blood and guts and torture and martyrdom. (Ie: Braveheart)”
And The Patriot, both of which took such seemingly gratuitous (to me, anyway) liberties with history that I must have missed the point. Of course, they’re his movies and he can do whatever he wants with them, I just didn’t get it.
Bill McCabe (at least I think it was Bill) said last night that Gibson, when he directs, is obsessed with his own martyrdom. With putting HIMSELF in the position of the bloody martyr.
Maybe it’s because he knows that his image is hard to combat – the big honking movie star – and so he wants to show that we are all human, we are all mortal … or maybe it’s just that he has a martyr complex. I don’t know.
Bellucci was hot, but I thought Pilate’s wife was also very attractive.
Sheila,
I referenced the cross-type table that Wallace was disembowled on in Braveheart.
It was Pete who first pointed out to me that Gibson gets tortured (physically and/or psychologically) in quite a few of his films.
Dave,
Gibson’s work was all in front of the camera in “The Patriot”, so I can’t blame him for the (great) liberties taken there.
Patrick writes:
Spoiler? Sheila, we know how it ends!
I’m glad I wasn’t the only one thinking this.
I believe she was joking, as I made a big deal about how I was going to post “spoiler warnings” on my review, and she may have also been within earshot when I grabbed my friend and shouted “He dies in the end? You ruined it for me!”
First of all, I have not seen the film yet, and have not yet decided if I can. But I have read a million reviews of and comments about it (almost hard not to, during the last few days.) In several of them, people have implicitly or explicitly postulated that Gibson has some sort of sick (I think AS used the phrase “psycho-sexual”)and perhaps gleeful obsession with blood, gore, etc. That smacks of spite to me. I have not seen many of his films and therefore no real frame of reference in that area. But clearly, from the descriptions that I’ve read, that this goes beyond the beyonds, as they say. Many, many people have said they simply could not look at the screen for much of the film. Yet Gibson is an actor and a filmmaker, he WANTS and NEEDS people to look at the screen, and of course he knew that this would be the way most everyone would react in the way so many have–unable to do just that. Mustn’t that mean, then, that the unwatchablility is the whole point? That he is pushing people to work harder, making his captive audience look long and hard at the brutal, hideous face of suffering so that they are forced to either shut down (as you, Sheila, did and I fear I would too, at least in the moment) or move more deeply into it, to try and find something else there, something redeeming or beautiful or SOMETHING in that suffering, because to stop right at the physical part is just unbearable? Is he trying to make people so desperate for there to be something more than this that they must either make that leap and actually find it, or go crazy? Of course, that is a very and uniquely (I think) Catholic understanding of the whole thing, of what were supposed to do with suffering in our own lives, etc. I am Catholic, so this probably makes much more sense to me than to people who have none of this stuff floating around — I can totally see how if you didn’t, you’d be thrown for a complete loop. And I guess I can see how a non-Catholic with no affinity for any of this might feel offended at having that point of view forced upon him or her so, well, violently. But hey, no one HAS to go see it, and anyway isn’t every filmmaker promoting his own agenda, politics or worldview in one way or another? And maybe that level of raw and relentless violence was necessary for the point to be made and the comfort zone penetrated. We are, in many ways, deadened to violence on film. No, Jesus may not have acutally endured the specific tortures portrayed in the film or been tortured to such a degree. But would an audience be able to begin thinking more deeply about suffering, in a way they may never have thought about it before, if they weren’t presented with a depiction of it that was more graphic than anything they’d seen before? And while yes, of course, there are many, many more kinds of suffering than just the physical (and it sounds like there were those moments depicted to, in shots of Mary watching the spectacle, etc.) we are after all, human, experiencing the world largely through our physical senses. And he only had a very limited amount of time in which to communicate his message as powerfully as he could. Maybe the subtlety that so many critics feel was missing wasn’t possible?
Whoa, that’s a whole lot of talking about and quasi-defending a movie I HAVEN’T SEEN! Sorry, it’s all just very interesting. And I walked away for a while and haven’t read any of the interim postings. Hope I haven’t been redundant here.
The more I read about this movie, the more I realize I have no interest in it.
