Frank Longo Member since Nov 18th 2003 86672 posts
Tue Mar-20-07 02:09 PM
22. "I'm not being snarky, I'm engaging you in discussion here, lol" In response to In response to 16
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.
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. 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. 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.
Those who went to The Passion wanting to understand more about Jesus's death got that. 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.