The Passion

Check out trailer here: http://movies.go.com/movies/P/passion_2003/index.html#

The story is said to take place over the last 12 hours of Christ's life, on the day of his crucifixion, and will be filmed in Latin and Aramaic with no subtitles. But It looks like Mel is still going with the classic western idea of the physical appearance of Jesus. I wish he would of updated that and gone for a closer possible likeness of the historical Jesus (check out http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030414/jesus.html. ).
But this movie isn't even close to being released and people are already freaking out. Fox just said today that they will not distribute it. I'll see it though, even if I disagree with it.




Grafic movie about Crucifixion is stirring debate
BY MURRAY DUBIN
Knight Ridder News Service

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/entertainment/6645396.htm

Seven months before its expected release, a Mel Gibson movie about the final hours in the life of Jesus Christ is stirring up a firestorm with allegations of anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, a stolen script and bad faith.

The Anti-Defamation League, whose representative saw The Passion at a private screening, said recently that in its current form the movie ``will fuel the hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism that many responsible churches have worked hard to repudiate.''

Theologians who have read a script also fear it may cause a rift in Christian-Jewish relations.

''The role of the Jews in the Crucifixion was heightened, and the role of the Roman governor was even more de-emphasized than it was in the Gospels,'' said Sister Mary C. Boys, a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York. ``In the script I read, the Jewish mob is a huge, blood-thirsty, vengeful group.''

With a furor building, The Passion joins The Last Temptation of Christ and Dogma among the religious films met by intense debate.

''What we've learned over time is the film endures and the controversy doesn't,'' said Jeanine Basinger, chairman of film studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. If the film is bad, she said, no one will remember either.

''People have an entertainment experience, not a religious experience, at the movies,'' she said. ``People who go to this movie will be going to a Mel Gibson movie.''

Gibson cowrote, directed and invested $25 million in the film, whose dialogue is in Latin and Aramaic. He is not in it.

A spokesman for The Passion said the script that Sister Boys read was outdated and had been revised.

''The vast majority of the things they are afraid of are not in the film anymore,'' the movie's marketing director, Paul Lauer, said in a phone interview. ``Jews are not Christ-killers. They should not be charged with deicide . . . .''

`OLIVE BRANCH'

Lauer said the filmmakers had ''extended an olive branch'' by inviting the Anti-Defamation League to see the movie, and had ''gone way beyond the call of duty'' to invite critiques.

Paula Fredriksen, a theologian who read the script, disputed Lauer's suggestion that the script had been significantly changed. She predicted the film would offend Catholics as well as Jews because its telling of the Crucifixion diverges from the Catholic Church's current teachings.

Basinger cautioned that a movie cannot be judged solely by its script.

Fredriksen acknowledged that scholars were at a disadvantage, but the script ``was written extremely vividly with a lot of directorial comments. This is one from our report: `The crowd is frenzied . . . It screams for his death.'

``That's a Jewish crowd, and that's not in the Gospels. Descriptions like that are in the script throughout.''

For months, Gibson has been going around the country to build support for The Passion by showing a rough cut of the film to select audiences.

Columnist Cal Thomas who saw the rough cut, called The Passion ``the most beautiful . . . realistic and bloody depiction of this well-known story that has ever been filmed.''

Filming began last year in Italy. The movie likely will be released around Ash Wednesday. The controversy, however, began last spring.

Articles about Gibson's efforts to be accurate to the four Gospels drew the interest of Catholic and Jewish scholars. They knew that some language about Jews in the Gospels was inflammatory, and that the Gospels, written 40 to 80 years after the Crucifixion, were neither fully historically accurate nor consistent.

GIBSON'S DAD

In March, a New York Times Magazine article about Gibson's father, Hutton, described him as a traditionalist Catholic who does not recognize the modern papacy and who disavows the reforms of Vatican II in 1965 -- including that all Jews, past or present, were not responsible for the killing of Jesus. The article also said Hutton Gibson does not believe in the Holocaust.

