Sunday night at the movies.
Feb. 29th, 2004 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lykomancerSo I went and saw "The Passion of the Christ" with some friends tonight.
I will say right off that I hate going to a crowded movie. People are assholes! They talk (loudly), they run around the theater, they show up late for the movie and wander around, they sit directly in front of you even when they could have sat elsewhere. Not to mention the people that came with me... I spent half the show getting Annie and Crystal's attention, shutting them up, enjoying a few scenes, and then trying to get their attention again to shut them up.
GAWdamn, children!
Right.
While I am not what most sane people would call Christian, I'm not as far from the ideals Jesus set forth in his ministry as, say, Hitler, and I used to be very involved in church groups and in the Christian faith. Though I am now thoroughly Unitarian, I do try to keep up with current Christian theology and do considerable amounts of reading and research to understand the faith. (As a side note, lemme tell you that most people who think they are Christian, or claim to understand what it's about, are wrong.) I've been reading all the reviews and articles that have been posted about Mel Gibson's movie on Belief.net, and was kind of curious to go see it myself
So I went. With a few other people who had heard interesting things about it and wanted to see.
First off, I will say that it was extremely SQUICKY. I cannot believe that people are taking small children to see this. I'm not the easily disgusted type, but about a third of the way through the flogging scene (when they switched to the cat-o-nine tails and rip a goodly chunk of Jesus's side off) I began to turn away, gnaw on my knuckles, and cringe every time I heard the 'tails hit. The actual crucifixion had me shuddering and cringing, fighting the urge to run screaming out of the theater. It bothered me so badly I was both laughing and crying simultaneously-- that twisted reaction of confusion and distress. I wanted to throw up in my shoes (which I had taken off so that I could tuck my feet up under me so I could see over the guy in front of me without getting my butt wet).
SQUICKY.
The moral that struck me wasn't that Jesus led a worthwhile life and was sacrificed for his people. It wasn't that He died for our sins. The moral is that people suck! People have an infinite capacity for cruelty.
Think about it: thousands people were flogged every day in the Roman empire, thousands were crucified. People were flayed alive with whips spiked with jagged bits of metal; people were nailed through their wrists and broken feet to a piece of wood and died agonizingly of slow suffocation... and if they were fortunate, they did not have a metal torture device (I forget the name) affixed on the cross near their crotch so that if they relaxed at all it shredded their genitals.
Terrible, terrible suffering, inflicted every day on many people all over the Empire. The Romans, the Catholics, the Nazis... it's always the OTHER. It's never us.
But it is. We are all capable of such mindless savagery. Even if we think we are not, we are. Psychology tells us that much.
Moved by evil, by Satan. Beelezbub. The Lord of the Flies.
The Lord of the Flies... though it horrifies us to read Golding's masterpiece, it is shamefully voyeuristic. We are all Jack, painted for the hunt, for the sacrifice. "Kill the pig! Cut her throat!"
Crucify him...
We blame others, we point the finger. It was him; it was her. Satan put this evil in my heart. I was possessed of demons, demons named not Legion, but Ignorance-- Willful stupidity and complacence. Lord, forgive me, I know not what I do. Even Gibson seems to say subtly that it was Satan that put such cruelly into the Jewish high priests, but that's a cop-out. We have no sense of responsibility. We forget that there is little or no difference between participating in slaughter and turning a blind eye to it though we know it exists. (Where one is captive, all are in chains.)
"No... I do not know the man Jesus of Nazareth!"
Is sacrifice a necessary thing?
Many ancient cultures believed so. Jesus was not the first God-incarnate to die for his people, for the fertility of the land. Notably, both the druids of Britain and various god-cults of the Greeks demanded human sacrifice, and often those to be offered were considered divine. This is not mentioning the bloodthirsty sacrifices of the New World Aztecs or Mayas.
It this a variation on equivalent trade? To have a good life and fertile fields, one must die? Why? Is it still needed?
---
I think I especially liked that Gibson broke up the bloody, gruesome shots of Jesus' face as a death mask of tears and blood-- mostly blood-- with bits of his words on death as a sacrifice... telling the disciples that where he is soon to go they cannot follow, the Sermon on the Mount. Very nice.
There were definitely some stuff that was not right (i.e. not in the Bible or just not logical). Jesus would have spoken Greek, not Latin. They would have driven nails through his wrists, not his hands. And so forth.
(I was pleased by how much of the Latin I understood. Yay!)
But over-all I think the film works. No, I don't think it was anti-Semite. Yes, however, I do think that the Romans were too sympathetically portrayed. Yes, I think it went a little over the top with the gore. Yes, I think it could have focused more on Jesus's teachings instead of on his terrible death. And the scene with the Roman spearing his side to see if he was dead was just poorly done. Dead people don't gush, Mel. Living people don't even gush. Not like that, anyway.
On the other hand, the people I went with thought it was very poorly done, and were not moved at all.
*shrug*
Go figure.
I'm kind of hungry now, and though Crystal and I were going to go shopping she's wandered off somewhere with the other monkeys. Oh, well.. I can still hit the Chub.
