The Pianist vs. The Passion

[Andy O'Neil]

I hesitated before posting this topic, which was probably a red flag I shouldn't have ignored. I certainly do not intend to run people off of this site by starting this topic. Please engage in discussions at your own risk. What really tickles my pickle is delving into what makes a good story. Cinematography is a means of telling stories, that's how i see it.

 

I too was lured in to see "The Passion of the Christ." Mel Gibson has gone through a drastic transformation since "Mad Max." But anyway, here's my interpretation of "The Passion." Here's my quibble.

 

"The Passion" depicts a gruesome story. It's rather disturbing, the movie is. While I was watching it in the theater, I was imagining a wide-eyed Mel Gibson sitting on the floor in the front of the theater darting his head back and forth from the screen to the audience licking his lips eagerly waiting for everyone's wince and adjustment in their seats, every time they would cringe.

 

In his head, I imagine that he would be thinking, "You see what this guy did for you? you see how you're reacting? This is why you should ask Jesus in to your heart. If you don't, you should feel horrible about it."

 

I didn't feel horrible about not asking Jesus into my heart, but I did feel horrible that Gibson was taking this approach. It was rather repulsive. But I gotta hand it to Mel Gibson, he had a biiiiig audience for this subject matter. Hell, he had me, and I'm an atheist.

 

Now "The Pianist."

 

I used to try and formulate into words why I liked Polanski's "The Pianist" more than "Schindler's List." Now I'm thinking, wasn't Brody's character depicted in the same way as Jesus Christ was in "The Passion." Brody's character and Jesus were sand bags, pitiful sand bags that slid around where everyone would push them like pawns on a chess board. Brody survived, but I don't know.

 

I apologize, but I have to cut this short, probably because I don't have enough evidence or confidence to support this hypothesis. But I wanted to get these ideas out there. Any thoughts?

 

Thanks.

Edited December 3, 2004 by Andy O'Neil

[Jonathan Spear]

Good post.

 

IMO, the Passion is a -beautifully- lit and choreographed film, but the story itself is one that shouldn't be told with so much barbaric violence and finger pointing.

 

The film does absolutely no justice to Christ (or the Jews for that matter!)...but it sure is bringin' home the bacon and feeding the Gibson family quite well.

 

If you're going to make such a political, spiritual and ideological film - make one about the teachings of Christ - love, humanity and wisdom to name a few.

 

The biggest tragedy in the Passion was the enormous worldwide box office success and praise the film recieved.

It's just another reminder that we humans are =addicted= to seeing others suffer violently.

 

The Pianist however, tells a more 'human' story, if you will. And there are actual facts to back it up...if ya know what I mean. It does have somewhat of a similar

feel to the Passion in many ways, but I think the film shows what human beings are capable of - the good and the bad, whereas the Passion seems like a certain someone's sick and perverted (or maybe calculated?) way of depicting the last moments of Christ's life on earth.

 

(Gibson claimed the Devil's spirit was with them on the set almost every day)

[Andy O'Neil]

I must concur with TSM and many others that the cinematography was gorgeous in scenes. I think to myself, "I would give so much to have the ability to achieve such levels of work." Sometimes I get too caught up in my own quibbles that I fail to recognize the good. This is one of my own vices.

 

It's hard not to let a director's personal life interfere with my perspective on his/her movie.

 

Or is it? I don't really care about Polanski's fiasco years back. That has never once affected my viewing experience of his movies, but when I go back to watch "Road Warrior" now, my viewing experience is somewhat scathed.

 

Perhaps I should put forth more energy in producing my own work for others to critique before I criticize others.

 

In a nutshell: For me, "The Passion" was a commendable yet misguided effort. I cannot hide my disdain for those who seek to make others feel bad in the name of their "beliefs." Such things are not worth believing in. Find a new constance. Amen.

Edited December 2, 2004 by Andy O'Neil

[Max Jacoby]

Funny that you should compare the 2 films.

