Last Friday my wife and I finally got around to watching The Passion of The Christ. We have owned the movie since it came out on DVD in 2004 but it sat in the case waiting until now to be watched. Every year my wife and I would say, “this Lent we will watch it,” but every year we always found a reason to put it off. This year we almost missed the opportunity again, I think if we had not gone to stations of the Cross on good Friday, we probably would have forgotten about it.
I am sure part of it was the reviews of the movie: “The Bloodiest,” “The goriest,” “The hardest to watch,” “Watched with my eyes closed.” And it lived up to these reviews. It did seem at points to be focusing on gore for gore’s sake.
With that being said, it was still a decent movie to watch. There were obviously some very, “interesting” artistic licenses take with the movie, but certainly nothing that is really objectionable. It was wonderful to watch peoples lives changing even as they are doing horrible things. Interesting to watch the people who throughout the course of the movie (thinking of some of the soldiers here) seem to continually try to distance themselves from what is going on so as not to be a part of it even though they have to be a part of it.
The movie brought up two things that I will need to do more research on, though I don’t know if I will really find any answers. One was the fate of Pilate, and the other was, who was Mary Magdalene? Both will require a lot more reading but as I said I will probably not find any real answers. If you have recommendations for readings on these two please feel free to leave me a comment.
In the end, this movie will probably go back into it’s case and never come out again. It was an interesting movie, but since I am really not one for gore for the sake of gore, and though as I said it was a decent movie, it didn’t really move me in any meaningful way (not the way going to stations does) so there is really no reason to watch it again.
The Great Hites 