I will say right off that I hate going to a crowded movie. People are assholes! They talk (loudly), they run around the theater, they show up late for the movie and wander around, they sit directly in front of you even when they could have sat elsewhere. Not to mention the people that came with me... I spent half the show getting Annie and Crystal's attention, shutting them up, enjoying a few scenes, and then trying to get their attention again to shut them up.
GAWdamn, children!
Right.
While I am not what most sane people would call Christian, I'm not as far from the ideals Jesus set forth in his ministry as, say, Hitler, and I used to be very involved in church groups and in the Christian faith. Though I am now thoroughly Unitarian, I do try to keep up with current Christian theology and do considerable amounts of reading and research to understand the faith. (As a side note, lemme tell you that most people who think they are Christian, or claim to understand what it's about, are wrong.) I've been reading all the reviews and articles that have been posted about Mel Gibson's movie on Belief.net, and was kind of curious to go see it myself
So I went. With a few other people who had heard interesting things about it and wanted to see.
First off, I will say that it was extremely SQUICKY. I cannot believe that people are taking small children to see this. I'm not the easily disgusted type, but about a third of the way through the flogging scene (when they switched to the cat-o-nine tails and rip a goodly chunk of Jesus's side off) I began to turn away, gnaw on my knuckles, and cringe every time I heard the 'tails hit. The actual crucifixion had me shuddering and cringing, fighting the urge to run screaming out of the theater. It bothered me so badly I was both laughing and crying simultaneously-- that twisted reaction of confusion and distress. I wanted to throw up in my shoes (which I had taken off so that I could tuck my feet up under me so I could see over the guy in front of me without getting my butt wet).
SQUICKY.
The moral that struck me wasn't that Jesus led a worthwhile life and was sacrificed for his people. It wasn't that He died for our sins. The moral is that people suck! People have an infinite capacity for cruelty.
Think about it: thousands people were flogged every day in the Roman empire, thousands were crucified. People were flayed alive with whips spiked with jagged bits of metal; people were nailed through their wrists and broken feet to a piece of wood and died agonizingly of slow suffocation... and if they were fortunate, they did not have a metal torture device (I forget the name) affixed on the cross near their crotch so that if they relaxed at all it shredded their genitals.
Terrible, terrible suffering, inflicted every day on many people all over the Empire. The Romans, the Catholics, the Nazis... it's always the OTHER. It's never us.
But it is. We are all capable of such mindless savagery. Even if we think we are not, we are. Psychology tells us that much.
Moved by evil, by Satan. Beelezbub. The Lord of the Flies.
The Lord of the Flies... though it horrifies us to read Golding's masterpiece, it is shamefully voyeuristic. We are all Jack, painted for the hunt, for the sacrifice. "Kill the pig! Cut her throat!"
Crucify him...
We blame others, we point the finger. It was him; it was her. Satan put this evil in my heart. I was possessed of demons, demons named not Legion, but Ignorance-- Willful stupidity and complacence. Lord, forgive me, I know not what I do. Even Gibson seems to say subtly that it was Satan that put such cruelly into the Jewish high priests, but that's a cop-out. We have no sense of responsibility. We forget that there is little or no difference between participating in slaughter and turning a blind eye to it though we know it exists. (Where one is captive, all are in chains.)
"No... I do not know the man Jesus of Nazareth!"
Is sacrifice a necessary thing?
Many ancient cultures believed so. Jesus was not the first God-incarnate to die for his people, for the fertility of the land. Notably, both the druids of Britain and various god-cults of the Greeks demanded human sacrifice, and often those to be offered were considered divine. This is not mentioning the bloodthirsty sacrifices of the New World Aztecs or Mayas.
It this a variation on equivalent trade? To have a good life and fertile fields, one must die? Why? Is it still needed?
---
I think I especially liked that Gibson broke up the bloody, gruesome shots of Jesus' face as a death mask of tears and blood-- mostly blood-- with bits of his words on death as a sacrifice... telling the disciples that where he is soon to go they cannot follow, the Sermon on the Mount. Very nice.
There were definitely some stuff that was not right (i.e. not in the Bible or just not logical). Jesus would have spoken Greek, not Latin. They would have driven nails through his wrists, not his hands. And so forth.
(I was pleased by how much of the Latin I understood. Yay!)
But over-all I think the film works. No, I don't think it was anti-Semite. Yes, however, I do think that the Romans were too sympathetically portrayed. Yes, I think it went a little over the top with the gore. Yes, I think it could have focused more on Jesus's teachings instead of on his terrible death. And the scene with the Roman spearing his side to see if he was dead was just poorly done. Dead people don't gush, Mel. Living people don't even gush. Not like that, anyway.
On the other hand, the people I went with thought it was very poorly done, and were not moved at all.
*shrug*
Go figure.
I'm kind of hungry now, and though Crystal and I were going to go shopping she's wandered off somewhere with the other monkeys. Oh, well.. I can still hit the Chub.