 

I thought the Passion said more about who Mel Gibson was than Jesus. I didn't like the cinematogrphy, it was shot like a commercial (witness the ECU of a drop of rain splattering on the sand), which I found very unappropriate. Just because you make a film about a biblical theme doesn't make it in any way spiritual.

 

As for 'The Pianist' I thought it was 'Robinson Crusoe in the Warshaw Ghetto'. Very boring film, just because you make a film about the holocaust doesn't make it an important film.

[Matt Pacini]

Having both read the bible, and seen "the Passion", I can assure you, this was not Mel Gibson's twisted and perverted view of anything.

You're giving him too much credit.

 

If you have problems with the message, the viewpoint, the agenda, etc., then that's understandable, but Mel didn't just make this stuff up.

There's absolutely nothing in the film that's not in the "script" i.e. the bible.

You have to go to the source for your criticism, and you're entitle to do that, obviously, but saying this is "Mels' sick and perverted idea", would be like saying that Schindlers List or Saving private Ryan is "Speilbergs sick and perverted idea" or something.

Speilberg didn't make up WWII, and the fact that the Germans really did what the Germans did, excuses him from the need to tread lightly so he doesn't offend any Germans, right?

 

You can dislike the gruesome portrayal, but it would be a bit silly to suggest Speilberg should have made his two WWII movies about the nice loving things that many people did for others during the war so we wouldn't be upset by seeing the cruelty of human beings in a film.

It was a large part of what the story was about.

 

Sacrifice is a "nice' thing to do for someone too, and that's what The Passion is about.

I'm not necessarily saying I believe all of it (I'm probably what you would call a semi-agnostic at this point in my life), but that's the story he was trying to tell, and I think he did it brilliantly.

 

Matt Pacini

[Jon Allen]

There's absolutely nothing in the film that's not in the "script" i.e. the bible.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Do you mean the Bible (caps) ?

Anyway, there were a lot of very artistic licenses taken. Remember the Satanic baby?

No matter what you believe, first and foremost, Mel made a MOVIE- although he wanted it to be something besides that (ie, a Christian recruitment vehicle). It simply isn't any more or less than that. Yes, he tried to make a statement, but there are a lot of movies that do that. But seeing this movie doesn't make one more or less spiritual.

However, the story he was telling is pretty incredible: The Creator of everything rescues his favorite creation by dying by his creation's hand.

That said, I thought the pianist was a little slow moving- I don't mean any disrespect, but I had enough of this "atrocity against _____" movies in high school.

Just because it tells a tragic story doesn't make it a good story.

[Max Jacoby]

No one disputes that the story he tells isn't based on the bible. But it is very revealing 'which' part he choses to tell and 'how' he depicts it. All he really tells about Jesus was that the man was horribly tortured. And he shows that in great graphic detail. Which is very revealing about his approach to religion.

[David Mullen ASC]

Uh, where exactly in the Gospel does the satanic baby appear, the snake that Jesus kills, the tossing of Jesus over a wall and hanging him by chains, the earthquake that splits the Temple down the middle, etc. -- let alone the details of how he was tortured and the degree he was tortured? I can go and double-check my Bible but I think we're entering the area of creative license. Which I'm not opposed to at all, but to say that it's all in the Bible... well, they must be handing out different Bibles.

 

I think it's a decent film if a bit sadistic, but it has some basic problems for me, as a Christian. I think one point of the Gospel was that God sent Christ to earth as a man so he could suffer and prove to mankind that God (thru Christ) understood and deeply felt their sufferings, that he was not so above it all that there was no emotional connection between him and his creation. There are not many other religions where the head of the church is a figure of such human suffering instead of some all-powerful super-being (there's that aspect too, of course.)

 

Trouble is that the Christ in the movie suffers SO MUCH torture that he starts to look like a super-hero after awhile, inhumanly strong to keep getting up. So instead of humanizing Christ, it does the opposite. Second problem is that there is no context because Christ's teachings are not portrayed -- it just assumes we are all so familiar with them that there would be no advantage in presenting them, which is a mistake because the Passion and Resurrection are the culmination of Jesus' mission on earth.

