RotK and Passion

[Dimwhit]

Passion will be the top-selling movie of all time (it will exceed Titanic).

That sounds like someone aching to place a bet...

 

[MrFilthyIke]

I'll be skipping the Passion. I prefer to see fantasy set in mythical worlds with magic, elves, and hobbits.

I feel that it (re: bible) is the literature just like LotR, not to taken as more than anything else, just a book.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

BTW, you'll have to cite your source as to where he made that alleged "assertion."

I read an online article about this, can't quote it, don't care much for Mel's opinion these days.

 

[The Serge]

Regardless of your belief in the Bible as a spiritual work, it's the most detailed historical document of the area we have. I'm not sure why you're trying to separate history from the Bible when the Bible is the only real historical record that we have for this event.

Actually, it's the most widely distributed work that discusses the time it supposedly portrays. Because Christianity is very powerful and people, including many scholars, are dealing with issues of faith vs. historical accuracy, it's unlikely that a lot of information regarding the time frame and what was really going on will ever be widely distributed.

I don't believe the Bible is a historical work. It has its place in history, certainly, but a lot of material has been compiled from other sources that, while probably having their own agendas as much as the Bible, are not steeped in religious intent. Furthermore, not one of the canonized gospels was written prior to a generation after the death/disappearance of Jesus, and each was written in order to make a religious statement, not a historical one.

In order to keep this thread and my role in it on point, it's my contention that any portrayal of Jesus that includes his torture as an act of Passion and then follows up with his crucifixtion and subsequent resurrection is not intended to be a historical work, but a spiritual one. Or maybe some people do perceive it as historical while I see it clearly as another myth that just happened to come along at the right time.

What this boils down to is a lot of people are unaware of why the Jews would have have blamed by early Christians, why this became part of the tradition, why Jews were demonized based upon religious beliefs throughout medieval Europe, and why we see this movie in this fashion. It's not intended to paint a historical picture beyond trying to capture the kind of violence a tortured and crucified man would have suffered before dying. And, even in that depiction, I think Gibson and co. are still offering a spiritual position (I've heard from friends of mine who've seen the movie how many people who traveled in Church groups cried during the presentation. Although I'm sure a lot of people would have cried regardless of this being Jesus or not -- say a well done Aslan from Chronicles of Narnia -- I suspect that the reaction is much the same as what I've seen in some churches).

 

[barsoomcore]

Not a Moderator but just thinking maybe the issue of the Bible's historicity is a topic best left for other venues...

 

[Eridanis]

Seems to me that things are OK so far - and will remain so as long as discussion stays respectful, serious and on topic.

Henry and I are on the case.

 

[CrusaderX]

Mostly his assertion that non-Catholics would not be going to Heaven. Apparently, his wife is Episcopalian, and he felt it was a tragedy that she wouldn't be going to Heaven with him.

I doubt that Mel ever asserted such a thing. During his interview with Diane Saywer on ABC, Mel specifically said that non-Catholics can go to heaven. And this is what the Church teaches, after all. So if Mel is a faithful Catholic, he's going to believe that non-Catholics can indeed go to Heaven.

 

[Mistwell]

"The high priest tore his clothes. 'Why do we need any more witnesses?' he asked. 'You have heard the blashpemy. What do you think?'
They all condemned him as worthy of death. Then some began to spit at him; they blindfolded him, struck him with their fists, and said, 'Prophesy!' And the guards took him and beat him." --Mark 14:63-65.

Kai, I think you are arguing for the sake of arguing now. That scene went on for nearly 10 minutes in the film, with long bouts of yelling and demanding death and spitting and punching and kicking and grimacing and sneering and angry cries and fist shaking etc....The extent of the scene simply is not described that way in the bible. You can interpret it the way it was portrayed in the movie, but you can also interpret it other ways. You could say that "some began to spit..." implies that others held back and did not express outrage, for example. And yet, Mel decided to have the entire crowd react in outrage. Is that how it went? Who knows. But Mel made a decision to add some color to the scene, to add additional emotions. It's perfectly fair to dislike Mel's intepretation of the text, portraying the entire crowd of jews as a bloodthirsty mob instead of a few of them.

The film depicts Pilate as heeding his wife's warning (Matthew 27:19) and being afraid (John 19:8). The film presented him as being conflicted because of a mandate from Caesar that if there was an uprising in Jerusalem he would see Pilate's blood, and he was afraid of an uprising from the people if he spared Jesus, and of one from Jesus' followers if he crucified him. I didn't get a whole lot of compassion from his character, he was obviously looking out for his own skin.

