Chronic Murmuring

Ebert on the Passion

Roger Ebert's review of The Passion is up. He calls it "the most violent movie he has ever seen." Gulp. He also has some very interesting insights about the types of movies the MPAA probably gives NC-17 ratings to.

"I said the film is the most violent I have ever seen. It will probably be the most violent you have ever seen. This is not a criticism but an observation; the film is unsuitable for younger viewers, but works powerfully for those who can endure it. The MPAA's R rating is definitive proof that the organization either will never give the NC-17 rating for violence alone, or was intimidated by the subject matter. If it had been anyone other than Jesus up on that cross, I have a feeling that NC-17 would have been automatic."

But even more interesting than those lines were these:

"I prefer to evaluate a film on the basis of what it intends to do, not on what I think it should have done. It is clear that Mel Gibson wanted to make graphic and inescapable the price that Jesus paid (as Christians believe) when he died for our sins. Anyone raised as a Catholic will be familiar with the stops along the way; the screenplay is inspired not so much by the Gospels as by the 14 Stations of the Cross. As an altar boy, serving during the Stations on Friday nights in Lent, I was encouraged to meditate on Christ's suffering, and I remember the chants as the priest led the way from one station to another:

At the Cross, her station keeping ...

Stood the mournful Mother weeping ...

Close to Jesus to the last.

For we altar boys, this was not necessarily a deep spiritual experience. Christ suffered, Christ died, Christ rose again, we were redeemed, and let's hope we can get home in time to watch the Illinois basketball game on TV. What Gibson has provided for me, for the first time in my life, is a visceral idea of what the Passion consisted of. That his film is superficial in terms of the surrounding message -- that we get only a few passing references to the teachings of Jesus -- is, I suppose, not the point. This is not a sermon or a homily, but a visualization of the central event in the Christian religion. Take it or leave it."

I was telling a couple the other night that for the longest time, one of my darkest secrets was my inability to get much out of the gospel narratives. As far as bible books go, I get far more out of the Psalms or the epistles. I think this has mainly to do with the way in which I tend to approach Scripture - so often it is as an academic, looking to decipher some obtuse idea or as poetry needing interpretation. But the narratives are unique in that I can't always figure out their point. As far as narratives go, they feel so terse. So little detail is shared, and I long to better enter into the psychology of the characters themselves. But, for whatever reason - be it lack of effort, be it the way in which the players are themselves presented, be it sheer failure on my part - I have never really been able to feel the gospel narratives in any deep way. I have in isolated parts, but not the way I do when I read fiction. And I've felt a certain amount of distance from Jesus because I cannot enter into those texts very well. What I told my friends were, right or wrong, I feel like I need something non-textual to help me enter into the story of Jesus. All the controversy around this movie has really been of little importance to me, because I've been looking forward to seeing it in hopes that I could notice Jesus's story. I do think it's surprising - I talk about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ every week, and do so without really understanding graphically that I'm talking about a man that was brutalized, physically. In my mind, and I think in a lot of people's minds, our familiarity with the story is what keeps us at a distant from the story itself. This is partly why I think art is so desperately important in the church. We need artists of various stripes to defamiliarize the familiar in order that we can actually hear the very things we think we understand.

But, I am getting the sense that there's no way possible Paige is going to be able to handle this movie. I showed her a review similar to Ebert's last night, and I think I got my answer when she said, "Maybe we should see Monster instead." So, maybe I will see this one by myself. I actually don't mind that.