 

I prefer Zeffirelli's version, but then, he had a whole mini-series to tell the story...

[Matt Pacini]

"... And he shows that in great graphic detail. Which is very revealing about his approach to religion.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, he IS Catholic, after all!

That's one of many reasons I defected from that particular faith, but you can't expect someone to not be what they are.

 

You have to realize, that to practicing Christians, the entire message of Christ is not just "be gentle and nice to everyone".

It's about 90%+ centered around the crucifiction, the sacrifice made.

That's almost the whole message.

So when non-Christians, or those unaware of this for whatever reason, say things like "ewwww, why did he have to show this stuff? It's has nothing to do with what Jesus was really about", I have to disagree.

I understand why they feel that way, but they just haven't done their homework.

It's like making a movie about Martin Luther King, then leaving out his assasination, because "it wasn't what he was all about" or that you wouldn't want to offend anyone, and in Gibson's case, I would imagine that after so many movies bascially leaving that aspect of the story out, or softening it, he decided to concentrate on that aspect of the story, similar to what anyone would do with the portrayal of any historical figure.

 

Yeah, it's really unpleasant, disturbing even.

As were many countless other acts of barbarity that have happened in history, and are told in graphic detail in films exactly for the point that people "get" what it was all about, again, like Schindlers List and Saving Private Ryan.

And you could just as easily accuse Speilberg of being the one, sitting in the front row giddy with exccitement over the audience's reaction to the opening scene of SPR, and you could obviously make the same accusations about the money incentive, but I think it's not true in either case.

 

It's kinda silly to insist that a filmmaker tell a story, but leave out the nasty bits.

 

MP

[David Mullen ASC]

>It's like making a movie about Martin Luther King, then leaving out his assasination

 

Or ONLY having the assassination, which would be just as problematic.

 

Most movies about Jesus haven't managed to leave out his crucifiction at the end, although some have skipped the ressurection, which is a bit odd...

[David Mullen ASC]

Well, I just re-read the last sections of all four Gospels, and the "nasty bits" are hardly there! Remarkably short text. Pretty much all four say simply "they took Jesus away to be whipped" or to that effect, one sentence. One book says he was also hit by a guard, another says he was slapped once by Ciaphas' guard and by some priests. That's about it. Oh, he was verbally insulted too.

 

Only one mentions Mother Mary (the others say it was Mary, mother of James) being there at the crucifiction, none of them mention her being there for the whipping and beating, or wiping up his blood, etc.

 

And there are almost no details about the Stations of the Cross.

 

I was wrong in that the Book of Matthew says the earth shook and the rocks split when Jesus died. The other three simply say that the curtain in the Temple split in two.

 

So this argument that Gibson just got everything from the Bible doesn't hold water. He wasn't "leaving in the nasty bits" he was deciding what those nasty bits were. Clearly he was using a lot of artistic licence plus pulling in from non-Gospel sources, mostly apocryphal now.

[Alex Ellerman]

Interesting thread... I don't know why people think a movie about the Bible should eschew violence. I think the fact that it embraced violence in a mainstream way is the crux of its success, because previous Christian entries tend to stray from this type of depiction, and Christian entertainment tends to be overly pasteurized.

 

However, the most interesting comment to me is that this choice ultimately worked against the characterization of Christ as human for which the story should strive. BRILLIANT! That is a criticism that I think has much merit, and a cinematographer made the observation that somehow the writers/producers/storytellers missed.

 

I think the story would have likely had more impact with a more human Jesus as well.

 

theturnaround

[Jonathan Spear]

(*NOTE*: TO BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT...)

 

"There's absolutely nothing in the film that's not in the "script" i.e. the bible."

 

Read your bible again. The gruesome details just aren't there. Mel could have taken this story from ANY angle and he chose the (IMO) worst, most socially destructive and regurgitated angle of them all - THE JEWS KILLED JESUS.

