The Passion of the Christ is easily the most controversial film to come out recently. It’s also easily one of the most bloody and graphic. The majority of critical reviews that I have read for this film have dismissed it as that it’s a two-hour long torture scene, that relentlessly pounds the audience into watching Jesus get beaten, punched, kicked, whipped, scourged, stabbed, beat, spit on, etc, by Roman soldiers and Jews. However, some other critics gave the film high ratings, realizing the message it was conveying.
Actually, the Passion of the Christ is one of the most powerful and moving film experiences that I have had, not because of how graphic it was, but because of how authentic and real it is, and the message it’s conveying to us.
The film opens on a dark knight as Jesus is praying on the Mt of Olives, and his disciples are praying. Jesus (James Caviezel) prays for God’s support, while Satan appears and tempts Jesus, telling Jesus that God will not save him. The Jews arrive and arrest Jesus, beat him, and then take him to Pontius Pilate. Pilate finds no wrongdoing in Jesus, and so sends him to Hered, who also finds no wrongdoing. The crowd wants Jesus executed, but Pilate, wanting Jesus to live, had Jesus brutally tortured. After the bloody, graphic, disturbing and emotional torture scene, the crowd still yells that Jesus be crucified, and Pilate relents. The rest of the film had Jesus carrying the cross to the Hill of the Skulls, where his crucified. The film ends with Jesus resurrected, having triumphed over the Devil, and ready to ascent to Heaven.
This movie helped me realized what Jesus went through. When the credits rolled at the end, I also realized that no other living man could have survived through what Jesus went through. He went through all of that immense trouble, beatings and torture, to die for our sins. The effect of the film is amazing. It’s not pounding the audience into watching a big bloodbath torture scene; this is what actually happened. There are numerous flashbacks to other events in Jesus’ life, from when he was toddler, to a young man working as carpenter, to washing one of his disciples’ feet, to telling God’s message of love to a crowd of people, and to the Last Supper. And then we see Jesus, bloodied and scourged, his flesh ripped open, dragging the 350 pound cross along the road to the Hill of the Skulls, and, in the end, I appreciated for what Jesus went through.
The director, Mel Gibson, spent a lot of his own money on this when no other film company would finance it. It was a risky gamble, but it paid off, and Gibson made a lot of money off of it when the Passion of the Christ because one of the highest-grossing movies of the year.
I have never seen a film that was so excellently well made, so moving, so powerful, so emotional and a movie that didn’t have as much effect on me then the Passion of the Christ did. As a result, I am adding it to my ‘significant films’ list, no matter what other people and critics complained about it
This will not be a movie that I will watch over and over again; in fact, I suspect that I won’t see it for more than a couple or few times in my lifetime. This is one of those movies that you need to watch at least once. And I will bluntly say that the Passion of the Christ is a masterpiece.
*****/5
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