The Passion of the Christ

Time to tackle a real controversial one: The Passion of the Christ

I'll preface this by saying that I'm an unbeliever, not very fond of religion in general, but love controversy and movies. So even though the subject matter isn't going to reach me like it will reach people who have faith, I don't see that as a prerequisite for evaluating this movie.

The Passion of course deals with the death of Jesus Christ, executed by the Romans nearly 2000 years ago. Being a passion story, it focuses on the suffering he went through including beatings, scourgings, crucifixion, and at least one stabbing. It definitely brings the subject matter home for the viewer to think about.

And I did like it. It was full of powerful emotion and some very nice visual touches. The Satan-character who floats through the crowd as Jesus hauls the cross through the streets of Jerusalem, the darkness in the garden when Jesus gets nicked by the temple guards, the flashes of sympathy you see in people's faces as they make eye contact with Mary as she witnesses her son's ordeal. All handled very nicely and with a great deal of emotional gravity. I have to hand it to Mel Gibson on the level of being able to tug at the viewer's emotions.

The movie is certainly not for the faint-hearted. I'm pretty jaded about movie violence in general. I wasn't particularly disturbed by the opening to Saving Private Ryan because I thought it was about time that we had an American-made WWII movie that didn't pull many punches on the awesome carnage inflicted by modern weaponry. I just sat back and enjoyed the ride. Well, the scourging scene in The Passion looked so realistic that I flinched, probably more than I've ever flinched at movie violence before.

As I prefaced, I'm no believer but it was hard not to identify with the characters since you become such a close witness of their experiences. One scene particularly struck me, probably because I'm a parent of small children. When Jesus first stumbles while dragging the implement of his own execution (how nice of the Romans to add such insult to injury), Mary flashes back to an event (totally artistic license, but that's fair game) in which a small-child Jesus stumbles and she runs to help him. That one really drove home to me that, regardless of why some individual is being tortured and executed, thoughout any period in history, he or she was once some mother's child. Again, it's that darn Mel Gibson hitting an emotional nerve and I was pulled right in.

Overall, I'd give the movie a strong B+. The only elements pulling it down are, I think, a little slow pacing at points and too much reliance on all of us already knowing the story. While there are flashbacks to the last couple days to help fill in gaps in knowledge and show how prophecies are being realized, I would have liked a little more insight into the motives of the forces calling for Jesus's blood to help explain why he went from being met with palms fronds one week to being crucified the next.
A fine film, worth seeing once, I doubt many people will have the endurance to view it more than once.