Last night, I went with Betina and Hans to see a sneak preview of The Passion of the Christ. The cinematography is excellent. The acting is top-notch, the costumes are realistic. However, the movie is very graphically violent. Some familiarity with the parables is required, and all the dialogue is in Aramaic or Latin with subtitles. The film is entirely self-funded by Mel Gibson, who went with an independent distributor.
Yet despite all the great qualities of the film, I would not recommend it. Perhaps if you're already a believer in Christ, you'll gain a greater understanding of what it means to suffer, and the wrongs done to him. But for everyone else, it's a painful movie to watch, not for the film itself, but rather for the fact that I felt like I was getting beat over the head with "Can you see? This is Jesus, suffering for you." Then they'd cut to a parable before Jesus' capture, only to return back to the beating of Jesus with more "Look at Jesus suffer at the hands of the Jews and the Romans!" The violent scenes go on too long -- not only do they show it from different angles, in slow-mo, in closeups, from a distance, it just shows how cruel and evil human beings can be toward their fellow man. I know that certain scenes are supposed to manipulate and ellicit a certain response from the audience. The movie is a blood and gore fest... and that's about it. For those who want to see the movie, wait until DVD, when you can fast-forward through the violence, and you'll be left with about 30 minutes of footage.
I can see churches using showings of this movie as a conversion tool, and an effective one it could be. However, one must keep in mind that the movie is simply just that, a movie -- it is a man's vision of the stories told in the Bible which is another man's retelling of events which may or may not have happened 40 years later. There's no physical evidence or archaeological proof that such a person ever existed or did the things that are claimed in the Bible, which is where they ask you to believe and have faith in Christ.
People have commented before on my self-assurance in life -- that I seem to know where I am going or what I am doing, but the answer to that does not come from looking to a saviour from outside, or from reading the Bible, or from an external source. It comes from within, from the heart. It comes from making mistakes, and not making the same mistakes again. It comes from accepting the world as it is, and making the decisions one must make to make life worth living.
A more historical view on the film
The marketing of the Passion
One of the things that Buddhism teaches is that one needs to protect oneself from poisons entering the body -- this refers to not just being careful of what one eats, but also in what we are exposed to.
Save yourself from being exposed to poison. Don't see this movie.
I don't know if I want to go see this movie, but I did read somewhere that the Catholic sect that Gibson belongs to is not recognized by the Vatican and the Catholicism the sect practices is not mainstream Catholicism. Also, his father is a holocaust denier and the movie does not portray Jews in a very positive light. Perhaps the movie is just a visual manifestation of Gibson's personal views. But then, all movies are a visual manifestation of a person's views.
After just watching the movie tonight, I somewhat disagree. Yes, the movie is a gore fest, but I believe that was Mel's intention, IMO. Jesus (if he actually existed) suffered horribly; if you didn't know, being crucified is perhaps the worst form of torture known (according to a TLC speical I just watched :), and I believe the point of the movie was to show this gruesome tribulation he went though.