Just to let you know where I'm coming from - my background and bias - I'm a pre-seminary dropout turned teacher who moonlights as a movie blogger. The driving question here is, how and why does The Passion of the Christ choose to emphasize certain things, and are there times when the film's focus is inappropriate?
Then, we'll address accuracy and interpretation: how the film builds the illusion of historicity and of fidelity to its primary source material, the Bible, while also bringing in outside influences and giving itself leeway to take a great deal of artistic license with various elements. First, we'll tackle the film's violence through a detailed examination of one set piece, namely, the extended whipping torture of Jesus at the hands of the Romans, which arguably provides the film's most memorable, discomfiting scene. To keep this 15th-anniversary revisit orderly and manageable, we'll limit it to three main areas of discussion, spread out over several sections.
The can of worms this movie explodes is almost bigger and more unwieldy than any one analysis can contain. Talking about The Passion of the Christ raises a whole host of issues long-standing charges of antisemitism against the film are just one of those. The question is: outside the usual echo chambers, below all the noise, how does The Passion of the Christ hold up fifteen years later? It's the film that opened up the floodgates on the niche market of faith-based movies. The film's divisiveness goes beyond its horror-movie shock tactics, however, to what EW called "a culture-war firestorm unrivaled in Hollywood history." Entertainment Weekly once ranked it as the most controversial movie of all time, just ahead of Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, a film that helped bring the word "ultra-violence" into the cinematic lexicon with its depiction of a disturbing home invasion set to the tune of "Singin' in the Rain." In a way, that juxtaposition is fitting, because while Jim Caviezel receives top billing as Jesus, ultra-violence is the real star of The Passion of the Christ. To say that The Passion of the Christ was and is a contentious film would be an understatement. For everyone else, it was just hump day, a random Wednesday when they might happen to see Xtians walking around with ash crosses on their foreheads. For Christians, it was a holy day-Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. The month of February used to be more of a dumping ground for low-profile movie releases, so when The Passion of the Christ hit theaters on February 25, 2004, it didn't look poised to become a certified blockbuster.
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