The Passion Of The Christ

The movie hasn't been released yet. It hasn't even been screened but for a few people. And yet Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ has already gotten a lot of criticism from the Jewish ADL and in the major media for its perceived depiction of Jews as being responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. Mostly, the ADL has been working from an early draft of the script. The media has been working from the ADL. It's a neat little daisy chain.

The few people who have seen the movie have raved. Gibson showed it to a group from Opus Dei, the fundamentalist, traditionalist Catholic group he is a member of. They all pronounced it deeply moving. A sympathetic audience might be suspected of being biased in favor, though, right?

Now come reviews from a group of cinema lovers who would be steeply tilted against religious sympathy. Over the weekend, Harry Knowles, of the movie gossip/spoiler website Ain't It Cool News held Butt-Numb-A-Thon 5, an around the clock, two day film festival. Movies are shown back to back, all day and all night. One of the movies shown was Passion and this was followed by a ninety-minute Q&A with Mel Gibson himself! The reaction was surprising, considering how juvenile, profane, gore- and sex-loving, and shallow this crowd can be.

Knowles reports that after the movie ended, the audience of over 200 gave the movie a five minute standing ovation. He's published his comments here; scroll down to items 18 and 19.

Other attendees give their thoughts here and here.

Mind you, this is for a movie that is in Aramaic and Latin, with subtitles! No English is spoken on screen. I've been wondering how this will be received when it's released in February. My feeling is that the major media will cover the controversy and the dissenters. The public reaction is likely to be historic. No doubt it will have a huge opening weekend, as the buzz will be enormous. I think it will have strong legs and stay in the top three for weeks afterward.

Why is an atheist so interested in this film? I dunno, but I think it has to do with the effort Gibson is making to have this film be as historically accurate as he can, and as textually close as a devout worshipper would want. He is making this movie "right," and not necessarily palatable to movie-goers' sensibilities. It should make for an interesting experience, to say the least. And yeah, I'm going to see it.