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The Movie "Passion of the Christ" Now Showing Abroad
The movie has opened in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon - but not in Israel. .... The film opened in France this week, as commentators warned it could add to a recent wave of anti-Semitic feeling in the country. .... Vatican officials have praised the film, with the movie due to open on 7 April in Italy. .... The film is also due to open in Russia on Tuesday. It has already proven to be a box-office hit in the UK and the US, where it may soon become the biggest film in US cinema history. Many critics have complained that the movie blames primarily Jews for Jesusâ arrest and execution. Thatâs certainly true about the film, but itâs also true about the New Testament. I myself am not very concerned about that aspect of the film. After all, the film also shows the Romans as the worst torturers and shows Jews as Jesusâ family and disciples. I would condemn the film for a failure to present a clear and coherent explanation of why Jesus was arrested, tortured and executed. The film is so muddled about that question that we can hardly address (what should be) the next question of whether that explanation is true. On the other hand, I praise the film for its cinematic virtuosity in depicting Jesusâ physical suffering, which I think was a major intention of the filmâs creators. This aspect of the film will make a huge mental impact on all viewers. This film will significantly affect the way that people in our time think about Jesus. The mental image of Jesus as the holy moral teacher has been eclipsed by an image of Jesus as a human courageous martyr. That said, I now want to point out the moment that, I think, the filmâs creators intended to deliver the filmâs main lesson. I found this incident to be a brilliant yet subtle element that I wish other viewers understand as I did. Although Jesus is already dying because of the tortures, he is forced to drag his cross a long way to the execution site. He collapses several times, and each time the soldiers and bystanders beat Jesus to make him stand up and continue. Eventually a Roman officer orders his soldiers to make a bystander help Jesus drag the cross the rest of the way. The soldiers then do pick a tall, strong man (Simon of Cyrene) out of the crowd and tell him to help. The tall man tries to talk his way out of the order, complaining that he is just passing through and knows nothing and has nothing to do with the events, but the soldiers nevertheless compel him to help. The procession to the execution site then continues for a while, and gradually the tall man sympathizes and even admires Jesus for the endured suffering. After a while Jesus collapses again, and the soldiers and bystanders again begin beating him. The tall man watches for a moment and then swings his hands at the attackers to make them stop and move back. He then yells (something like): "Stop beating him. If you keep hitting him, then Iâll stop helping here; I donât care what you do to me!" That statement is (as I recall) immediately followed by a very brief flashback of Jesus reciting his beatitudes in his Sermon on the Mount. Simon of Cyrene is a uninformed, unengaged, ordinary, cowardly man who does not realize his own strength and moral instinct. Unexpectedly placed into a dangerous situation where he might exercise that strength and instinct to defend a doomed stranger against many dangerous attackers, he is inspired by Jesusâ suffering to risk his own safety. On one hand, his threat is: "Iâll stop helping here." On the other hand, though, his defiance is brave: "I donât care what you do to me." A positive message that I thus took from this very brutal film is that, like Simon of Cyrene, we too should feel encouraged by Jesusâ suffering to do even small good deeds when crucial moments occur in our own always confused and sometimes frightening lives. Posted by: Mike Sylwester 2004-04-04 |
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