Saw this movie yesterday...probably the most emotionally draining experience of my life. My g/f pretty much never stopped crying once the beating started, and I cried a good bit throughout the movie. People can whine and complain all they want about the historical accuracies of some of the events that took place. The message I got out of the movie is not about who had more blame for why Jesus was crucified. Seriously, how can any Christians really care about this when he was going to die for our sins anyway? It was his death for our sins that was the point of this movie, not at what position the nail was driven through him and in to the cross. As someone else mentioned, I don't recommend this to everyone. There are a lot of very religous people in my family that really couldn't deal with the kind of violence, even if it is probably very realistic. Also, there are elements of evil that I definitely did NOT expect, and that creeped me out quite a bit. Question to those well versed in the Bible, what is the significance of the dead horse/mule/donkey behind Judas just before he hangs himself in the movie? I couldn't remember anything about that in the Bible (but admittedly, my knowledge of it is not at all what I would like it to be).
You got it! I'd be willing to bet that rope he used to hang himself was hemp too, because we all know that Democrats are pot smoking hippies.
It was a lamb, and it was reminding Judas of Jesus. As John the Baptist said about Jesus, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" John 1:29). It took me a minute to figure that one out myself. That part was Mel's imagination, however. There's no indication of anything like that in the New Testament.
Aha...that's partly why I didn't get it. I could have sworn it was a dead horse. Also, Traj, please don't respond further to ZRB. He more than anyone else in this thread is obviously just trying to stir up trouble. If he wants to debate, let him take it to the D&D threads that already exist.
Are all these people crying at this movie churchgoing folk? It sure seems like a lot of people are becoming more religious when it comes to talking about this movie. I'm not religious....so, it still comes down to "WHO CARES" for me. At least show something about his life.
If its a 'who cares' for you, then why do you even bother reading topics likes these. If I don't care about a topic, i surely don't bother reading it, much replying.
I don't care about the movie. I do find popular reaction to it interesting/amusing. The increase in religious sentiment/feeling over the last few weeks solely as a result of this movie is odd to me. The lack of true dialogue between historians, religious leaders and common folk as oppossed to general "it is bad", "no it isn't", including in this thread, is interesting to me. But, as I said, I am not a Christian in any way and not religious in any way, so it is much easier for me to question this movie's significance as anything other than a piece of art, to question the accuracy of the historic details presented in it, to even question the popularity of Christianity in the world today more a result of a premeditated plan to subdue other religions of the day and less of an elevation of one man to the status of god... hence, my participation in this thread - the "who cares" is directly related to the fact that the movie shows us nothign about who Jesus was, what he did, how Chrisitanity grew before and after his death, how he was viewed by people before and after his death, how the "Bible" was created as a book of man and by whom and why by them, etc, etc, etc - i.e. - why care about a movie that tells you so little and assumes so much.
Gibson and his sect are a sad group (add another reason to why I won't be seeing this movie) Monks' performance disrupted by protesting Catholics http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1639990 (Grand Rapids, February 11, 2004, 7:01 p.m.) It was a religious confrontation that has inspired anger and confusion. 24 Hour News 8 spent Wednesday finding more about the scores of people who disrupted a Buddhist worship service Tuesday night at a Grand Rapids Catholic Church. About 150 demonstrators from St. Margaret Mary Church in Allendale gathered inside St. Adalbert's Basilica in Grand Rapids. The police were called in when the demonstrators' loud prayers disrupted the event. The group was upset that Tibetan monks were allowed to perform inside a Catholic basilica. One person described the incident as a civil war between churches. You have places like St. Adalbert's, and then you have St. Margaret Mary in Allendale, which broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in the late 1960's. There are a lot of similarities between the churches as well as a lot of differences. Some people call Tuesday night's incident praying, while others say it was a downright rude interruption. Either way, the sound was so loud and so distracting, the Tibetan monks didn't