As a professional writer, I can’t help but feel skittish about the world class amateur writing appearing so prolifically in Blogs these days. Take this review of Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ for example. None of the reviews I read in the old media come close to the depth and erudition of this one. Don’t stop there. Read the more about all sorts of stuff on The Currency Lad.
I’ve been startled about how few people seem to get The Passion. Traditional Catholicism placed enormous weight in the redemptive power of Christ’s sacrifice.
I remember an interview decades ago with the makers of Superman: The Movie. They made the point that, with The Six Million Dollar Man appearing on TV screens every week, Superman’s exploits had to literally world turning. And so it is with the pain and suffering of Christ. For Gibson’s emphasis on Christ’s suffering to carry any weight, it had to obviously exceed the suffering of characters routinely appearing in modern movies. The heyday of religious movies pre-dated graphic Peckinpahishness, and so could be more restrained while remaining shocking.