The Passion Cont.'d
I'd like to follow up the story of my experience with The Passion of the Christ last week with some of my thoughts on the film.
This was a film with a lot of potential. With excellent cinematography, quality actors, and a great vision, The Passion could have served as a wonderful way of sharing the story of Jesus. However, as I alluded in my Friday entry, the violence just takes it too far.
Throughout the film, I waited for some brilliant scenes that would get people re-viewing and re-considering the person of Jesus, but instead, there is a lot of blood and gore with almost no explanation of why this happens to the character of Jesus. These are some of the chief complaints that I've heard from unchurched viewers of the film:
"Why do these people hate him so much? Just because he said that he was God?"
"What's up with that whole scene where the people drop stones and that girl goes to Jesus' feet?"
I understand that this is supposed to create conversation with believers and get people inquiring into the Jesus story, but I simply feel that the The Passion would have been much more powerful if it focused more on these events than the extremely filmic and unrealistic violence.
I can also understand why people would fear this film's ability to incite anti-Semitism. Most of the dialogue in The Passion is verbatim from the Gospel accounts. However, unless you know of the conflict between Jesus (a Jew) and the Jewish religious system, you might not understand why this particular Jewish religious leader character set (not all Jews in the film) would call for Jesus' death. Without the knowledge of what happens prior to the Torture and Crucifixion, one might think this film portrays Jews in a terrible light.
Kudos to Mel for a visually stunning and well-acted film. As I've mentioned before, the violence makes it too much for me to even think of using it as a conversational tool.
6 Comments:
Patch,
Hi, I don't know if you're going to read this. I'm not sure how you'll react to this, but here goes. I've read a number of your posts and find it somewhat unique and refreshing to hear the views of devout and yet in many ways open-minded Christian thinker such as yourself.
That said, I should say that I'm an agnostic, or refer to myself as such. Though there are certainly analogies outside the world of "faith" I don't know if I'd call myself devout, but I do try to be open-minded despite some stubborn beliefs I hold on to.
My immediate family is quite atheistic, sometimes to the point of annoying me, that's the environment I was raised in (which I am both thankful for, and yet see its limitations). The majority of my extended family is Christian (Lutheran, Protestant, Catholic), so there's a bit of a divide in the family. At a young age, I went to an Episcopalian school for 10 years, where I was marched into church pews against my will (meaning the experience was more about obligatory physical presence than mental or spiritual awareness). And it took some effort and meeting some good friends later in life for me to resist the impulse to let my experiences at that school cloud my judgement on my beliefs on the existence of man, which is not to say that it doesn't cloud my judgement, perhaps it is simply an experience that has guided me, for we all have experiences.
In any case, though it's not always obvious to everyone, I turned away from my family's views and found myself in the realm of agnosticism. It didn't happen on purpose, nor had I read any literature on the topic, I still haven't really. But it did happen.
Anyway, I feel like I've been in a bit of a mental vacuum the last few years while having a strong desire to develope some of my thoughts on philosophy and theology, many of which are my own personal responses to what has been my theological experience growing up, loosely the world of Christian thought on the one side and atheism on the other.
Right, so like I said at the beginning, this whole thing probably sounds strange but I was wondering if you could answer some questions I have about Christianity and the Bible, or least provide your own feelings. Feel free to check out my blogspot at boxosoap.blogspot.com (which so far has nothing pertinent to this discussion, but maybe I'll put something up there soon) or email me at chiquero@aemail4u.com
I appreciate your time,
Juan
Hi Juan.
I would love to field some of your questions and establish some conversational dialogue. It's my favourite hobby (and of course profession, since I work as a chaplain).
I can't guarantee that I will have an answer for all of your questions (in fact, it is highly likely that I do not have many answers for many things), but I would certainly love to hash out thoughts and exchange ideas about anything that's on your mind.
Why don't you e-mail your questions to me at cmhutton@hotmail.com, then I will post my replies here on my blog. That way, you may post your comments or thoughts alongside a particular topic on the blog.
Please let me know what you think, and I look forward to journeying with you in dialogue.
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