The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s film about the last 44 hours of Jesus of Nazareth’s life, opens in theaters across the United States on February 25, 2004. Not coincidentally, the day was Ash Wednesday, the start of the Catholic season of Lent.
The star of action-packed blockbusters like the Lethal Weapon series and Braveheart, Gibson was earning more than $20 million per movie at the time he decided to direct The Passion of the Christ, for which he received no cash compensation. Largely based on the 18th-century diaries of Saint Anne Catherine Emmerich, the film was a true labor of love for Gibson, who later told Time magazine that he had “a deep need to tell this story…The Gospels tell you what basically happened; I want to know what really went down.”
He scouted locations in Italy himself, and had the script translated from English into Aramaic (thought to be Jesus’ first language) and Latin by a Jesuit scholar. Gibson’s original intention was to show The Passion of the Christ without subtitles, in an attempt to “transcend the language barriers with visual storytelling,” as he later explained. With dialogue entirely in Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic, the film was eventually released with subtitles.
A year before The Passion of the Christ was released, controversy flared over whether it was anti-Semitic. Abraham Foxman, head of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) went on record saying that Gibson’s film “could fuel hatred, bigotry and anti-Semitism.” Specifically, its opponents claimed the movie would contribute to the idea that Jews should be blamed for the death of Jesus, which has been at the root of much anti-Jewish violence over the course of history. For his part, Gibson categorically denied the allegations of anti-Semitism, but they continued to haunt him years after the film’s release. (In July 2006, he was arrested for driving under the influence; a leaked police report of the incident stated that Gibson made anti-Semitic remarks to the arresting officer. Gibson later acknowledged the report’s accuracy, and publicly apologized for the remarks.) Meanwhile, Christian critics of the film’s story pointed to its departure from the New Testament and its reliance on works other than the Bible, such as Emmerich’s diaries.
Gibson, who put millions of his own money into the project, initially had trouble finding a distributor for the film. Eventually, Newmarket Films signed on to release it in the United States. Upon its debut in February 2004, The Passion of the Christ surprised many by becoming a huge hit at the box office. It also continued to fuel the fires of controversy, earning harsh criticism for its extreme violence and gore–much of the film focuses on the brutal beating of Jesus prior to his crucifixion–which many saw as overkill. The film critic Roger Ebert called The Passion of the Christ “the most violent film I have ever seen.” Gibson’s response to similar charges was that such a reaction was intentional. In an interview with Diane Sawyer, he claimed: “I wanted it to be shocking. And I wanted it to be extreme…. So that they see the enormity, the enormity of that sacrifice; to see that someone could endure that and still come back with love and forgiveness, even through extreme pain and suffering and ridicule.”
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Romans were notorious for their extreme brutality in the way they treated “criminals”. Crucifixion was considered one of the most brutal deaths at the time. The scourging Jesus underwent with a leather flay tipped with either bone or metal prior to his actual crucifixion was also an extreme measure and did literally rip the flesh from the bones.
For a society to watch movies that portray senseless violence and to play video games that allow a player to rape prostitutes and then get upset over what happened to Jesus is hypocrisy at it’s finest.
Public punishments and/or executions were meant to be scary. They were meant to be a strong crime deterrent, and I can’t imagine they weren’t.
Catholic or not, what the historical figure of Jesus underwent was horrific, and he was not alone in his punishment. While little is said of the two flanking criminals that were crucified along with him, I can imagine whatever it was was horrible.
E. Michael Jones goes into the Oberammergau Passion Play, which predated Gibson’s movie by centuries, a fair amount in one of his books and says the play has been under constant attack by jewish groups to meet their liking. I read somewhere that Gibson had to remove the scene where the jews say “His blood be on us and on our children” but never cared enough to see the movie. Anyone seen it?
I tried watching it the other day on netflix, it is a little too much for me, the first 45 mins is the basic plot line of the last hours where judas betrays jesus, then it goes on and on and on and on with the whipping and the torture, it’s just too over the top for me.
on another note: the Pharisees who condemned Christ remind me a lot of Schiff and Nadler.
Yep, I saw it twice, the second time because I wanted my daughter to see it, just her and I went, my wife couldn’t take it a second time. My daughter was moved to tears, as was about a third of the packed theater, as was I.
I have seen all the major ‘Jesus movies’ the crucifixion scene was the most brutal of any of them by a significant factor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4k1uExAOa4
https://godtv.com/jim-caviezel-says-mel-gibsons-sequel-to-passion-of-the-christ-will-be-biggest-movie-in-history/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oybklNuCZU
I saw it on the big screen, and it was indeed shocking.
A small, telling, detail was that the hands shown which hammered the nails into His body were those of Mel Gibson himself.
Jim Caviezel, the actor who portrayed Jesus in this movie, took one hell of a beating during filming. He was struck by lightning, accidentally scourged, had his shoulder dislocated, and suffered from pneumonia and hypothermia.
What they fail to realize is that MOST of the hatred has always been for what they are doing RIGHT NOW, not what a few hundred or even a few thousand might have done 2000 years ago.