His son is a member and financial backer of the same Catholic splinter group as his father -- though it is not known what beliefs the two share.

Fredriksen, a theology professor at Boston University and the author of From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus, said she was one of nine New Testament scholars and professors -- five Catholics, four Jews -- assembled to examine a copy of the script. The group, she said, was organized by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Anti-Defamation League.

The script was leaked to the group of scholars in April; Gibson's people say it was stolen.

''When we read the screenplay, our sense was this wasn't really something you could fix,'' Sister Boys told The New York Times. ``All the way through, the Jews are portrayed as bloodthirsty. We're really concerned that this could be one of the great crises in Christian-Jewish relations.''

IT'S `ABOUT FAITH'

In a statement, Gibson said the film ``conforms to the narratives of Christ's passion and death found in the four Gospels of the New Testament. This is a movie about faith, hope, love and forgiveness -- something sorely needed in these turbulent times.''

Those invited to a screening in Blue Bell, Pa., signed a confidentiality agreement about the film. (Lauer said viewers are often released from the agreement shortly after the screening.) The movie was shown with English subtitles.

''It was a brutally frank film and difficult to watch,'' said Elmer F. ''Bud'' Hansen, 66, a Catholic who owns the Normandy Farm Inn where the film was shown. When it ended, no one applauded, he said. ``They were almost tearful.''

Ron Gorodetsky, 45, a restaurant consultant who is Jewish and who works with Hansen, was not on the guest list but saw about half the movie. ''I had no problem with what I saw,'' he said. ``I don't want to speak for the Jewish community, but I just can't see anything bad coming out of this. It's just a film.''

The film is now in postproduction. There has been no decision whether it will have subtitles -- it has been screened with and without. As yet there is no distributor.

COMMERCIAL VIEW

Martin Grove, a columnist for the online version of The Hollywood Reporter, thinks Gibson has a chance to find a distributor, based on his fame. But Grove said most theaters would avoid showing it.

''What does the theater owner gain from showing this movie?'' Grove asked. ``You can bet there will be threats of violence and pickets. People will stay away from other movies playing in the same multiplex to avoid physical confrontations. There is nothing in it for a theater owner.''

Grove said that ''probably not more than a million people'' would end up seeing The Passion. Usually, controversial films about religion -- such as Dogma and Last Temptation of Christ -- don't do well at the box office because they offend general tastes, he said.

Fredriksen, the Boston University professor, said she loves biblical movies, but predicted this would be a dud: ``There is no plot, no character development, no subtlety. The bad guys are way bad, the good guys are way good.''

Lauer, the movie's marketing director, sharply disagreed, saying the film was ''understated. It's not a hit-you-over-the-head religious film. It's not preachy. The story speaks to our world today, the mob mentality, the rush to condemn someone.'' Until an official of the Anti-Defamation League was permitted recently to screen the movie at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the group had protested that Jewish leaders and other potential critics had been excluded from seeing it.

Previously, Abraham Foxman, the league's national director, had expressed concerns that if Gibson's ``message was tainted, [the movie] is dangerous. He is an icon.''

The National Association of Evangelicals strongly supports the movie and its ''authentic retelling'' of the New Testament accounts. On its website, the association's president, Ted Haggard, expressed surprise that ``some Jewish leaders would protest a movie portraying the final hours of Christ's life.''

''There is a great deal of pressure on Israel right now, and Christians seem to be a major source of support for Israel,'' he said. ``For Jewish leaders to risk alienating 2 billion Christians over a movie seems shortsighted.''

'OBNOXIOUS' REMARK

Foxman told The Times that that statement was ''obnoxious and offensive,'' and added, ``Here's the first time we've heard that linkage: We support Israel, so shut up about anti-Semitism. . . . If that's what support of Israel means, no thanks.''

Lauer acknowledged that the controversy is drawing attention to the movie, and he said that anti-Semitism, which has often been ``marginalized, may now move front and center. That will be good.''

He added, ``We have an opportunity here to do something positive.''