>And in response to Mel touching people, it's because he chose
>a subject matter that touches a lot of people in real life.
>People cried because they watched an actor play a person that
>they worship as he got beaten and killed.
>
>Violence is always painful, especially when the subject is
>someone you actually care about in real life, so of course
>people cried. That doesn't have much to do with storytelling,
>it has to do with the passionate delivery of subject matter
>that people can relate to.

the folks crying and wailing and falling out in the theater and all that, sure. but it was still a very moving story from a strictly dramatic perspective.


>As I said above, it's a passion project, and on that level, it
>works because the passion touched so many people. But I'm a
>Christian who also happens to be a jaded film viewer, and I
>was left cold by the violence.

A Christian left cold by violence? what are you, a Quaker? LOL


> I wanted to watch Jim Caviezel
>play Jesus, and he didn't get to until the flashbacks about
>2/3rds of the way through the movie.

Jesus is more complex than just the hippie peace & love preacher giving the sermon on the mount though. I mean, the opening scene depicts Christ's agony in Gethsemane - that's not playing Jesus? (and Caviezel played the hell out of that scene btw) What are they teaching you kids in Sunday school these days?



>I thought the last third
>of The Passion was really quite good, but the first 2/3rds
>left me cold and made me wonder exactly why Mel would show so
>much violence and not justify it from a storytelling
>perspective.

he did justify it. he just didn't justify it the way *you* wanted it to be justified. that doesn't invalidate the justification or make it work any less well from a storytelling perspective.


>Those who went to The Passion wanting to understand more about
>Jesus's death got that.

and that's exactly what The Passion set out to do.


>But those who went to The Passion
>wanting to understand more about Jesus as a figure (myself
>included) were left unsatisfied for roughly the first hour of
>the film.

that's your problem. like I said, you wanted this movie to be something it wasn't and was never meant to be.