the passionless christ

so... i watched, or rather half-watched because i ended up fast forwarding through most of it, 'the passion of the christ.'

where to start to tell you what's wrong with it? hmm... i just don't know. well, maybe i'll tell you the only thing i did like about it: hearing the languages. even though two of them are dead, so there's no way to know how they really sounded, and the third i'm sure has changed in sound over the millions of years it's been spoken. so they weren't accurate, but as a Ph.D. in english who herself knows a few dead languages, i really liked that part...

but the rest of it... not so good. in fact, really shitty. first off, you know the story if you'ver ever been made to sit in front of the telly watching those ol' biblical epics. or been driven to church and sort-of paid attention. or again, if you have a Ph.D. in english with a concentration in medieval english lit, including drama. 99% of plays put on then were biblical in nature, you see. mostly they revolved around corpus christi, when they would put on what are now called 'cycle plays'. here, you went from station to station watching a different play based on biblical dogma, but with british influences, settings, humour, etc. for example, one play is the noah play, and in one version (the wakefield) noah's wife is a nagging bitch. the bulk of them dealt with jesus and his last day on earth, so you got the different stages of the passion. in a way, i liked the film because some of the scenes really seemed to be influenced by these plays, especially the more realistic york cycle. in one of these plays, jesus is realistically nailed to the cross, and the workers talk about tearing the sinews and watching the blood pour out as they each take a turn hammering in a nail. so the goriness of the play didn't astonish me (esp since the world made such a big stink about it). although i doubt, sincerely, that good ol' mel went back and read the cycle plays...

now while the excessiveness of blood didn't astonish me, and while i usually, as you all probably know by now, adore violence and gore in my films, here it was just excessive to the point of patent inanity. granted, it could be true (if any of the jesus stories are true) that he was beaten to a pulp, and i have no doubt that that's the way it was, but come on, we get it already, mel. plus, mel was trying far too hard to make it stylized violence, with funky camera angles and slo-mo. was he taking a page from a hong kong action film? who knows. but if he was, his film lacked the humour that goes along with the gore, and thus it was just too much. i mean, as i said, it didn't really bother me, but i could see how some reverent folk might be shaken up. i mean, this was supposed to be a tribute to christ, not some psuedo-artsy-fartsy trip down crucifixion lane!

another problem with the film is, as i slightly mentioned above, all the tricky camera angles and shots and effects. they made me laugh, roll my eyes, or just scream, 'oh god, not another shot of the ominous sky!' one scene just really cracked me up... judas, who was going mad with guilt over selling jesus to the high priests, was sitting against a tree. these two kids come up to him and start taunting him mercilessly. all of a sudden, mel cuts backs and forth from the kids to judas, and sometimes they've turned into hideously deformed kids, complete with only one eye on one of the boys and grimacy faces on the other. it reminded me of a cheesy halloween film or something.

and as i said, all the slo-mo, focus on the dropping rain shots showed up, which are really nice in a film like 'hero' where they enhance the beauty of the film, but here they just seemed like gimmicks to make the audience suffer with christ. and oh boy did i suffer!!! through all the hokiness!

also, the pacing was a little too slow for me, and again i know that's because of the aforementioned attempt by gibson to make the audience feel jesus' pain. but to me, it was just boring. that's why i ended up watching it at 5 and 20 times the speed after a while.

then came the end, which i won't tell you about in case you actually end up watching this film. oh boy! it's a whopper, effects-wise!

so i guess if you want to suffer through a bad film, do so with christ and watch 'the passion...'

by the way, i have been so absent these days as i am very busy with school. acupuncture college requires a lot from you! but i love it! i'll try to write more. one reason i haven't blogged is that i've not seen a film worthy of my attention and care. but once i get into a routine, i'll be able to blog more about whatever... i am reading the 'tale of genji' now, and while it may take me months to finish (it's about 1200 pages of very small typeface) i will LOVE to talk about that when i'm done....

bye!