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Drooling on the Pillow

Saturday, January 22, 2005

The Passion of the Christ 

As New Jersey huddles down and waits for the blizzard to pound us (yikes, just looked out the window and the snow has started), the girls have gone to a play date and the house is quiet and cozy.

So what does Sluggo do? Well, here he comes choogling along six months late with a few words about The Passion of the Christ which we watched on DVD last night.

The Goddess hated it almost as much as she hated Kill Bill, and for the same reason. She just couldn't watch it. She found the violence pointless and disgusting. It angered her. She, by the way, considers herself a Christian. I do not.

I was surprised at how much I liked it. I found it thrilling, in a way. (I liked Kill Bill, too, but for very different reasons.)

Did you see the movie The Rapture? It's not a great movie, but it has some fine performances and it had an almost unique point of view for a Hollywood film. The question it asked was, 'What if it's all true?' What if God is coming, he will judge us, most of us will be damned and the righteous will ascend into heaven? Mimi Rogers is a troubled woman in a boring job who has some (entertaining) sexual quirks. She is witnessed to, becomes born again and goes on with her very different life. Then the rapture happens. Right in the middle of life as we know it, our ordinary, realistic world ends. The movie kind of blows up at that point because I don't think the end of the world was in their budget

There are cool people, there are scoffers. There are sophisticated points of view (not James Bond sophisticated, but POVs you would recognize from life). But the movie itself takes no point of view, except that the Rapture, and all of the predictions contained in the Bible and the consequences of them are events and conditions of existence, nothing more, nothing less. It is an eschatology removed from metaphysics and plopped down right in the middle of your day.

The Passion of the Christ is a very different movie but my appreciation of it is based on similar principles. It forces you (if you are able to watch it) to consider the event it depicts apart from all the clutter it has accumulated in your mind and in your life. This is not 'kiss of peace' Christianity. There is not a kumbaya moment in it. It is the story of a couple of days and the brutal torture and judicial murder of a man. The backstory and meaning you provide yourself according to your knowledge and belief. If it happened in a way anything like the Gospels say it did, it was much worse than Gibson shows in this movie. A less graphic portrayal would be pointless.

I think the Passion confronts Christians and non-believers alike to consider their relationship to the central story of western civilization in a way that no other movie ever has. The flashbacks to the Last Supper and the Sermon on the Mount and a few others serve to break the otherwise relentless violence. The only supernatural presence is a silent and lurking Satan.

I've not touched on the reaction of a good part of the Jewish community. I can see why they were upset, but Gibson doesn't go out of his way to offend them. This is the story. It is the Romans who inflict the sadistic touches. The participation of the Jews strikes me as more of a political sub-plot.

This movie will not make a Christian out of a non-believer. I felt no stirring toward the cross. I did, though, feel moved, horrified, astounded and shaken by a story that had, for me, all the emotional impact of a Christmas card. Until last night.
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