Review: The Passion of the Christ

Seen 2/(27-28)/15--(broken up)

2.5/4

This film is difficult to judge. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, because he took it with respect to its purpose. I am willing to do that in some ways, but also it is a film, and thus we must recognize its mediocrities in that regard.

Apart from the ceaseless brutality, you may be surprised to hear me call this film "childish". Its characters are one-dimensional and highly archetypal. Some of them could have been placed in a Disney movie without seeming too mature to belong. There are plenty of film-cliche sequences also. Mel Gibson is working straight from the Bible, but there is only so much material there, and he fills in the holes poorly and lazily.

The performance of John Caviezel shows in him extraordinary strength and determination as an actor. It seems there is no low he is not willing to touch.

Whose fault is it that I didn't recognize Caviezel's sufferer as Jesus Christ? Throughout the film, my deeper consciousness failed to truly make the connection. Instead, I felt as if I was just watching an arbitrary body being brutalized. And even in the serene sequences, the flashbacks, it wasn't Jesus I was seeing. Is it my strange connection/disconnection with Christianity that limited my perception? Is it Caviezel? Is it the dialogue? The direction? Maybe there is no way portray the most iconic human figure of all time to expectations, simply because the expectations are unmeetably high.

Indeed, I felt disappointed with my emotional connection to this film. I felt almost nothing but a constant grimace, a sickening feeling. There wasn't much for compassion, or gratefulness. I am glad I am not a Christian anymore; otherwise, I would feel guilty for such a lack of response.

The violence though; it is there, it is inescapable, and it is done well for the most part. At times it's that kind of Hollywood-epic violence, but mostly it's realism, which is exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, the maturity-in-realism fails to extend beyond the violent visuals. That's why the rest of this movie is standard, barely par, and one can only rate it with any enthusiasm when one considers its purpose, which depended upon the violence. But even there, I sense that the purpose was ultimately to invoke compassion and appreciation, through merciless violence, whereas I only saw violence. But an experiential interpretation of this film must necessarily be highly personal.

I thought I was getting into a film of profound maturity that was built on the matter of adult-level cinema and thought. Reality was a bit disappointing.