Flipside Movie Emporium

[The Third M?n]

Controversies innumerable have been wrapping around Mel Gibson's latest project, but how do you think it will be? Will the critics receive it greatly or is it bound to be a love it or hate it film? Are you looking forward to it? How much do you think it will gain at the box-office? Do your toes itch?

Personally, as a Roman Catholic myself, I am anticipating this film with mounting expectations. The bothersome thing is that lately on RT shameless people have been posting threads about how "Jesus sucks" and whatnot. It's idiotic, really, and they just want to stir up some cheap controversy. Now that this film is getting released, I fear that Christians are going to be bashed a lot.

Apparently WABC reported that Ebert is going to give this film one star. Other critics have been saying how it's a work of art, etc, but there is bound to be another side to it.

Ah well. Discuss, share your thoughts and whatnot.

[matt header]

I've never read the Bible and I'm somewhat indifferent to organized religion, so I'll view this the same way I viewed, say, Ben-Hur or The Ten Commandments - as an epic drama. I'll be more concerned with its formal elements than its religious implications, although I doubt the accusations of prejudice and anti-Semitism that have been flung at the film have any basis in fact.

I must admit I like Gibson - he's always an engaging actor and usually an interesting director, and I like Braveheart quite a bit more than I probably should.

[beltmann]

While I can understand the fears that another Passion play may potentially stir up anti-Semitism, I feel that Gibson has adequately answered that charge: He saw Schindler's List and didn't walk out hating Germans more than when he went in. In fact, I feel that Gibson's recent discussion with Diane Sawyer revealed him to be informed, aware, intelligent, and, most of all, eloquent.

Although I consider myself a person of faith--but not a member of any organized religion--I agree with Matt Header that what most interests me is the picture's formal qualities. My first concern is whether it succeeds as art, not as religious tract. If it happens to have strong evangelical power, that's merely bonus.

Eric

[the night watchman]

This seems to be a movie that requires a viewer to share its assumptions in advance. In other words, unless the viewer is Christian, or at least views the figure of Christ in the same fashion as Christians, I'm not sure the film will afford any point of contact on an emotional or intellectual level, unlike, say The Last Temptation of Christ or even Dogma. I don't see how this movie could function as anything other than, as Eric put it, a religious tract.

That said, I was initially interested in Passion if only for, as Matt and Eric have pointed out, its formal qualities; specifically its use of dead languages. (I have an amateur interest in linguistics.) However, the controversy -- spurred primarily by conservative Christians and the religious right in an effort to paint the movie as persecuted by liberals -- has since soured my interest, and while I wouldn't write off the possibility of ever watching it, I probably won't catch its theatrical release.
_________________
"If you're talking about censorship, and what things should be shown and what things shouldn't be shown, I've said that as an artist you have no social responsibility whatsoever."

-David Cronenberg

[beltmann]

[beltmann]

[Danny Baldwin]

[the night watchman]

[the night watchman]

[beltmann]

[mfritschel]

Beltman Wrote:

I guess I just meant that even if a viewer doesn't believe in the Gospels, or doesn't even believe that Christ existed, the film as a self-contained dramatic story (perhaps fictional) may still provide a point of contact for them, whether in terms of the themes I listed, or some other possible entry point. I think of Kundun, which doesn't reflect my beliefs but still contains themes that I can relate to.

Exactly what I was thinking. Without making this a huge religous debate, which is kind of like walking on egg shells. One needs no formal introduction or belief in a certain thing to perceive if it is a quality work of art or not. I never knew the Mona Lisa or who she was, but I believe that it is a very good painting.

I think in order to truly appreciate the movie for what it is, or take it for what it did not achieve, one really needs to set aside their personal beliefs and opinions and try to take a non biased look at it. Although, this is purely ideological and can never really happen one can certainly try. One cannot approach a movie and say I hate it, simply because it does not follow their systems of beliefs. Albeit all of us walk into movies with preconcieved notions of what movies can and cannot achieve, we must constantly being trying to apply this nonbiased and more educated approaches, otherwise what is really the point. If one is not willing to study and critically think about the work they are watching, and try to decipher the movie, novel, or whatever it may be, What is really the point of watching or reading it? Isn't the point of humanities and there study to help us learn something about themselves.

Finally, the only people drawing a fuss about this movie are those who are not really willing to seperate themselves from their beliefs ans step back and analyse things, and are counting on humans to not be able to rationally think and analyze things, but who can blaim them. Likewise, I can watch Birth of a Nation and immediately recogize its deeply segrated and racist undertones, and yet it will not sway me, because I am able to realize the how false and inncorrect these notions are.

PS: my whole chain of thought desconstructs on itself, but i really dont care.

[the night watchman]

[The Third M?n]

[The Third M?n]

[The Third M?n]