 

The way I see it, a couple thousand years ago a Jewish man called Jesus, most of whose followers were Jews, was executed on the basis of trumped up charges. This was done with the grudging sufferance of the Imperial Roman authorities at the behest of certain powerful Jewish political and community leaders. Thus it would be fair to say he was killed by Jews.

 

This is of course not at all the same thing as saying he was killed by 'the Jews': that makes about as much sense as saying "John F. Kennedy was assassinated by the Caucasians".

 

-----------------------------

 

""You can dislike the gruesome portrayal, but it would be a bit silly to suggest Speilberg should have made his two WWII movies about the nice loving things that many people did for others during the war so we wouldn't be upset by seeing the cruelty of human beings in a film.

It was a large part of what the story was about""

 

What's important and great about his films is that the main idea and point of Schindler's List and SPR is exactly that. To show the world the 'nice loving things that many people did for others during the war'.

To make this world a better place, we -need- to hear these stories more often. As humans, we are prone to violence and hatred and some of us need this a a constant reminder.

 

(Yes - violence and hatred. There's absolutely no point denying it either. Just read your history books and today's paper.)

 

"You have to realize, that to practicing Christians, the entire message of Christ is not just "be gentle and nice to everyone".

It's about 90%+ centered around the crucifiction, the sacrifice made."

 

Well, too bad. That should be the message. Maybe this world would be a better place. (The same can be said for all religions!)

Notice the humanity in Spielberg's films. Noitice the sacrifices humans really did make for each other during those awful times.

 

The Passion depicts Christ's last hours on Earth in the most brutal fashion and the film ends with his resurrection.

Christ's teachings and his aftermath (Christianity) should have been more important to Mel then just martyring Him on Super-35mm.

 

When I saw the Passion, two thoughts filled my mind.

One, Gibson's mission statement is one that has been carried through the ages, and indirectly, has caused such human (yes, HUMAN) attrocities such as the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition and the persecution of Christ's own people.

 

Two, ... WOW. What a beautiful looking film.

----------------------

 

-TSM

[Jonathan Spear]

"When I saw the Passion, two thoughts filled my mind.

One, Gibson's mission statement is one that has been carried through the ages, and indirectly, has caused such human (yes, HUMAN) attrocities such as the Holocaust, the Spanish Inquisition and the persecution of Christ's own people."

 

did I say indirectly?

 

i meant DIRECTLY.

[David Mullen ASC]

>"You have to realize, that to practicing Christians, the entire message of Christ is not just "be gentle and nice to everyone". It's about 90%+ centered around the crucifiction, the sacrifice made.

 

Gosh I hope that's not true or there are some Christians with some serious hang-ups. But I guess it does account for why so many seem to ignore Christ's teachings, you know, like: "those that take up the sword will die by the sword", "love thy enemy and those that wrong you" and "it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven", etc. The Jews were pretty upset over Christ's attitude towards the brutal Roman occupation ("love a Roman! Are you kidding!") and no doubt many Christians today wouldn't listen to him if he told them to respond to Islamic terrorists with love and compassion.

 

The crucifiction and ressurection, the triumph over death and evil, are the culmination of Christ's mission, but that doesn't mean his teachings are only 1/10 the value of that. Forced to choose between two unlikely scenarios, the world would be better off if more people followed his teachings but didn't believe in his divinity versus only believed in his divinity but ignored his teachings.

[Matt Pacini]

My 90% statement above, reflects what is actually going on in Christianity, not what I THINK should be going on in Christianity.

That's actually a very large reason I've slid out to the sidelines (been to Church 4 times in the last 13 years, two of them funerals for family memebers), because a big problem I have with the practice and teachings in most Christian churches, is that they don't focus more on the love and tolerance issues.

I think it's too easy to focus on the forgiveness factor. You know, just do whatever you want to, then ask forgiveness afterwards!

