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Reviews22
jimtheven's rating
Forget the cheesiness, the anachronisms, what's obviously dopey...
This weird forgotten little Xmas TV movie raises some of the most intelligent questions ever about the reality of Jesus' Life Situation.
Why would the Virgin Mary and St Joseph think and feel and act as Christians... Before Christ? What hard lessons might Providence have had to drive home to them in such a bleak and bloody world before they could have the privilege of welcoming His uniquely non-Samaritan burning Son into their home?
Why WOULDN'T the Virgin Mary think of the Messiah as a great warrior like the Maccabees or David in the Scriptures?
And so on.
Nice acting job by that main Zealot fellow who once played James Dean.
This weird forgotten little Xmas TV movie raises some of the most intelligent questions ever about the reality of Jesus' Life Situation.
Why would the Virgin Mary and St Joseph think and feel and act as Christians... Before Christ? What hard lessons might Providence have had to drive home to them in such a bleak and bloody world before they could have the privilege of welcoming His uniquely non-Samaritan burning Son into their home?
Why WOULDN'T the Virgin Mary think of the Messiah as a great warrior like the Maccabees or David in the Scriptures?
And so on.
Nice acting job by that main Zealot fellow who once played James Dean.
THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
GIST: An astounding, thought-provoking, hard-to-figure personal vision of the Last Twelve Hours of Jesus Christ whose most notorious element - the illusion of breakthrough realism in the gruesome depiction of Christ's physical sufferings in that time period- only distracts from the movie's real meaning: that as a mixture of Gospel literalism, Romish mystical devotionalism, and post-SUPERSTAR desacralization,THE PASSION is, among other hard-to-figure things, a therapeutic externalization of one post-Vatican II Catholic's lifelong Jesus-and-Mary-related religious trauma, as performed by a bright, funny, kind of sad and jumpy guy who loves Christ and Truth passionately, and wants to bring the world the blessings of that love, but doesn't take himself or his talents too seriously and therefore directed a movie about the Passion of the Divine Redeemer wearing a clown's red nose.
This movie is in large part an extreme form of a certain type of male conservative Catholic humor. Mr Gibson's humor is pretty sophisticated as conservative Catholic guy humor goes. That's why PASSION ends with a tongue-in-cheekily Antimodernist visualization of something Modernists have ridiculed specifically for a hundred years -the Resurrection as a photographable Naked Man climbing off a slab, molecularly sailing right though a linen sheet. That is why it ends with a shot of the Lord's Risen Rear End. The setting is Joseph's tomb. The moral atmosphere is the locker room at the Knights of Columbus Hall. That's where fine Catholic family men will "yak" about say, the Shroud of Turin and how rough Our Lord really had it shortly before Checking Out.
Mel Gibson is above all a cool, quirky Catholic guy. He made a cool, quirky Catholic Guy's Flick whose Implied Ideal Viewer is the regular Catholic guy who might be embarrassed to say or even feel how much Jesus Christ Almighty and His Blessed Mother (no one jokes about HER!) mean to him on the whole, and therefore is given 'outs" such as thinking about the obvious guy thing a fellow team mate would do with that linen cloth (or TOWEL)as the temporarily benched Hero gets back into the Game...
WHAT'S POOR OR BAD:
All the Horror Flick monsters, big and small, especially the Beelzebub-booger. An apocryphal scene which features Jesus as a Human Yo-Yo. The Ed Wood-worthy earthquake/Temple curtain rending coda. The doubtlessly unintentional evocation of the medieval Passion Play's sinister perversity, whereby clownishly brutal baddies (Barabbas, the Roman soldiers) are winkingly "coded" to seem more real and entertaining than the Holy One in the White and then the Scarlet Robe Whom you've GOT to love and adore, as if there were any real fun in THAT.
WHAT'S OUTSTANDINGLY GOOD:
The cinematography (if you happen to like Mannerist murk).
The desperate remorse of an oddly likeable Judas who "really didn't mean it."
A Caiphas who oddly leaves a mostly favorable impression because, although HE clearly means business against Christ, he has dignity and class and was recognized by the Lord Himself as deserving of honor.
The lovely, delicate, heartbreaking depiction of Pilate's wife.
Maia Morgenstern's oddly Stoic and cryptically Romish Madonna.