get to perform at the altar. "It's the idea it was being done in a Catholic basilica," said Debbie Underhill, one of the demonstrators. A Christian Reformed church or university setting, says Underhill, wouldn't have bugged her a bit. But the fact is, the monks don't worship her God. Plus, as a member of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church, she says her priest wouldn't be allowed to hold service at the basilica because they aren't recognized by some people as a Catholic church. "The differences are getting bigger and bigger," Underhill told 24 Hour News 8. She says St. Margaret stands apart because it's much stricter and traditional. "Most of it is Latin," Underhill said. "The priest faces the altar, not the people," she continued. And the differences don't stop there. St. Margaret Mary is affiliated with the Society of Saint Pius X, which was founded in 1970 by French Bishop Marcel Lefebvre, after splitting with the current Roman Catholic Church. At a performance at Grand Valley State University Wednesday, the monks tell 24 Hour News 8 they've performed at churches before with no problem. "Our message was not to create disharmony, but to create harmony, so they are sorry things happened that way," said Tsering Mullens, a translator for the Tibetan monks. Or rather, just the wrong place, wrong time, in a crossfire of differing beliefs. "Our motives were not to hurt anyone, it was in defense of the faith," said Underhill. 24 Hour News 8's reports on Tuesday night's demonstration and the follow-up Wednesday have gained a lot of attention. We received more than a dozen e-mails and numerous phone calls from people expressing their thoughts and concerns, primarily talking about the distinction between these churches. 24 Hour News 8 was able to find some information on the Society of St. Pius X, which is the group the parishioners at St. Margaret Mary's belong to. The Society's United States headquarters are in Kansas City, Missouri. There are 850 Third Order members in the U.S. with more than 100 chapels and 50 priests nationwide. Grand Rapids Bishop Kevin Britt released a statement about allowing the monks into St. Adalbert's basilica, saying "In Pope John P II's commitment to peace and justice, the Holy Father has championed ecumenical and interreligious dialogue." The diocese also made clear that St. Margaret Mary is not part of the Roman Catholic Church or the Diocese of Grand Rapids.
Never said it was his fault, but it is his sect of Catholicism acting like jerks. Onward Christian soldiers...
$83.8 million since Friday, $125.2 million since Wednesday...Grossed more than the next 11 movies combined... I can already see the sequel - The Passion of the Christ 2: Jesus Strikes Back
I find disrupting Buddhist worship services "sad", along with your arrogant attitude. Being raised Catholic, I also find the actions of The Society of Saint Pius X to be more than "sad", and I will not support them. They are an embarrassment. To use an analogy from GK Chesterton, the Pius X people are 100 % correct, because they are following their conscience, and according to their view of the universe and creation, which has become much smaller, they can now define the necessary parameters of their Faith. The problem is that they have reduced the discernible universe from a mega to a micro creation. Instead of the cosmos, they look at a basketball size universe. They no longer look at the universe, but only at a few items. Consequently, according to their logic, they are 100% correct, and it is next to useless to try and convert them. They have necome much like protestant fundies, white supremacist groups, or other organizations that reduce reality to a minimum by doing such things as being literal with the Bible, or subverting the words of Christ to fulfill a personal doctrine, or join together as a paranoid reaction, because the "government is out to get me." sad indeed.
If you want to know the truth... The Jews Killed Jesus... The Romans Killed Jesus, You Killed Jesus, and I Killed Jesus, everyone who has ever committed a sin has a hand in sending Jesus to the Cross to die. What I find sad is the people who want to discredit the message of the movie and Christianity as a whole using a vehicle of anti-semitism as ammunition. Judging by the box office, you obviously failed.
Oh please. A non-Christian viewpoint is stirring up trouble? Sorry, do I have to go to Church every Sunday to participate in this thread? I think people are taking this movie too seriously. It is nothing but a bloody cash machine for Mel Gibson. All this controversy is really paying off for him in a big way. Now a rich man is going to get richer- just what Christ would have wanted, right? This is just a movie. It's not like someone went back 2000 years with a camcorder... I'm looking forward to seeing how they recreated the Roman world. The set and costume design will probably be the most interesting parts of the flick, for me.
