Feb 28th, 2004, 11:21 PM
Ugh. I'm glad I didn't bring a hot date.
Massive spoilers.
Let's start with the positives so I can really hammer home the criticisms. The cinematography was good, the score was effective and appropriate, and the acting was satisfactory. I definitely appreciated the use of ancient languages and the attention to period details (I don't know exactly how accurate the setting was, but it *looked* it without exception). I liked the portrayal of Pontius Pilate, and I liked Satan (except for that short clip at the end and the scene with the ugly baby, which didn't make any sense to me). The resurrection scene was done about as well as I could have imagined.
Now..
I thought Judas being haunted by demons was dumb. I would have liked to see a few more flashbacks.
And the brutality was fucking idiotic.
The man should have been dead of shock or blood loss well before he even started carrying that cross. He should have been unconscious from pain after or in the middle of the first beating. He should have had terrible difficulty walking after being dragged out of the woods and beaten all the way into the city, and should have had broken bones somewhere along the line there.
And for fuck's sake, you don't whip a guy with a scourge EIGHTY TIMES and witness him breathing afterward. Two or three strokes in the same spot on the torso should expose bones, maybe a couple more in meatier spots like the arms. A dozen shots to the midsection and they would have gone right through him and his guts would be on the ground. They hit him in the face at least a couple of times - he should have been blinded and his nose and lips ripped up. A shot near the wrist or neck and they would have opened arteries and on the unlikely chance that hundreds of gouges everywhere else didn't make him bleed to death, that would. Lastly, as I said, he would have been unconscious from pain a long, long, long, time before they finished. And don't tell me the guys were really good at their jobs so they kept him alive and awake. There is no way they could have done that much damage to a conscious victim just by choosing their shots carefully. Dead.
AND THEY MAKE HIM WALK AFTER HE'S BASICALLY DEAD TEN TIMES OVER. On the very slim chance that he didn't have too many broken bones already to even support himself, there's no way he would have been able to stand up, much less drag a big piece of wood around, after that much pain and blood loss.
The point? I don't care about the gore, but the violence itself was overdone so badly that the experience skipped emotional and went straight to absolutely disgusting. I understand the point that they were trying to make and I know that the Gospels explained how much Jesus suffered and how important that suffering was supposed to be. But the film took it way, way, beyond reasonable levels and beat the premise into the ground so hard that it was difficult to recognize afterward. I hated the movie with a Passion.
P.S..Did anyone else notice that no dust or sand ever, ever gets in Jesus's wounds? Aside from his face, he's fresh and pink the whole way through. How much sense does that make?
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- Was there someone at the Winterpeg outpost's theatre handing out tissues as well?
My Wiener Touches the Ceiling (now available on iTunes)
Those were great.
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