TWO scathing reviews of Passion in one issue of Boston Herald (GOP rag)

The movie critic in the movie section, and a regular columnist
with a full-page color spread on Page 3 (usually reserved for
babes - it is a GOP tabloid rag, after all).

Anyway, they hate it with a capital H.

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Here is the movie critics piece, which is accessible for free at:

http://theedge.bostonherald.com/movieReviews/edgeMovies.bg?articleid=262


Pulp scripture: Gruesome violence eclipses message of Gibson's `Christ'
Review by James Verniere
Tuesday, February 24, 2004


I've never before reviewed a film reportedly directed by the Holy Spirit and given a thumbs-up by both the Pope and Roger Ebert. But there's a first time for everything. Mel Gibson's ``The Passion of the Christ'' - the subject of months of controversy and debate - is the gospel according to Mad Max.

      Remarkably brutal and often stomach-churning, it is easily one of the most violent films I have ever seen, a full-length version of the torture sequence in ``Braveheart.'' If it had been about any other subject, it would have been rated NC-17.

      As most Christians know, the apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have amazingly little to say about the specifics of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the Bible. ``The Passion'' is derived in large part from the Passion plays performed for more than 300 years in Europe, which have a troubling legacy of anti-Semitism. The film also has roots in ``The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ,'' a minutely detailed, violent 1833 account of the torture and murder of Jesus based on visions of 19th-century German Catholic nun Anne Catherine Emmerich, who is known to have also been an anti-Semite. ``The Passion of the Christ'' is not an anti-Semitic film, but anti-Semites are likely to feel justified by it.

<end snip>

This guy lays it out, as does the other columnist.

arendt

:hi:

Margery Eagan's review is on page 3 of the same and is even more...brutal.

It would seem to be laughable to proclaim that

1) a two hour exercise in sado-masochism is good for children

AND

2) gay marriage is so bad it must be banned Constitutionally.

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I think Mel's movie is going to be thrown overboard to save the
Constitutional fight from immediate collapse.

I think the ammendment:

1) has no chance of getting 2/3 in the Senate.
2) is patentently political, and is already being assailed as such
3) is not a clear win for Bush, because if it loses WITHOUT him
going to the mat for it, he looks AWOL all over again - this time
in a war he himself started.

Anyway, perhaps we are seeing the final massive overreaching
of these looney tunes.

arendt

I think your namesake would have had a thing or two to say about Mel's Melodramatic Melee Messiah mishmash. Suffice it to say that it apparently fits the American conservative Christian notion of Jesus of Nazareth, wherein a Semitic society magically lives by northern European physicalist pagan religious doctrinal conceptions for thirtysome years. And then reverts to being a desert's edge Semitic society with a psychologically centered cultural doctrine of the kind that the former kind of people find unbearably difficult to understand or operate in.

I figure it will go the way of Scorsese's make of Kazantzakis's "The Final Temptation of Christ"- great hullaballoo, then rapid disappearance. (Though the Peter Gabriel instrumental soundtrack of that movie was called "Passion" and is quite beautiful. And maybe captured more of wonder than the movie did.)

In my opinion the FMA is probably not even going to make it through the House of Representatives. Not that Bush really cares, of course, as long as Democrats are sufficiently to blame. Personally, I'm quite sure that the whole gay marriage issue will be over- finished as a politically exploitable instrument- by the middle or end of this summer.

"...The subject of this film, despite its title, is not the Passion of the Christ, but the sick love of physical abuse, engaged in for power."
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"Gibson is so thoroughly fixated on the scourging and crushing of Christ, and so meagrely involved in the spiritual meanings of the final hours, that he falls in danger of altering Jesus’ message of love into one of hate."
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"People that are obsessed with the gory death of Christ completely miss his message IMHO."
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