It's much easier than doing the right thing to begin with, and yelling "you're gonna go to hell", is just simply not an effective way to motivate people!

 

And sure, I'm not suggesting that every single detail of Mel's film is in the Bible, I'm referring to only the issues that most people are complaining about in the film, namely:

 

A. It's too violent and gruesome.

B. It "unfairly" depicts the Jews as having Christ crucified.

 

I would agree, that watching the film, I was bothered by the gruesomeness, and repulsed by it, but knowing the story, and knowing what Gibson set out to do with the film, it seemed appropriate, (although I certainly would have shown much more restraint.)

 

Just to clarify, in this context, "Jews" is not referring to their genetics, (like the statement about him being killed by "the Caucasians").

The Jews were an organized nation/religeon, they wanted Christ killed because he was a trouble-maker for them, but were under Roman law at the time, and could not carry out executions themselves.

So they had to drag him before the Romans and make up a story that Christ was challenging Ceasar (by claiming to be King of the Jews), so that the Romans would have a reason under their law to execute him.

So saying that the Romans killed him, not the Jews, would be like saying that if I paid a hitman to kill you, he's guilty of the crime, but I'm not, because I didn't physically do it.

 

By the way, this wasn't "all Jews" at the time, just the leadership, and certainly there's no implication that it has anything whatsoever to do with Jews today, (as some have speculated).

If it did, I'd be out there protesting, because I have enormous respect for Jewish people, and jump all over anyone in my presense that makes bigoted comments about them (which thankfully, is seldom).

Like I said before, people can believe all this stuff in the film is not true, and that's fine, but Mel Gibson did not make this up. That's all I was trying to say.

If it's sick and twisted, or wrong, or never happened, etc., then blame Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, etc. for making it up and being twisted, not Mel Gibson.

 

David, what did you think about the cinematography?

I liked the open scene, but then, I'm must have some sort of weird fetish with fog, I think!

I even like driving in it, which I guess is not very smart!

 

Matt Pacini

[David Mullen ASC]

I thought we just proved that he DID make stuff up; there's a whole laundry list of stuff not in the four books of the Gospel. Even Gibson has explained in interviews that he pulled elements from other material, like the mystic visions of some Catholic nun. These were part of pre-twentieth century Catholic lore and teachings, but not directly from the Bible and later dropped by Vatican II.

 

It's a pretty big leap to take a single sentence "they whipped Christ" and turn it into three hours of torture methods on display so I hardly think it is as simple as "he got it from the Bible."

 

As for the Jews, it's always important to remember that Christ was a Jew and half the Bible comes from Jewish text. He was killed by the Sanhedrin (sp?), more or less the church leadership, and it wasn't exactly a unanimous vote among them either (which even Gibson points out). In fact, on the one hand it seems clear that Gibson wants to remind viewers of Christ's "Jewishness" (is there a proper way to say that?) and not make him into some golden-haired Aryan being killed by some other race. So on that level, I don't buy the charge that the film was deliberately meant to be anti-semetic.

 

Now whether it is unconsciously anti-semetic is another issue because traditionally Passion Plays, which started in the middle ages, were used to stir-up anti-Jewish sentiment. So unfortunately, by making a movie of just the Passion, not the whole mission, he is putting himself in some questionable company historically. But I don't think that means that making a movie about this story is therefore forbidden. Just means it takes some tact, not Gibson's strong suit.

 

My biggest problem was that the movie SHOULD have been emotionally draining but instead it was just physically draining. I wasn't so much moved as I was queasy and exhausted when it was over. And I'm someone who cries when I get to the end of "Jesus of Narareth"...

 

As for the cinematography, I thought it was excellent. Maybe a little softened from the DI, but then again, a little softness may have been intentional -- Deschanel is not known for always delivering razor-sharpness but likes a little schmutz on the lens, if you know what I mean. It's a little like Gordon Willis and his love of older lenses. My favorite lighting was the night scene in Pilate's bedroom with the mix of warm firelight and cold dappled moonlight patterns on the wall. Other scenes were lit with big soft firelight sources ala Storaro; it had a painterly quality.

