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The Passion of the Christ (2004)

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From Time Out Film Guide

With more than a suggestion of a horror film about it, Gibson's searing, bloody re-creation of Christ's tormented last hours - from arrest in Gethsemane, to trial, crucifixion and resurrection - is hard to recommend to any but the curious or the converted. Its insistence on the ugly physical nature of the ordeal is almost expressionist - the endless beatings, stonings, flailings and the like would have killed any man long before we see the welt-skeined, naked body hammered to the cross in slo-mo and extreme close-up. Arguably, the script by Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald epitomises one Western tradition of gruesome iconic depictions of the Passion; but their extrapolations from the four Gospels suggest an anti-semitic interpretation that has no biblical justification, and their use of ludicrously intoned, subtitled Aramaic and Latin is a pretentious bid for authenticity. In technical terms, the film is occasionally impressive. Caleb Deschanel's careful compositions provide an ostensibly credible biblical setting, even if John Debney's epic-lite score is unable to match Gibson's extremist vision. But the film's characterisations deliver no insights. A negative and spiritually underwhelming experience.

Author: WH

Time Out Film Guide

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Technoguy said...

Posted on Mar 24 2008 22:32 I admire Gibson’s attempt to show us the ‘facts’ of Christ’s Passion,ie just what he had to suffer on our behalf.the physical torment ant torture and scourging with hooked flails.However in concentrating so literally on the brute physical horror with such life-denying certainty,he has cast out the pearl of Jesus’s teaching,the spiritual baby ,the poetry of his grace and the beauty of his News of the Kingdom.All the parables,the Miracles,the prophecies,the love.Gibson is giving us in our secular age a little of the literal fundamentalism lacking from our milk and water creed.A sock in the decadent jaw.Using ancient subtitled languages is his idea of authenticity.
However too, he has unbalanced the emphasis and made the Jews the Christ killers of traditional anti-semitism.Pilate gets off lightly.Caphiais is more complex than is represented. Israel was under occupation by the Romans and the Priesthood had to look after the wealthfare and safety of their people.Their idea in the Bible was that it was better for one man to die for the people to survive the terrible wrath of Roman power.Gibson’s vision is so black and white that you remember the anti-semitic
drunken rant he made against the police thinking they may have been Jewish ,saying rthey were responsible for all the world’s wars.Also his father is a well known anti-semite.Gibson is as likely to get his Christianty wrong as the largely secularised West
and to lash it with a pestilential sensationalism is just as likely to make it lose it’s way. For a better version go to even the BBCs The Passion,on this last week.

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