I'm going to piggyback on a couple of posts today in forming some more thoughts about The Passion Of The Christ, which I saw last night.
It is as graphic as people say, and I can attest to Allison's point that it won't be easy to watch. I saw it at a 10:10 pm showing in a theater with stadium seating that was a little more than half-full. The first minute-and-a-half, two minutes was totally silent, as the sound hadn't been turned on, so someone yelled about that in our audience. There were points in the movie where I jumped--once the person behind me laughed--and cringed at the brutality. You can know it's a crucifiction, and you can know it's violent, but seeing it onscreen is something else. The camera doesn't look away from it either. You see the flesh coming off the skin, the nail going into the hands.
So how does the violence in the film compare to what's in scripture?
In Matthew, it talks of him being struck with fists and being slapped, and also the governor's soldiers twisting the crown of thorns on his head, spitting on him and striking him on the head again and again. Pilate has him flogged when he released Barabbas. In Mark, it's noted that his clothes are torn by the high priest, spit at, blindfolded, and struck with fists before the guards took him and beat him, and the flogging is here too. Mark specifically notes that he gets hit on the head over and over with a staff. In Luke, he's mocked (as is said in Matthew and Mark) and beaten by the guards, blindfolded. Herod's soldiers ridicules and mocks Jesus too. No flogging is menitoned in this account. In John, he is bound after being betrayed by Judas, struck by another in the face while questioned by the high priest, Pilate takes him to get flogged, and there's more about the crown of thorns and the soldiers striking him in the face before Pilate hands Jesus over to be crucified.
I noted the above from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John because I wanted to read the descriptions of the various acts of violence directed on Jesus during his last hours. None of the accounts seem to say specifically how much, or how he was hit, beaten, flogged and how much physical damage it did to Jesus and where. But it's clear from the four Gospels that there's a significant amount of abuse inflicted on Jesus during this period that the movie depicts.
From my own reading, Gibson at least has a valid point for depicting as much brutality on Jesus as he does in the movie. Some specifics are left out of scripture, yes, but it's clear he endured much suffering, and like I said, Gibson doesn't shy away from it, however unpleasant it is to see. Could he have shown less brutality and more teaching to give the movie more context? Sure, but that's clearly not what Gibson wanted to do with this movie. I can't say whether he overdoes it or not without more specifics we don't have in scripture.
All accounts have him crucified, violent enough in and of itself, with him carrying the cross, with some help part-way through. Gibson spends about half-a-minute on Jesus' resurrection, and a few minutes more than that on flashbacks of his teachings.
That's my amateur Biblical scholarly work. Very amateur I know, but after seeing the movie, I was curious.
Some more thoughts on the movie:
I don't think it's anti-Semitic. People like the minister Kim refers to, though, can distort things though.
I don't think it's for everyone. Younger people and those not familiar with the story shouldn't see this, I think. It's R-rated for a reason, and to me, could have easily earned an NC-17. And since Mel Gibson doesn't put much in context, it'll help your viewing if you've read the Gospels, even check into some Catholic teaching (particularly Gibson's) and have some background in theology.
I don't think it'll be the big conversion tool some have talked about. Referring back to the point above, if you don't know much about Christ and His life, the context in which he's crucified won't make sense.
My church didn't talk about the Passion at all in the lead-up to it. I saw some groups at the screening last night, and more to come this weekend. My boss said he talked to a Catholic priest and a Baptist minister about the movie--the first said he'd endorse the movie whole-heartedly, the second said he wouldn't recommend it to his congregation and actually advised them during a recent service not to go because it was too violent.
This isn't a movie where you'll care about someone's reviews of it. The reviews of this movie are all over the map, thousands of reviews from film critics and us ordinary folk alike.
I've never, until last night, walked out of a movie theater where everyone else was completely hushed. I stayed until the last credit had played, and so did plenty of others. No one that I could tell walked out. I couldn't tell if anyone openly cried, though I did see some that appeared to be wiping tears from their eyes.
After watching the movie, I went home to read the corresponding Gospels from John and Luke, and read Mark's this morning. I read the whole book of Matthew recently, so I haven't visited that yet. I felt compelled to read them. Gibson is influenced by his own understanding of Jesus' last 12 hours, referencing the Gospels and a few other sources from his Catholic teaching, so everything you see on film won't necessarily be found in the four Gospels. That doesn't take away anything from anyone else seeing it though. And no film is going to be able to do an exacting play-by-play of the crucifiction. What documentary footage we have of it is the written words in the Bible.
It's a gripping, no-holds-barred account of his suffering.
I went back to Charlottesville yesterday to see a second film at the Virginia Film Festival--Swimmers. It was the one April and I were going to see before traffic interceded. I found a repeat showing yesterday, so I decided to go. (The picture is of Tara Devon Gallagher, who played Emma--from the movie website)
At the Virginia Film Festival last night, April and I saw the documentary, Based On A True Story (with the sound on to this site, the title of this post should be better understood), about Walter Stokman's attempts to document a guy who wants to have total control of his documentation. The guy, John Wojtowicz, is the one portrayed by Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. At first, Stokman, who directed the movie, wanted to get behind the scenes of the original movie, but instead ends up making the movie about Wojtowicz and the two's negotiations.