Will rightfully be considered a landmark achievement not only for the passionate responses it is causing but because Gibson was able to give one of the oldest and best-known stories in literature such contemporary resonance and power.
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:259
Fresh:129
Rotten:130
Average Rating:5.9/10
Consensus: The graphic details of Jesus' torture make the movie tough to sit through and obscure whatever message it is trying to convey.
Theatrical Release:Feb 25, 2004 Wide
Box Office: $370,203,632
Synopsis: The Passion of The Christ is a film about the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life. The film opens in the Garden of Olives (Gethsemane) where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper.... The Passion of The Christ is a film about the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life. The film opens in the Garden of Olives (Gethsemane) where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper. Jesus resists Satan's temptations. Betrayed by Judas Iscariot, Jesus is arrested and taken back to within the city walls of Jerusalem where the leaders of the Pharisees confront him with accusations of blasphemy and his results in a condemnations of death. Jesus is brought before Pilate, the Roman Governor of Palestine, who listens to the accusations leveled at him by the Pharisees. Realizing he is confronting a political conflict, Pilate defers to King Herod in the matter. Herod returns Jesus to Pilate who gives the crowd a choice between Jesus and the criminal Barabbas. The crowd chooses to have Barabbas set free and to condemn Jesus. Jesus is handed over to the Roman soldiers and flagellated. Unrecognizable now, he is brought back before Pilate, who presents him to the crowd as if to say "is this not enough?" It is not. Pilate washes his hands of the entire dilemma, ordering his men to do as the crowd wishes. Jesus is presented with the cross and is ordered to carry it through the streets of Jerusalem all the way up to Golgotha. On Golgotha, Jesus is nailed to the cross and undergoes his last temptation -- the fear that he has been abandoned by his Father. He overcomes his fear, looks at Mary, his Holy Mother, and makes the pronouncement which only she can fully understand, "it is accomplished." He then dies: "into Thy hands I commend my Spirit." At the moment of his death, nature itself overturns. -- © Newmarket Films [More]
Starring: James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci, Mattia Sbragia
Starring: James Caviezel, Maia Morgenstern, Monica Bellucci, Mattia Sbragia, Claudia Gerini, Luca Lionello, Hristo Shopov
Director: Mel Gibson
Director: Mel Gibson
Screenwriter: Mel Gibson, Benedict Fitzgerald
Producer: Bruce Davey, Stephen McEveety
Composer: John Debney
Studio: Newmarket Films
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Release:
Feb 17, 2009
Reviews for The Passion of the Christ
One thing is certain: Gibson has delivered a film so visceral, so unwavering in his commitment, that it makes most other Jesus movies look pale and tepid.
One of the things that happens while you watch a man slowly beaten to death is that the fact of his life is reinforced. This happened, Gibson is saying.
In expressing his own blend of masochism and piety, Mel Gibson may well have created a Jesus uniquely apt for our time: bloodied, tormented, alienated and alone.
Gibson has made an extraordinary, focused movie with blinders on, showing mostly one color -- blood-red -- from the full Christian spectrum.
Working with premier cinematographer Caleb Deschanel, Gibson effectively hurls us into Christ's living nightmare, creating a mesmerizing twilight zone that is creepy and utterly unforgettable.
Jesus Christ is remote, a Superman among men, and his teardrops shake the earth.
A labor of conviction that comes remarkably close to faith-based sadism.
Instead of letting his reverence broaden him, Gibson uses his action-movie expertise to reduce the Crucifixion to something kinetic, literal and merely tragic.
The extreme violence does not teach a lesson; it's an end in itself, more suited to the S&M crowd than to anyone seeking an uplifting sermon on everlasting redemption.
Gibson ultimately seems to be preaching to the choir, rejecting standard storytelling conventions such as introducing his characters, assuming his audience already knows everything he's about to tell us.
You may not believe in the events that transpire in The Passion of the Christ, but it's hard to deny the grim potency with which they've been captured.
What graphic sex is to the use of the body in hardcore porno, graphic violence is to destruction of the body of Christ in this Passion.
Never dull -- no mean feat, given that it spends two hours telling a story whose end is widely known -- and features performances that range from coarsely effective to phenomenal.
May have succeeded in exploiting Jesus's death for its most highly pitched emotion and drama. But in the process, for many believers, it may have served only to trivialize and further obscure the story's most central and sacred mysteries.
As it plays out, the brutality brings about more numbing revulsion than the revelatory empathy that Mel Gibson intends.
Gibson places his faith in Christ's suffering, and is determined to make the moviegoer suffer in Jesus' name as well.
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