Let me try and be even more clear. History reports that Pilate was a mass murderer. He slaughtered thousands of people. He was a vicious, cruel, and unusually barbaric individual.

Mel portrays Pilate's troops as that kind of people, but not Pilate himself, despite Mel saying in interviews that he knows Pilate was just as bad as his troops, and is in fact the one who trained them to be that way. Pilate is portrayed in the movie as simply a ruler in a tough position, trying to protect himself while also trying to do the right thing. And yet, there was no reason at all within the biblical text to portray him that way. There is plenty of stuff there to portray him as the sadistic murderer he seems to have been.

Do you see why it is troubling to me that Mel made the decision to add some anger to the crowd of Jews, while he also made the decision to subtract some sadistic tendancies from the Pilate character? Both are up to intepretation from the biblical text, and yet Mel made different decisions for the two types of characters.

The Bible doesn't make any mention of Pilate being cruel and sadistic toward Jesus, but it certainly does of the Roman soldiers who flog and taunt him. In both the Bible and the film, Pilate knew Jesus was innocent, had the power (as far as he knew) to free him, yet "handed him over to them to be crucified." (John 19:16) Not exactly someone on Jesus' side.

The bible doesn't mention the clothing that most people wore either, but Mel went to the trouble of examing historical examples of the dress of the time to accurately portray them in the film. Why go to that extent for things like dress, but not for the type of person Pilate is known to have been, given a certain vagueness in the bible concerning his personality?

King Agrippa I wrote a letter to the emperor Caligula about Pilate's "corruption, his acts of insolence, and his rapine and his habit of insulting people, and his continual murder of persons untried and uncondemned, and his never-ending, and gratuitous and most grievous inhumanity."

Likewise Philo wrote that Pilate was an "unbending and recklessly hard character," famous for "corruptibility, violence, robberies, ill treatment of the people, grievances, continuous executions without even the form of a trial, endless and intolerable cruelties."

So cruel was Pilate that he was eventually recalled by Rome for his sadistic actions. When a Samaritan prophet gained a large following, Pilate's method of dispersing his followers was typical: he slaughtered four thousand of them when they gathered on their holy mountain. Even the brutal Romans could not overlook this atrocity, and Pilate was recalled to Rome in 37 CE.

So, are you really telling me that the only possible logical decision for Mel to make concerning Pilate was to portray him with the personality seen in the movie? Don't you think it would have also been a logical decision to portray Pilate as a lot more cruel and sadistic, while speaking the same lines found in the bible? And, if it is possible to you that the second intepretation would be an equally fair interpretation, can you understand why it troubles me that Mel chose the version he did, rather than the more antagonistic version of Pilate, given his intpretation of the jewish characters in the movie?

You know I did no such thing [dismiss people who dislike it or have concerns about it]

Well, here is what you said in response to my concerns "I think its obvious what Mel was up to. Making a film depicting the last 12 hours of Jesus' life as it was documented in the Bible."

To me, that is dismissive. My concerns went to things that differed from the bible, based on personalities portrayed in the film beyond words found in the bible. In response, you said it was obvious that it was just stuff documented in the bible. That is dismissive, in my opinion. I'm just asking that you look a little deeper, and ask yourself if there were times in the film that Mel made the decision to portray people (not their words, but their body language, verbal tone, additional actions not mentioned in the bible, etc..) as more or less angry, more or less cruel, more or less antagonistic than a literal reading of the bible might suggest. And, if you find it conceivable that Mel made some of those decisions, why do you think he did it?

I don't think it was out of anti-semitism. However, I do think it is worth asking. Nor does it make me a Mel hater for asking these questions.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

On the subject of critiquing Passion as a film, I thought it dragged a bit towards the end, but that's probably just because I already knew the ending A dragging feeling started around the time Jesus fell and Mary had a flashback of him falling. The walking-to-Golgotha went on a tad long.

 

[Greatwyrm]

I'm a Christian, but I'm not really sure I want to see this. Not that I don't think anybody should see this, just not me. Watching it would just feel like being witness to an execution. I don't think I'd feel any more comfortable watching this than I would sitting ringside for some guy going to the electric chair.

I've seen some very good theatrical portrayals of the Passion. None were quite as graphic as what I've seen in clips from the movie though. As a side note, I saw Roger Ebert on TV the other night. He said if nothing else, this movie proves the MPAA will never give a movie an NC-17 rating just based on violence.