Thoughts on "The Passion" with spoilers

A full moon over the Garden of Gethsemane...

That embarassingly inaccurate image is the first shot of "The Passion of the Christ." (Well, maybe there was a full moon over the Garden during the night of Jesus' arrest, but if so, then it didn't happen during Passover...) Edit: The embarassing error is mine; my memory failed me, and after double-checking I found that the first day of Passover occurs on a full moon. I could erase the error, but I will leave it for posterity.

In many ways this movie was not at all what I expected. In other ways, it was exactly what I expected.

For one thing, the movie was slightly more anti-Semitic than the gospels themselves. Most problematic for me in this regard were three scenes in particular( Read more... )

Actually though I think the movie is distressingly homophobic. ( Read more... )

Next, I was surprised to see that while the imagery was vivid, even lush, there was an otherwordly feel to most of it. Many scenes have a detached, slow-motion feel. ( Read more... )

Then there is the violence. The movie can be described as an orgy of bloodletting, and I would compare the scourging of Jesus to the kind of "buckets of blood" violence you'd see in a slasher movie, meaning that it is so overblown it is unbelievable. (Not LJ-cut because the violence is hardly a spoiler.)

There is an awkward mingling of the two passion narratives in the gospels( Read more... )

The net effect is that while Gibson tried to portray Jesus as a human who was tortured and murdered, he actually portrayed events in a very unreal, otherworldly way.

I was, however, moved by one aspect of the film, and that was the portrayal of Mary's agony over seeing her son arrested, tortured, and executed. ( Read more... )

(no subject)

nifty, taken from lady_babalon:

Eysenck's Test Results

Extraversion (52%) medium which suggests you are moderately talkative, optimistic, and sociable. Neuroticism (21%) low which suggests you are very relaxed, calm, secure, unemotional but possibly too unobservant of your feelings. Psychoticism (40%) moderately low which suggests you are good natured, trusting, and helpful but possibly too much of a follower.

Take Eysenck's EPQ-R based Personality Test.