The realism with which the interaction between the roman soldiers is treated is the only part where the thing gets so naturalistic (as I said before, great acting) that the remembrance of that particular color of tratment might make "the doctor in you" scoff at the crucifixion scene later.
In your opinion. I disagree. As I've stated.
Mel Gibson didn't intended to make the most gritty, realistic movie about the crucifixion, then conceded to have the impossible moments depicted, too, in a nod to the Christian faith, it's the other way around: This movie is clearly a religious statement. Mel Gibson is a traditionalist catholic who wanted to make his homage to a crucial moment in Christian theology, and then he added the exquisite details that make up for a more life-like experience.
They aren't details: the entire film is geared toward being "life-like". My point is, this creates a certain dissonance with the 'mythic' suspension of disbelief stuff.
It's not the easiest balance to make and I have, too, problems with certains scenes (and now the motormouth thief scene really starts to annoy me, along with the "floating cross" thing) - my point still is that this movie has much more to offer, both spiritually and, yes artistically, that any cultural venture in recent times. This is just the best Via Crucis ever filmed.
Again, in your opinion. I agree there are artistic points of interest but, to me, much of the rest is hyperbole. But hey, we're allowed to think differently.
My point is that I see as... so... clear that Gibson was trying (he said it in interviews) to elicit compassion(tks) with his violent portrayal of torture, that to analyse such work (of admittedly naïve presentation - we're all adult, right? we know better than this "raising from the dead on the third day stuff") with the eyes of a psychiatrist specialized in sexual deviances (no time to look for the PC term here) seems to me completely unnecessary, unelegant, and poor.
Are you suggesting that, perhaps, everyone who's called the gore pornographic is a nastily inelegant "psychiatrist specialised in sexual deviances"? Bloody hell, there's a lot of us about...
I don't know. Maybe he was not subtle enough, maybe he feared people wouldn't possess enough theological experience to understand the extension of Christ's sacrifice if he didn't show them his suffering in detail. But an easier (and funnier) way to go about this would be, I suppose, to ponder "Maybe Gibbo gets something else out of it, eh, eh?". You're not the only one who raised this "angle", but this does not make you right.
No, but it doesn't make me wrong - and it doesn't means I've watched the film 'wrongly' or, as you've repeatedly condescended to suggest, somehow missed the point.
You're just treating something that's clearly a spiritual offering (Gibson has stated this many times) with the same daily jaded blunt little tools of modern cynicism
Gibson's also stated that the film is the result of the Holy Spirit working through him, and implied that those who fail to be spiritually moved by his gorefest are rejecting the Bible itself. This (and we haven't even begun to touch on his range of 'nail on a chain' merchandising) is not entirely without "modern cynicism" itself.
I don't deny that The Passion is meant as a "spiritual offering"; I'm emphasising that it's one man's offering, is filtered through the lens of that man's idiosyncratic psyche, and is therefore deeply warped/flawed.
*shrugs*
Peter Sutcliffe's murdered prostitutes were meant as a spiritual offering. One man's spirituality is another man's pathology...
That there happens to be fetishist impulses that thrive on bondage/whipping scenes does not imbue said scenes with fetishist intentions a priori. This is such an inversion of values... You say "The camera lingers on", while I would say "bad handled use of slow motion". Different points of view, fine. But, dude, you missed the point.
No, "dude", you missed the point - or perhaps we have different awareness of the same point. The fact that Gibson, directorially speaking, has previously included hefty dollops of fetishised sadism/masochism in his films suggests to me that the hours of lovingly detailed beating, whipping and bleeding in The Passion are not solely the result of bad [sic] handled use of slow motion.
Passion \Pas"sion\, n. [F., fr. L. passio, fr. pati, passus, to suffer.]
Do you get that? The "suffer" part, specifically?
Uh-huh. It's the "two hours of bludgeoningly fetishised gore which is nonetheless not pornographic in any way, nuh-uh, no way, never, you're a sicko for even thinking of it" part I didn't get. The meaning of the word 'passion' still doesn't "clearly confirm" this viewpoint for me. Perhaps you need to crank up the Patronisometer a little? Try adding 'do you see?' at the end of your posts, and you're almost there.
Jade, we're going in circles here. Ultimately, you're gonna have to accept that other people are going to respond to The Passion in a different way from your own - and that those people aren't necessarily blind, stupid or wilfully cynical in so doing. When you exhort that "you cannot not feel proud when that fragile little man keeps standing up again and again" or "you cannot not feel the joy..." or "you cannot not celebrate...", you're frankly wrong. I don't feel proud, I don't feel joy, I don't celebrate. The Passion doesn't recharge my "hope-batteries", it leaves me feeling drained, depressed and manipulated - and my reaction is not an uncommon one. As Deva said earlier, perhaps it's simply a case of to what extent Gibson's religious landscape chimes with one's own. That wasn't the Jesus in my head, and it wasn't my idea of redemption.
I guess we're gonna have to take the classic line here and agree to differ. |
