I’m trying foolishly to write a review of this movie after only an hour or two’s thought, but I know there’s a lot more thinking to do, not to mention at least one more viewing… but I think it’s probably worth getting some first thoughts down before they evaporate (unlikely).

Mel Gibson has succeeded on every level with this movie. I write this as an entirely non-religious, but entirely spiritual, person, and as that I have to say that what astonished and pleased me most about The Passion of the Christ was how restrained, unpreachy, unmanipulative, it really is. I’m not talking about the gore… both the gore and the “anti-Semitism” have been discussed plenty elsewhere. Briefly – yes it’s violent, but that’s the point; and is anyone calling Schindler’s List anti-German?

This is the time for a movie like this. Religion on the whole has been given a really, really bad slam in the past few years, fundamentalism has got out of hand (to say the least), and we joke about the nuisance of Jehovah’s witnesses, the wars carried out in God’s name, and the basic bizarre rituals of many key religions. Kevin Smith’s Dogma, in my opinion, is as much a masterpiece as The Passion for rightly poking fun at the hokey aspects of organised religion. I apologise for this paragraph to anyone who is religious – it’s just my opinion.

The Passion can easily be watched as a religious movie – as we’ve seen, with Christian leaders paying for their whole congregation to go and see it all across America. It definitely works that way. But it can also be watched, as I watched, for a truly great story – indeed, as another cinematic-representation called it, possibly The Greatest Story Ever Told (I haven’t seen that one). I genuinely don’t intend to belittle the life of Jesus by calling it a great story – yes it makes me sound like a shallow movie executive. I mean story in the grandest sense – something that addresses human problems universally. The Passion is about cruelty and love, having the courage of your convictions to the bitter end, loving your enemies. Gibson has succeeded in making me want to pick up the Bible again, reminded me that there is some good, even a lot of good, within those pages, that though people can take these good words and justify absolute evil, it was far from intended.

There’s basic human truths in all religions… this is only one story, and Gibson’s major achievement is that he doesn’t glorify it at all – I’ll say again, I was absolutely overwhelmed by how little he tried to be a converter or preacher. If I remember right, there are only two major miracles in the whole movie – the restoration of the guard’s ear at the beginning, and, of course, the resurrection (I’m sure I’m not issuing spoilers here…), which is so delicately touched upon, you can read it as you will. I mean, the fact is, Jesus does live on, real or exaggerated or not, in churches and worship places all over the world.

In the first half hour I was really worried that this was going to be another Matrix: Reloaded for me. I’ve been fearing this ever since I heard about the movie, which was possibly years ago – that I was too excited by the prospect of Mel Gibson doing a total art movie – “the last 12 hours of Jesus’ life all in Arameic and Latin… wow…” and it would be a let down. I was as certain this movie would be great as I was that Matrix: Reloaded would be great. Fortunately in this case, I was far from let down. It took a while for The Passion to hit me, but hit me it did, as Jesus carries his cross, barely carries it, and I realised I was watching this movie devoid of English language and I’d all but stopped reading the subtitles, I had completely forgotten I was watching a foreign language movie, I had become completely lost in a depiction of “history”. Like a lot of other viewers, I really lost it during the last half of the movie, I reacted to the cruelty inflicted on this innocent man, whether his message was true or not. The movie touched me deeply and I think that’s the highest praise coming from someone like me for a movie like this.

Tags: religion

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2004 at 2:57 pm and is filed under 4 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.