I'd like to see the reaction to this article: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click...ic=columns&sortby=default&page=16&rid=1255525 Christ on a Merry-Go-Round The Passion of the Christ, The Last Temptation of Christ, and Monty Python's Life of Brian Lisa: "The mound builders worshipped turtles as well as badgers, snakes, and other animals." Bart: "Thank God we've come to our senses and worship a carpenter who lived 2,000 years ago." That bit of snarkiness, courtesy of the always profane The Simpsons, highlights why we cannot talk about Mel Gibson's piece of cinematic insanity as "just a movie." We have not, as a culture, come to our senses. There is nothing "just a movie" about this self-flagellating exercise in inciting mass religious frenzy. In fact, there's so little that's "just a movie" about The Passion that it cannot even be appreciated on any level, never mind the "just a movie" level, unless you enter the theater already in a state of religious ecstasy. If you were an extraterrestrial who'd just landed from outer space and knew nothing about the story of Jesus, this film wouldn't teach you a thing, but it might sicken you to see audiences cheering and applauding a relentless, two-hour-long depiction of the brutal torture and murder of a human being. These people -- supposedly good, decent folk -- are hardly better than Gibson's cartoonish Roman soldiers, who take such pleasure in their flaying of Jesus, literally to the bone. This isn't a movie: it's a theme-park ride for Jesus freaks. SEE the hunks of flesh ripped from Jesus' side! EXPERIENCE the stations of the cross like never before! HAMMER the nails into Jesus' hands! WITNESS the crucifixion in all its blood-and-guts glory! Bring the kids! It's disgusting to think that the same ratings board that gave an NC-17 to The Dreamers, because it shows a couple of penises and a few scenes of teenagers having sex, let this film pass with an R rating -- its gruesome violence is far more graphic and depicted with far more intent to tantalize and titillate. I can't see how any loving parents could let their child see this film... but then again, I can't see how any loving parents could teach their child in the first place that a rabble-rousing hippie had to be nailed to a cross because little Johnny was born full of sin and evil. But Gibson knows that this is his audience, and his only audience -- he can dispense with everything but the highlights. So Jesus doesn't have to be a character, and though Jim Caviezel (High Crimes, The Count of Monte Cristo) does what he can with what little he has to work with, Jesus is a cipher -- the audience already knows what they need to know about him, brought it into the theater with them, thank you very much, and Gibson (who cowrote, with Benedict Fitzgerald, as well as directed with such fanatical glee) isn't aiming to change anyone's mind about the man. He's just taking the faithful on a tour, with all the points of interest underlined with slo-mo: Oh, there's the 30 pieces of silver! There's the Judas kiss! There's the crown of thorns! There's Pontius Pilate, washing his hands! (On second thought, there are a few things I don't recall from my Bible stories, like how Jesus invented the tall dining table, and how Judas was taunted to suicide by the maggot-infested corpse of a donkey. That sounds like a Shakespearean insult: "You maggot-infested corpse of a donkey," and I intend to deploy it at some appropriate point. It's the only useful or interesting thing I got out of the film.) Is the film anti-Semitic? I have to admit that I don't understand the question. Sure, Gibson gives us a bloodthirsty crowd of hypocritical Jews, calling for the Romans to crucify Jesus because they can't do it themselves: their temple laws forbid putting a man to death, but apparently do not forbid demanding that someone else put a man to death. Gibson's Pilate is by far the most sympathetic character in the film, a minor functionary at the mercy of the rabbis if he wants to maintain what little power he has. (Hristo Naumov Shopov gives the best performance, but perhaps only because his Pilate is actually something approaching a realistic human being.) And the Jews are also idiots who'd rather release the murderer Barrabas instead of physically harmless but politically dangerous Jesus, when given the choice by Pilate. Oh, and Jesus does tell Pilate, who apologizes for having to execute him, that "he who has delivered me to you has the greatest sin," meaning, of course, it's all the fault of the Jews. But I don't get the anti-Semitism thing for a couple of reasons. First, since when is guilt hereditary? Even if the Jews of A.D. 33 did kill Jesus, how does that make all Jews everywhere guilty? Oh, but I forgot: the Jesus freaks think we all inherited the "guilt" of a woman who ate an apple 6,000 years ago, so never mind. But there's this, too: Didn't Jesus have to die, according to his fans? Didn't someone have to kill him? Shouldn't these people be thanking whomever killed Jesus? It makes no sense that Christians should punish the very people who supposedly gave them their savior. Wasn't the whole thing prearranged and preordained by God, anyway? Shouldn't God be the one who's blamed or thanked? There's no reason or logic to it. But I guess once you start talking to an invisible superhero who lives in the sky and can see you all the time -- even in the bathroom -- reason and logic kinda go out the window. And that's the worst thing about the circus surrounding this film, and the real reason why it cannot be seen as "just a movie." The people who in all seriousness buy into this stuff have an influence way out of proportion with the sense they make, which is little, and get a free pass on their fairy stories -- I've seen not one suggestion anywhere, in all the media's fawning delirium over this film, that perhaps Jesus never existed or, if he did, was nothing but a crazy guy who roamed