Featured Film Review
'The Passion of the Christ' 2004 Icon Productions starring James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern and Monica Bellucci Length: 2hrs 6mins
Ordinarily, films about the life of Christ are too clean, too sanitized, to really convey the full horror of what Jesus suffered on the day of his crucifixion. However, I feel that in its zest for realism, 'The Passion of the Christ' reached too far in the opposite direction.
The level of violence depicted is sickening, but that was to be expected. As someone who has never been squeamish about blood and bone, in film or real life, I felt nauseaous at certain scenes. This, in itself, is fine. The film aimed to show the torture of Christ as it really was, and torture is never pleasant to view, particularly for modern audiences free of the public spectacles of corporal punishment and execution.
However, the level of torture applied to Christ, as shown in this film, would have killed him before the morning was through. If shock hadn't done the job, then he would have bleed to death on the block. After the graphic horror of the scrouging, the audience is asked to suspend their disbelief in the fact that a man, with several ribs and part of his shoulder-blade showing, would then be capable of standing up before the assembled crowds, before carrying a heavy cross at least half a mile through Jerusalem.
By the time of the crucifixion itself, I felt that the whole point of the fact that this man was laying down his life for mankind had been lost, and the story was simply conveying brutality for brutality's sake. Where in the Bible does it say that the cross, with Jesus nailed to it, was then pushed over so that he fell face-down from a great height? Even if that were true, how was he not then crushed to death?
This was not realism, it was a blood-lust, and that detracted from the otherwise important and equally blatant point that Jesus was the Messiah. It was necessary to watch the film with a knowledge of Christian theology. My companion didn't have this and thus was confused at certain scenes, for example, the introduction to Veronica, before she wiped Christ's face on her veil. Equally confusing was the portrayal of Satan, which was excellent in itself; but as Satan did not interact with Christ at any point since Gethsemane, it wasn't apparent just how he was tempting Christ to betray his calling.
As a Catholic theological film, it was excellent. As a portrayal of historical realism, it failed on several points. For example, why was he nailed through his hands, when the Romans nailed through the wrists? To nail through the hands would not have held a human to a cross.
There is always a positive and in this case it was Maia Morgenstern's portrayal of Mary. She was utterly believable in her compassion and anguish, ultimately human, yet with that touch of the sacred, which made me remember why some see her as the Mother Goddess. She made Mary become a leading person in her own right, rather than the cameo of Jesus's Mum, in which I've seen her portrayed before. I cried with her during many scenes, and told myself to stop crying when she was being stoical. Catholic or not, I felt that Maia Morgenstern's Mary was someone who I would feel comforted in calling upon in times of trouble.
Reviewer: Mab
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