WHAT'S GREAT:
The scene of Jesus' confession of Messiahship (at least that) before Caiphas and the ensuing deluge of blows. The only scene whose violence is truly disturbing, not just gross, because it gives some sense of sociopolitical historical reality and because the conflict between Jesus and "His own" has terribly tragic moral meaning which is immediately discernible in the drama itself. (The Romans are like their scourges, just dumb props of pain. You have to MAKE the scenes mean anything once they take over the Action.) This is a glorious scene because of the Kingly nobility and meekness Jim Caviezel projects (along with a vague sense of nausea, I thought?). It is also the only scene which is appropriately -and beautifully- scored.
Jim Caviezel's performance overall, until he just gets lost in the Blood, under the Cross. He's a Hippie, but He's Hypostatic.
The odd, mysterious, Mariologically shocking, contemplative, economically but brilliantly shot, utterly unique flashback to life in Nazareth with the Christ Family.
GIST: An astounding, thought-provoking, hard-to-figure personal vision of the Last Twelve Hours of Jesus Christ whose most notorious element - the illusion of breakthrough realism in the gruesome depiction of Christ's physical sufferings in that time period- only distracts from the movie's real meaning: that as a mixture of Gospel literalism, Romish mystical devotionalism, and post-SUPERSTAR desacralization,THE PASSION is, among other hard-to-figure things, a therapeutic externalization of one post-Vatican II Catholic's lifelong Jesus-and-Mary-related religious trauma, as performed by a bright, funny, kind of sad and jumpy guy who loves Christ and Truth passionately, and wants to bring the world the blessings of that love, but doesn't take himself or his talents too seriously and therefore directed a movie about the Passion of the Divine Redeemer wearing a clown's red nose.
This movie is in large part an extreme form of a certain type of male conservative Catholic humor. Mr Gibson's humor is pretty sophisticated as conservative Catholic guy humor goes. That's why PASSION ends with a tongue-in-cheekily Antimodernist visualization of something Modernists have ridiculed specifically for a hundred years -the Resurrection as a photographable Naked Man climbing off a slab, molecularly sailing right though a linen sheet. That is why it ends with a shot of the Lord's Risen Rear End. The setting is Joseph's tomb. The moral atmosphere is the locker room at the Knights of Columbus Hall. That's where fine Catholic family men will "yak" about say, the Shroud of Turin and how rough Our Lord really had it shortly before Checking Out.
Mel Gibson is above all a cool, quirky Catholic guy. He made a cool, quirky Catholic Guy's Flick whose Implied Ideal Viewer is the regular Catholic guy who might be embarrassed to say or even feel how much Jesus Christ Almighty and His Blessed Mother (no one jokes about HER!) mean to him on the whole, and therefore is given 'outs" such as thinking about the obvious guy thing a fellow team mate would do with that linen cloth (or TOWEL)as the temporarily benched Hero gets back into the Game...
WHAT'S POOR OR BAD:
All the Horror Flick monsters, big and small, especially the Beelzebub-booger. An apocryphal scene which features Jesus as a Human Yo-Yo. The Ed Wood-worthy earthquake/Temple curtain rending coda. The doubtlessly unintentional evocation of the medieval Passion Play's sinister perversity, whereby clownishly brutal baddies (Barabbas, the Roman soldiers) are winkingly "coded" to seem more real and entertaining than the Holy One in the White and then the Scarlet Robe Whom you've GOT to love and adore, as if there were any real fun in THAT.
WHAT'S OUTSTANDINGLY GOOD:
The cinematography (if you happen to like Mannerist murk).
The desperate remorse of an oddly likeable Judas who "really didn't mean it."
A Caiphas who oddly leaves a mostly favorable impression because, although HE clearly means business against Christ, he has dignity and class and was recognized by the Lord Himself as deserving of honor.
The lovely, delicate, heartbreaking depiction of Pilate's wife.
Maia Morgenstern's oddly Stoic and cryptically Romish Madonna.
WHAT'S GREAT:
The scene of Jesus' confession of Messiahship (at least that) before Caiphas and the ensuing deluge of blows. The only scene whose violence is truly disturbing, not just gross, because it gives some sense of sociopolitical historical reality and because the conflict between Jesus and "His own" has terribly tragic moral meaning which is immediately discernible in the drama itself. (The Romans are like their scourges, just dumb props of pain. You have to MAKE the scenes mean anything once they take over the Action.) This is a glorious scene because of the Kingly nobility and meekness Jim Caviezel projects (along with a vague sense of nausea, I thought?). It is also the only scene which is appropriately -and beautifully- scored.
Jim Caviezel's performance overall, until he just gets lost in the Blood, under the Cross. He's a Hippie, but He's Hypostatic.
The odd, mysterious, Mariologically shocking, contemplative, economically but brilliantly shot, utterly unique flashback to life in Nazareth with the Christ Family.
