Peter M Howard ::

The Passion Part I

22Apr2004 [myth]

Finally got around to seeing The Passion, I've been waiting for the right moment, then one afternoon just got up and went and saw it. More to come soon, but a few comments:

Some things I found surprisingly artistic, others were terrible! (The bits that really got to me were all the people in the background laughing - really ugly exaggerated expressions - I understand why it was done but in something striving for realism it was ridiculous!)

The violence was ... interesting - I still think it was overly violent, emphasising the wrong elements of Christ, but that was a problem with the whole premise of the movie.

But anyway, given the way the media was talking about the violence, I was expecting one of those movies which were mostly intense violence with little moments of respite. I found instead that the violence was so like any other gratuitously-violent movie that it meant almost nothing, and instead acted as a respite from the really powerful moments - ie, almost all the scenes that weren't violent. All the scenes with Mary, the scenes in Gethsemane, Pontius and Claudia. I loved the scene where Claudia came to the two Mary's, who then mopped up Christ's Holy Blood. But there was a little too much Holy Blood in much of the movie.

And just an interesting little aside: the Merovingians were a line of kings in France in the early Middle Ages who claimed to be descended from Christ and Mary Magdalene. Strange then that the same actress plays Magdalene as Persephone, the Merovingian's partner in the Matrix 2 and 3!

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