Hi dglenn - it's Tamlin! I'm so happy you have a LiveJournal...and I just had to respond to this post; it was a topic of discussion at my job today.
Two of my coworkers - interestingly enough, both smart people - were talking about the assertion that this film is so much more historically accurate than other representations of Christ's life and death. Um, how is one interpretation of the Bible necessarily more historically accurate than the last? I've read second-hand that actually this film has a lot of *in*accuracies (see my mini-rant on this below).
Not to mention the violence, which is the major reason I'm not likely to see this film, especially not in the theatres. Maybe the violence is accurate. Cat o'nine tails *do* rip flesh off of the person being beaten. But...I really don't need to see that. I'm a believer in free speech and the right to see that kind of stuff, but with my core spiritual essence being essentially Christian (with some nature-based religion in there somewhere), it sounds like this movie would make me shudder in disgust.
I'll save my "seeing a disturbing movie" energy for when I finally get up the nerve to watch Schindler's List...I really want to find someone who will watch it with me. I've had a longtime wanting to understand how the Holocaust was able to happen, so many people dying right under so many other people's eyes...I want to understand especially as we're losing our Holocaust survivors to old age. Certainly seeing that movie would be much more worthwhile to me than seeing an apparent bastardization of the Bible!
The fact that Mel Gibson's father is apparently a Holocaust revisionist (Dad told me this; I need to ask him his source) makes me twitchy, too...though I don't know what type of input Mel's father had into the film. But as I mentioned above, do I hear correctly that the film essentially blames the Jewish people of Christ's time for Christ's crucifixion? Um, last I read the Bible, wasn't it the Romans who wanted him gone? Hasn't the fallacy that "the Jews killed Christ" been one of the major bases for antisemitism throughout the ages? Have we moved beyond the ballads of the middle-ages that were written around that sentiment?
If I see this movie at all, it'll be on DVD so I can fast-forward through the gratuitious squickiness. If that reduces it to a 15-minute movie, well, at least I won't be out the 9 bucks and two hours of my life. (Actually, given the tactics used to promote it, I will not see it in a way that could contribute to it being labelled a blockbuster. I'll borrow a DVD from someone who already owns it. I'd even consider a ripped copy, which I never do, if I actually knew how to procure one.)
I probably won't bother to see it, though. The reviewer who called it a two-hour snuff film seems to have hit the nail on the head (if you'll pardon the expression). This movie is not about the message of Christianity; it is about blood and gore in slow-motion, made knowing that it'll rile up some viewers against the people they hold responsible (aided by inaccurate depictions of the Romans in the movie), and I just can't believe that's an accident. While I don't think this film is going to do the massive harm that some fear it will, I can already see that it has caused some small damage in Jewish-Catholic relations, which had been going along pretty well since Nostra Aetate. It'll all blow over, but it's sad that we have to go through it for a movie that doesn't even tell the real message of the religion it supposedly supports. Or, at least, I choose to believe that most traditional Catholics do not believe that violence and hatred are the messages of their faith.
I hope you find someone to watch Schindler's List with. I actually watched it alone and was fine, but I don't know you. It's intense, but in a way very different from Gibson's movie.
(no subject)
Two of my coworkers - interestingly enough, both smart people - were talking about the assertion that this film is so much more historically accurate than other representations of Christ's life and death. Um, how is one interpretation of the Bible necessarily more historically accurate than the last? I've read second-hand that actually this film has a lot of *in*accuracies (see my mini-rant on this below).
Not to mention the violence, which is the major reason I'm not likely to see this film, especially not in the theatres. Maybe the violence is accurate. Cat o'nine tails *do* rip flesh off of the person being beaten. But...I really don't need to see that. I'm a believer in free speech and the right to see that kind of stuff, but with my core spiritual essence being essentially Christian (with some nature-based religion in there somewhere), it sounds like this movie would make me shudder in disgust.
I'll save my "seeing a disturbing movie" energy for when I finally get up the nerve to watch Schindler's List...I really want to find someone who will watch it with me. I've had a longtime wanting to understand how the Holocaust was able to happen, so many people dying right under so many other people's eyes...I want to understand especially as we're losing our Holocaust survivors to old age. Certainly seeing that movie would be much more worthwhile to me than seeing an apparent bastardization of the Bible!
The fact that Mel Gibson's father is apparently a Holocaust revisionist (Dad told me this; I need to ask him his source) makes me twitchy, too...though I don't know what type of input Mel's father had into the film. But as I mentioned above, do I hear correctly that the film essentially blames the Jewish people of Christ's time for Christ's crucifixion? Um, last I read the Bible, wasn't it the Romans who wanted him gone? Hasn't the fallacy that "the Jews killed Christ" been one of the major bases for antisemitism throughout the ages? Have we moved beyond the ballads of the middle-ages that were written around that sentiment?
Obviously not. :(
I'll stop ranting now.
(no subject)
I probably won't bother to see it, though. The reviewer who called it a two-hour snuff film seems to have hit the nail on the head (if you'll pardon the expression). This movie is not about the message of Christianity; it is about blood and gore in slow-motion, made knowing that it'll rile up some viewers against the people they hold responsible (aided by inaccurate depictions of the Romans in the movie), and I just can't believe that's an accident. While I don't think this film is going to do the massive harm that some fear it will, I can already see that it has caused some small damage in Jewish-Catholic relations, which had been going along pretty well since Nostra Aetate. It'll all blow over, but it's sad that we have to go through it for a movie that doesn't even tell the real message of the religion it supposedly supports. Or, at least, I choose to believe that most traditional Catholics do not believe that violence and hatred are the messages of their faith.
I hope you find someone to watch Schindler's List with. I actually watched it alone and was fine, but I don't know you. It's intense, but in a way very different from Gibson's movie.