 

But in some ways, I think David Watkin nailed that better in SOME of his shots in "Jesus of Nazareth" (not all and he didn't shoot a lot of it anyway. Overall, it's a mixed bag photographically with too many zoom shots.) There's one shot of Mary meeting Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, in an interior courtyard that is like something from an Italian Renaissance painting. And Robert Powell's face was haunting; Jim Cavesil's might have been if it weren't buried under make-up and blood.

 

Biblical movies have sort of moved to this realistic, somewhat muted pallate, soft-lit, rather brown and dusty, away from the Technicolor look of the 1950's Cecil B. DeMille epics. A lot of those TNT movies from stories in the Bible have been that soft & golden look. I think it's very pretty but the danger is that it gets repetitive visually. You start wanting a hard-lit shot in cold lighting after awhile, or for someone to wear a primary color! It's a good thing photographically that Roman soldiers wore red cloaks to break up all that brown and gray. And I'm someone who loves desaturation, but I think if you are going to eliminate variations in COLOR it has to be replaced by variations in contrast and light, just like a good b&w movie would.

[K Borowski]

Coming from a Roman Catholic background, and going to a school where we have monks roaming arouhd, I'd just like to clarify some of the discrepencies between the movie and the "good book". The parts with the female version of Satan and the baby are taken from the visions of a Catholic mystic who is apparantly believed by some of the higher-ups in the Church. I personally hated the passion. The DI looked terrible, the colors are all screwed up, and the whole movie is basically about Jesus Christ getting the poop beat out of him. There was a lot more to Jesus's work on Earth than dying. Read his words and you'll see the important part of his mission here. This probably isn't the view of the Catholic Church or Mel Gibson. I don't care though. That's what they should be concentrating on. As for the extreme brutality depicted in the movie, it was an exageration, just as the Bible is an exageration. The whips used in the movies contain nine strands. That's why they've been called "cats-of-nine-tails" by some people with grizzly senses of humor. Anyway, one lash with a whip such as this was considered the same as 9 regular lashes, so Jesus got nine times as many lashes as he received in the Bible (I'm not sure what version you're reading Dave Mullen, but I'm pretty sure mine mentions forty lashes for JC). Also, history shows that Jesus almost certainly didn't carry the whole cross, but instead only the crossbeam, as the other prisoners did. Of course, Mel isn't the first to get this wrong. It's some sort of strange tradition to portray Jesus as having to carry the whole thing. As for Mary wiping up Jesus's blood. This is to portray the ancient Jewish belief that the whole person must be burried in order to be whole in the afterlife, or something along those lines. Remember, theology, even in established religions of the time that persist to this day, was much more primitive then than it is now. I hope this clears up some of the controversy surrounding this movie. I wish someone would make a movie about the real Jesus. . .

 

Regards.

~Karl Borowski

[Brad Grimmett]

Forced to choose between two unlikely scenarios, the world would be better off if more people followed his teachings but didn't believe in his divinity versus only believed in his divinity but ignored his teachings.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Amen to that! I'm basically an atheist, but I do believe in being a good person and helping people, and blah blah blah. But some people tell me that I'm going to hell because of my beliefs (or non-beliefs). It just sounds like hatred to me. It's this kind of hypocrisy that has always pushed me away from religion. More people have been killed over religious beliefs than any other reason. So they kill because they.....why do they kill again? I just don't get it.

Sorry, rant over.

[Matt Pacini]

"...More people have been killed over religious beliefs than any other reason. ..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

That's one of those oft-quoted statements that have turned into "everyone knows it's a fact", but I'd have to seriously dispute that.

 

You add up the death toll from 100 years of Marxism & Fascism, (Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, countless Marxist dictators in Africa with the murder still going on), and you're WAY over 100 million lives, and I'm being conservative with the numbers (excuse the pun!).