Scourging someone with metal spikes in order to flay most of the skin off his back was not unknown in historical times. I’m not sure if it was a Roman practice to use metal on the whips or not, but if not, it’s not too far off base.
Having read about torture through history–there are books on this subject–I know how horrible man can be to man. I wish more people knew that. Will that film give that to people? I’m not sure. Maybe.
But what I also know is that the suffering Jesus went through was not particularly horrible compared to other torture methods. No, I am not belittling it, at all, I’m just giving you the flat-out fact that people have been put through worse, much worse, agony as intense or moreso, and made to go through it longer.
I do not exaggerate. I can give you examples, but I’ll spare you. “This is bad, really bad, and all I can tell you is that if you learn more, you’ll find out that worse has been done to people.” Which, again, is not a thought I find pleasant, and again leaves me wondering why I need to see this.
If it’s a movie about human cruelty then I’ve seen enough of that, read enough of it, to not need to see it. If it’s a movie about how a perfect human being who was also God’s son was unjustly punished, well, I get that message too. I’m not sure I believe it–in fact, I’m sorry to say, I’m pretty sure I don’t–so, again, why do I need to see it?
Will it make me feel closer to God? It doesn’t sound like it. Sounds like it’ll make me ashamed of humanity, or just plain revolted at how bad people can be and how even worse is possible. Not sure I need that either.
I saw the movie on opening day because I wanted to be “well-informed” on this debate. I found in unrelentingly and pornographically violent. I found the violence fetishistic and voyeuristic. As far as I am concerned, there is no way Jesus could have survived the torture that Mel Gibson puts him through before he even takes up the cross. He would have died of blood loss or shock! The violence is appalling. I know scourging and crucifixion aren’t pretty, but come on! Do we need to look at long, loving slow-mo shots of blood dripping from the nail holes in the cross? Do we need the slow-mo shots of Jesus falling and the cross falling on top of him? Do we need to see a Jesus who “takes is like a man” and keeps getting up for more punishment to the amazement of the Romans? Why is Mel Gibson so fascinated with the nearly naked body of a man being tortured?
I don’t know if the movie is anti-Semitic. my husband is Jewish and he hasn’t seen the film. Most of the people in the movie are Jews, and some of them are really good people who are loving and kind. But didn’t you get the feeling that all of those loving and kind Jews in the movie were going to be Christians? That their lives were transformed by witnessing Jesus’ suffering and that they were ‘converted”? Is there any doubt in your mind that Veronica or Simon of Cyrene or Mrs. Pilate will become Christians? Were there any “nice” Jews who would remain Jews?
Also, since I grew up on the story I think of thes e characters as individuals, not JEWS. Caiaphas is a bad guy, so is Pilate. And the Romans come off really badly, too. Didn’t you think that the guys who torture Jesus reminded you of film versions of Nazis in concentration camps? Big fat pink white guys with buzz cuts who enjoy torturing people? I don’t know — that’s the way it seemed to me.
I agree. The actor playing Pilate is sexy. Very sexy. Pilate himself? NOT sexy.
Those are my thoughts for now. I kept checking my watch during the movie and wondering how much more torture I had to watch. I keep telling people — save your money. The book is better.
Kerry
The Passion
Well, I wasn’t going to weigh in on Gibson’s The Passion. Mostly because I’ve decided not to see it. The criticism of Gibson frankly seems…
One thing some people have said I find interesting. That is that Mel is being “literal” because his dialogue agrees with the Bible. Even without seeing the film that is problematic, because there are many different versions of the Bible and they are all based on translations from Greek, Latin, and Aramaic and there is a fair amount of evidence that some of the translation is just wrong. Also, since the various Gospels are contradictory in their accounts, clearly they can’t all be accurate. This isn’t surprising given the fact that they were written anywhere from 60 to 200 or more years after Jesus supposedly lived.
I haven’t seen the movie yet and I guess I will go see it, though I have my doubts about it.
I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours
The following is a paraphrase of a comment I left on this post on Jeff Jarvis’ blog. The subject is still the Jesus Movie. The reason I am expanding upon my comment here on my own blog, is that I am sick of the trend of the argument that has taken p…