Is it true that "The Passion" is actually Cruci-Fiction? Just asking.
posted by Jo Fish on 02.25.04 at 01:27 AM
Comments:
Hahah. Reminds me of our pal Bill Hobbs, who said the movie is the first "factual" portrayal of the crucifixion. He also said that only now do we have the technology to make it so realistic.
Since Mel's father claims the Holocaust to be a fiction, maybe we should claim that Jesus was a fiction. There is ample evidence that the whole christian shuffle was a mushroom cult, the word "jesus" being a "street" code word for Amanita Muscaria, the little red cappad jobbies. I've been told they make you see god!
posted by: Dave on 02.25.04 at 11:20 AM [permalink]
If there really existed such an individual as Jesus of Nazareth (a question on which I'm agnostic as much out of indifference as anything else), the fact of the matter is that Mel's movie is truly a "cruci-fiction" for two very important reasons:
1) the Gospels are religious propaganda pieces written well after the events in issue, and were couched in terms meant to shift the "blame" for Jesus's death from the Romans (who really did it) to the Jews, because the early church needed to kiss Roman ass in order to survive, and
2) Mel's admitted that his imaging of the cruci-fiction borrowed quite a bit from the visions of two mystical-visionary nuns, which, as we all know, is even better than eyewitness testimony.
That being said, the critical returns are so emphasizing the blood, cruelty, brutality and suffering made so vivid in this movie that it makes me wonder. Surely, properly viewed, this almost obscene portrait of violence should, rightly viewed, be the strongest argument ever made that Christianity is a crock o'shit....
It's a testiment to the shallowness of contemporary religious conviction that a movie can generate this much "religious" excitement. The same kind of nonsense was demonstrated with the inappropriate response many readers had to the novel The Da Vinci Code - as if it were a serious thesis and not a work of fiction.
Hey, is America a great country, or what?
posted by: SOB on 02.25.04 at 07:18 PM [permalink]
Bolo Boffin does a great job on the historical accuracy that this portrayal lacks.
That it is intense is probably an understatement as a 50-year-old woman died from a heart attack this morning at a showing of the film in Wichita, Kansas according to the local TV station KAKE. [it's real, I Googled it with "KAKE Wichita", and it's the lead story]
As many have noted all over, it is not the Crucifixion, but the Resurrection that is at the heart of Christianity.
posted by: Bryan on 02.26.04 at 12:03 AM [permalink]