60 million just from WWII alone.

As bloody as the Church's past is, it's dwarfed by this body count, even if you exaggerate the estimates.

 

As to The Passion, I agree, I'd much rather have seen a gentler film, and I too wish Gibson would have made a film about the positive aspects of Christ.

But he didn't, and he was clear from the start that it was not his intent to do so, and given the advance publicity of this film, I really think we can't act surprised at what we saw when we stepped into the theater.

We knew what what was coming, and that's what we got.

 

I'm not saying I agree with everything in the film, and I'm certainly not saying it's 100% accurate (especially since I'm an ex-Catholic!), but I'm viewing it from the standpoint of; did he manage to make the film he intended to make?

(Which is really a difficult thing to do, if you ask me!).

 

Whether it's Airplane, JFK. Fahrenheit 911, Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Dude Where's My Car, these are films that did exactly what they intended to do, so that's where I'm coming from.

 

I think the very fact we're even having this discussion, is evidence of precisely what he was trying to accomplish.

 

I just found it silly that there were all these people claiming that the entire basis of the film was Gibson's "twisted" imagination, that his blaming Christ's death on the Jews come from him being anti-semetic, blah blah blah.

But you guys certainly make some valid points.

I wish someone WOULD make a film about Christ that was about his good deeds, but frankly, I wonder if that would lack the drama required to do decent business.

(Actually, there have been a lot of MOV's like this, so I guess there HAVE been some!)

 

Matt Pacini

Edited December 2, 2004 by Matt Pacini

[Max Jacoby]

The DI looked terrible, the colors are all screwed up,

 

That's something I've come to expect from a DI courtesy of EFilm. Sorry to single them out, but they are doing a lot of DI work and I just cannot understand why everyone uses them.

[Brad Grimmett]

That's one of those oft-quoted statements that have turned into "everyone knows it's a fact", but I'd have to seriously dispute that.

 

Matt Pacini

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

OK, point taken. You may be right, you may be wrong, but I don't know if we could ever prove it either way. For example, I don't think there's a good body-count estimate for the Crusades.

Anyway, this is way off the topic, so I'll shut up now.

Regarding The Passion: When I left the theater after seeing the film I felt like it was totally forgettable. The violence wasn't much worse than what we've seen many times before in many other films. Also, there is so little story there that it never really grabbed me. Basically, I was bored. I'm still not sure what all the fuss was about. Of course I know what the fuss was SUPPOSSED to be about, but it all just seemed like hype to me. Also, as a couple of you have already mentioned, it's not a complete story. It's like watching ONLY the last game of the world series this year and saying that that one game encompassed how the Red Sox won the title. You're leaving out all the best parts! Even as a non-religious person, I would have preferred to see what led up to the crucifixion. But I certainly applaud Mel Gibson for making the movie he set out to make.

[Matt Pacini]

"...Also, as a couple of you have already mentioned, it's not a complete story. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Good point, you're right.

It's kinda assumes that everyone knows the backstory already, so the "preaching to the choir" factor for this film is basically literally that!

 

Probably the same way I feel when people start talking about sports stuff.

I'm not into it, so I have no idea who, or what they're talking about, yet when they say some guys name, I'm supposed to know his whole history!

And on that note, some sports fans berate me for not knowing this stuff, far more than religious people usually do to "heathens".

Perhaps sports should be considered a religeon!

 

Matt Pacini

[Brad Grimmett]

Perhaps sports should be considered a religeon!

 

Matt Pacini

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Well, they certainly are to many people.....not me, but I know many people who are extremely fanatical about sports. Have you ever seen the Superbowl episode of the Simpsons when the Simpsons go to church on superbowl Sunday and the church is empty? Hilarious.

[David Mullen ASC]

I always remember the episode where Homer had to give up drinking and sat through a baseball game sober for the first time. After a few innings, with the announcers droning on and on ("now stepping up to the plate...") he said slowly "I had no idea how boring this game really was..."