Those who see it will understand, perhaps for the first time, the price that Jesus paid to forgive us our sins.
Mel Gibson’s portrayal of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his final 12 hours alive can best be summed up by a quote from film critic Roger Ebert. Betrayed by Judas Iscariot, Jesus is then arrested and taken within the city walls of Jerusalem where leaders of the Pharisees confront him with accusations of blasphemy. Cast: James Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Maia Morgenstern, Christo Jivkov, Francesco De Vito. Jesus must resist the temptations of Satan. The film begins in the Garden of Olives where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper. The violence and the glee of the Romans who were scourging Jesus highlight the demonic quality of the battle Jesus was fighting. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST focuses on the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life. Filmed in Latin and Aramaic, THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST has a foreign sensibility. THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST is a must-see movie, beautifully directed, powerfully acted, and with terrific sound. From that point, the brutal treatment of the Messiah is shown in stark detail. The timing for the release of The Passion is particularly poor, given the current rise in anti-Semitism world-wide, especially in Europe. Gone is the sexually motivated revolutionary Jesus of the last part of the century.
Gone is the mentally ill and emotionally conflicted superstar Jesus of the 1970s. Gone is the virile anti-hero Jesus of the 1960s. Quickly, Judas leads the temple guards into the garden to arrest Jesus. Any attempt, therefore, to accurately portray the Passion story on film is likely to stir up anti-Jewish sentiment and help to re-ignite the age-old hatred that has caused so much Jewish suffering. In the Jesus of The Passion of the Christ, gone is the effeminate Aryan proverb-spouting Jesus of the 1950s. Their search into this mystery was incompleteas ours will be, too.
True, they did not have the scholarly tools to understand it that we have today. When Jesus arises, he stomps on the head of the serpent. Christian mystics of the past saw the Passion of Jesus as their great book, a fount of wisdom, and they kept it constantly in their minds and hearts. The first scene has Jesus weeping in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Satan, an androgynous figure accompanied by a snake, tries to tempt Jesus away from his destiny on the cross. Going beyond most Passion Plays, it highlights in stark, dark, intense terms the spiritual warfare raging around Jesus Christ during His Passion. Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST covers the time period from the Garden of Gethsemane to the Cross and beyond.