Written by: Beck

The first person I had a conversation with about the movie, The Passion of the Christ, coincidentally, was Jewish. He had (and likely has) no desire to see the movie. He felt uncomfortable about the whole thing, what with the controversy over anti-semitism and all, and seemed a bit nervous talking about it, even with someone he knew wasn't religious. I assured him it wasn't anti-semitic, and gave as balanced a view of it as I could. The one thing he had heard of substance and brought up was the coddling of Pontius Pilate. Five minutes of half-assed online research doesn't say much about him that is all that shocking. Regardless, we've strayed from the topic at hand: what did I think of the movie?

I liked it. I wasn't moved by it. I felt nothing spiritual awakening inside of me. I was entranced by the sheer brutality of the treatment of Jesus who is brutalized from scene one until the credits roll (I wont spoil the ending by telling you whether or not Christ makes it through, don't worry). But I walked out of the theater feeling that I had gotten my $8 worth (and also that I needed to find a nearby movie theater that charges less).

Here's the best way for me to explain it. In any given movie, the director has two directions in which to develop his subject matter: breadth, and depth. By breadth, I mean the amount of topics, events, characters, subjects, and meanings which the movie attempts to convey. By depth, I mean the extent to which those given topics, events, characters, subjects, and meanings are explored, explained, analyzed, deconstructed, reconstructed, and, well, you get my point. Both take up time, so there is a trade off involved. The only way to have a movie which covers an immensely broad story line AND a significantly developed depth of characters, messages, and so on is if you make it 12 hours long (i.e. the three extended versions of the Lord of the Rings trilogy--and even then, neither the story nor the characters are as deeply developed in the movies as they are in the book). Indeed, the only way to have both complete depth and breadth to a story is in written form, and then you wind up with something like War & Peace or Les Miserables.

The Passion of the Christ was not broad. At two hours and seven minutes long, it covers very little subject matter, and brings in very few biblical elements outside of the strict "Stations of the Cross" from the Gospels. You hardly see the other disciples, and the only person other than Jesus to get significant facetime with the camera is Mary (who didn't look nearly old enough in my opinion, not that that's really very relevant). Jesus is captured, Jesus is tried, Jesus is condemned, Jesus is tortured, Jesus is crucified. That's the movie right there.

But the movie DOES have depth. As I told a friend, for me, the movie could have been The Passion of Bob and it would have been just as good. People in life suffer. Some of them suffer horribly. Jesus, considering what he sought to accomplish through his suffering, should have suffered most of all. And indeed, this movie is just that: a movie about just how greatly one man can suffer, and just how horribly humans can treat each other. It's a character study, of sorts. The movie virtually demands that we put ourselves in the shoes of the victim and imagine it happening to ourselves, and as Answerman pointed out to me, the movie would have worked just as well without the subtitles.

The Passion is a movie that everyone should see once, because every decade or so, people need to be reminded of what horror mankind is capable of. Throughout life, we try to avoid scenes of unpleasantness and discomfort. Without reminders, we forget ourselves, and invariably, atrocities follow in our wake. Several days after the September 11 terrorist attacks, all the networks agreed together to stop showing images of the World Trade Towers falling. And apart from the live broadcasts and the HBO special which came later, never were shown the people leaping to their deaths because an instant death from hitting the ground was the only alternative to being slowly roasted alive by burning jet fuel. Now it's only two years later, but people have already forgotten the horror that was inflicted upon us. They wince at taking action, preferring to hide back in their secure feeling holes and hope that the rest of the world will just Leave Us Alone. Well, folks, it doesn't work that way. The world is a mean place, and there are bad people out there. Either you deal with them, or they deal with you. And that's the lesson we learn, if indirectly, from The Passion.

Oh yeah, and good acting, cinematography, and all that crap too.