Partly that's because you come into this movie knowing more or less what to expect. This is Jesus, and this was what he came for. After all, he's God made flesh- he can take it.
What was harder to watch for me was the anguish of the people around him, particularly his mother. The images of helpless mother Mary at the foot of the cross with her son's blood on her face made the roughest, most anguished viewing of the whole show.
The sincerity of the film maker's belief radiates from the screen in a palpable manner. The film glows from the sincerity. Whatever your own religious beliefs, you can feel the intensity of a nearly crazed prophetic vision that this was how it was.
The Passion of the Christ comes out like a druggie vision, without the compromising self-consciousness. At the risk of appearing flippant or disrespectful- which is absolutely not my intent- there is a fascinatingly
hallucinatory effect about the whole thing. People sometimes take hallucinatory
drugs, and come up with images and connections and visionary dreams. They are usually limited, however, but their self-consciousness- they KNOW they're high and making stuff up.
Gibson et al, on the other hand, have imagined this fantasia into existence without the compromising doubts of self-consciousness. He didn't know he was high, so to speak. He has said things in interviews like that he didn't feel like he was doing things, but the spirit moving through him. This kind of talk is common among deeply religious people, but Mel Gibson has a much greater creative skill than average in concretizing the vision in a physical medium that we can all experience.
Critic types often speak of wanting non-commercial films that reflect a personal vision. Gibson has certainly given us that here. There's not a note of anything "crowd pleasing" about this. That it has found a huge audience in this case stands as a testament to the depth of Gibson's personal vision, and his great skill in getting it on the screen.
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