The Passion of the Christ
6:45 AM
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Back in 2004, when "The Passion of the Christ" was released, I tried to steer clear of the much warned explicit violence of the movie. Words like "graphic violence", "excruciating" and even "anti-semitic" kept appearing all over the place and I felt no inclination towards watching all that.
I still didn't see it when it came out on Dvd, even with a friend telling me how great it was. One day I caught it on Tv and was only able to bear watching until the scourging scene.
Finally, a couple of years ago I decided to watch it from beginning to end and I was amazed.
The point is: I was so reluctant because "The Passion of the Christ" is not an easy movie. And that's because the real events of the Passion were not also easy to watch. It is supposed to be that painful. The movie is violent because what happened was violent.
So, why should we watch it? For many reasons, but for one because truly understanding the Passion promotes a change in life.
So, why should we watch it? For many reasons, but for one because truly understanding the Passion promotes a change in life.
"See mother, I make all things new."
(one of my favorite scenes)
(one of my favorite scenes)
And also, the violence is not random or exploitive. Sometimes we have this fairy tale image of the Passion and the movie makes it much more real to us. The movie helps us meditate on it as if we were really there.
If watching it now is difficult, can you imagine what it was like to have been there? Wouldn't it be easier then, to just go home, close the doors and cover our ears?
Another way of looking at it is imagining ourselves as the other characters of the movie. Do you know how in dreams psychologists say all the people from your dream are actually you? It's a little bit like that in the movie. We are like Peter who promises to never abandon Christ and hours later denies knowing him. We are like the people from Jerusalem who in one day cheer: "Hail Christ the King!" and a week later scream "Crucify Him!".
All we can hope for is that we receive the grace to follow the good examples of the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist, Saint Mary Magdalen and Dismas (the good thief). They all stood by Jesus and allowed their lives to be changed by the Passion.
Happy Easter, guys!
What do you think of the movie and all the controversy around it? How was the first time you watched it?
2 comments
When I’ve seen the trailer of this movie, I’ve thought it was extremely violence. And, since it just covered the Passion, I’ve also thought that you couldn’t extract any of the previous established Christians teachings from it. Maybe it was just another movie trying to exploit the eagerness for violence scenes of the public.
ReplyDeleteWell, I was completely wrong. From all that suffering and from all that divine love for mankind, you can see the Redemption and the atonement of all sins. Even though the previous three years of public life of Jesus are not covered, the purpose of this mortal life – to enter in the Kingdom of Heaven –, is beautifully expressed on the movie.
Well, the first time I watched it was with my lovely girlfriend.
In fact, many people think this movie exploits violence, which I don't think is the case. While I was making a research about violence in movies I came across this article(http://nymag.com/movies/features/15622/)and I was a little surprised to see that it included horror movies such as Saw and The Hostel and The Passion of the Christ. We can't forget the violence in these movies is different and used with different purposes.
DeleteThanks for your comment, I'm glad you enjoyed the movie!
Thanks for commenting! Do come back because I usually reply to comments here.