Because the movie is now over 12 years old, there's bound to be at least some people here who were taken to see this film when they were little. In which case I do have a couple of questions.
How old were you at the time? Did you consider yourself a person of faith back then? Would you consider yourself more or less religious now? How did the movie affect you in the short and long term?
That's a great question and I hope it's answered before the boards disappear.
I saw it as an adult, but noticed what to me was a surprising number of kids in the audience, munching away on their concession stand treats...
It came out when I was 14 so of course I didn't see it in theaters. I had some questions when I first saw it but watched it a few more times to truly understand it once I did research. It is a profoundly inspiring film and I've had the DVD since. I was and still am agnostic but I absolutely praise the lessons of forgiveness, faith and love.
shareI saw it a long time ago and i am a muslim but this movie shivers me still. I have it in my collection and whenever i see the name, i don't find nerves to see it again. You really need to have titanium nerves and heart to see it all through while keeping in mind that it is one of those incidents in history where humanity fell to the deepest pits and what a man did to a man, a prophet apart. What a human did to a human where you lose words and become numb how to describe it. Your brain loses the power to speak when you want to express something about it.
I read somewhere on an article, that if Mel Gibson never did something good in life, he surely made a masterpiece.
I saw this film when I was 10 with my mom. We went late at night after hearing all the hype. We arent christians but had seen jesus of nazereth tv series. The violence wasnt that bad but it felt realistic. Great movie but antisemitic.
shareWhy is it antisemitic? Jesus, his Mother, the apostles and disciples are all semites. Are you against His torture, hence antisemitic?
But do you think Americans portrayed badly or as victims is anti American as well? Is true lies anti American and Muslim? What about the film the Harry Potter? Anti English? Die hard? Anti Japanese, American, and German?
So how do you depict anything in stories if there is no tension, suffering, or pain if it's all antisemitic to you?
Passion plays were a well known thing in Europe, the Catholic Church often used them to demonize Jewish people for being the ones that called for the death of Jesus.
shareThat may be true, but it has little to do with whether this movie or the story itself is antisemetic.
shareThey did portray the Jewish in a negative light and calling it ‘the passion’ knowing the historical implications.
shareThe story has been "the passion" long before and after the story was misused for that purpose. Calling a movie antisemetic for that reason is really grasping at straws.
If anything, the only criticism I can kind of see is that the evil Jews could be seen as having a more stereotypical portrayal. I personally see it as Gibson's decision, as he did in many other aspects of the movie, to model his look after popular art rather than historical fact. But that's one argument I can at least see having some sort of merit.