the desert, got his brain a little too sunbaked, and merely thought he was God. And there's been not one scrap of discussion about whether his legacy has been something we could have done without. When Gibson fades to black after Jesus finally expires on the cross, I so wanted to see the bitter, cynical "2,000 Years Later" epilogue. But no: we get the "Three Days Later" epilogue instead. And with all the cash Gibson is raking in on Jesus' back -- part of that bitter, cynical legacy -- I've no doubt that coming for summer of 2006 will be Passion 2: The Revenge of Zombie Jesus. Christ on a metaphor Now, The Last Temptation of Christ is a Jesus flick I can get behind, even as an atheist. Jesus is still a crazy desert roamer here, but he's a far more compelling one than Gibson's: He's an actual character, flawed and intriguing and contradictory and angry and real. Christian audiences were so terrified, back in 1988, at the suggestion that Jesus might have been a human being who had the same needs and desires as the rest of us that they boycotted the movie sight unseen, and that's another thing I don't get about these people: If you don't want to believe that Jesus was human, then doesn't that lessen the sacrifice you believe he made? What is he sacrificing if he's not human? Temptation is based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, and director Martin Scorsese (Gangs of New York, Bringing Out the Dead) knew what he would be in for: He opens with the declaration that "This film is not based upon the Gospels but upon [a] fictional exploration of the eternal spiritual conflict." There's a story here, not just a roller coaster to Calvary, and relationships and irony and confusion and resolution -- it's, you know, Just A Movie. Jesus (Willem Dafoe: Spider-Man, American Psycho, in maybe his best performance ever, so far) is your basic personal mess, in all aspects of his life: Career: He's the only carpenter who will make crosses for the Romans' executions -- "a Jew killing Jews," Judas (an unlikely but effective Harvey Keitel: The Grey Zone, U-571) spits at him. Romance: His old pal Mary Magdalene (Barbara Hershey: The Portrait of a Lady), the busiest hooker in Nazareth, really want to be more than just his pal, but he's guarding his virginity jealously. Hobbies: He talks to lions in the desert and raises guys from the dead; he removes his heart from his chest and turns water into wine. But he thinks it's Satan telling him he's the son of God. Sure, it's fantasy, but it's a pretty impressive one. And if you prefer not to think of it as fantasy, then surely it will at least challenge you to examine your own beliefs, just a little -- how dangerous could it be, honestly, to consider that Jesus may have been tempted by the idea of a normal life of a man at the time, with a wife and children and a little mud hut of his own? It's only a dream sequence within the fantasy, anyway: While Jesus is hanging on the cross, suffering horrendously, an angel, kinda like the Ghost of Christ's Life Yet to Be, comes and shows him how things would be if he climbed down off the cross and gave up this burden-of-all-sin stuff and just lived. It's all so normal and human and warm and happy that you have to wonder what people find so threatening in that. Then again, in the dream bit, Paul's (Harry Dean Stanton: The Big Bounce, Alien: The Director's Cut) got a whole speech about how the power of the Jesus story is more important than the reality of it. Maybe that's what scares some folks: that it's possible for the Jesus story to exist without Jesus himself ever having walked the earth at all. Christ on a skewer Still, the best antidote of all for The Passion of the Christ is the wonderfully profane Month Python's Life of Brian, which isn't merely blasphemous itself -- if you're a Jesus nut, that is -- it sends up the entire concept of blasphemy as nothing but an idea's method of self-preservation. This was another film that Christians protested, back when it was released in 1979, and the standard excuse from its defenders was Hey, it's about Brian, not Jesus. But make no mistake: Though Jesus appears in the background once or twice -- "I think he said, 'Blessed are the cheesemakers'" -- this film is entirely about Jesus and what his followers did and continue to do in his name. Sectarianism, fanaticism, sanctioned blood lust, groupthink, tribalism: these are the things that define life in Nazareth, a city downright lousy with insane prophets and streetcorner preachers. Brian Cohen (Graham Chapman), a nice Jewish boy with a secret heritage, gets caught up in a rebellion by the Judean People's Front -- or is it the People's Front of Judea? -- against the Romans, who've done such awful things as bring sanitation, clean water, and public order to Judea. The Pythons -- Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Palin, all in multiple roles, as usual -- go to town with Brian when he's mistaken for a prophet in the course of his terroristic activities -- oh, the overtones that has for today. There's nothing on film quite like the scene in which Brian, who doesn't want to be a prophet, is chased by frenzied horde who will not be dissuaded from their error and will not heed even direct contradictions to their beliefs. The shoe, the shoe... it's how religions get started: a clueless anti-Roman activist loses a sandal while running from a mob, and before you know it, someone sees it as a sign of something -- interpretations differ -- and people are being killed in the name of the sign of the shoe. But clear-eyed cynicism aside, there's something else notable about Brian: It's the only movie about Jesus to feature aliens and a space battle, which is still more plausible than a man turning water into wine. --MaryAnn Johanson
I'm not sure about this, but I was thinking that the dead animal was a donkey, and that it symbolized the donkey that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on.
