Class Reflection – The Passion of the Christ
During class last week, we had watched The Passion of the Christ. This was a film that was released in 2004, and on its release it was hit with a lot of scrutiny and backlash from the public community. What the movie is, a very graphic depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. They play out his whole death towards the end of the film, but without a last act of grace.
Controversy
After The Passion of the Christ was released, it immideatly created controversy. This was due to a couple of different factors. First, dealing with religion, this is a very sensitive topic throughout the world. Doing something wrong could make someone very upset. As my father would say, “you’re skating on thin ice.” Mel Gibson, who was the director of the film worked in classic Mel Gibson fashion, making the graphic scenes extremely graphic and realistic, which is comparable to his other works such as scenes from Hacksaw Ridge(2016) & Braveheart(1995). This created controversy because this was one of the first films that showed the death of Christ in a graphic form such as Gibson did. To think, all the other films we watched in class, all of the scenes were completely different. Other controversies were that the audience believed that film had lurid violence in it. Film critic Roger Ebert states, “the most violent film I have ever seen–“. Which, I agree. The blood shown and with the graphic scenes displayed throughout, you can understand why the Gibson film was criticized on release in 2004.
Historical InaccuraciesÂ
Another issue that was found during the film was the prominent issue of historical inaccuracies. The film was depicting the last couple days Jesus Christ had on Earth to live, you would think that they would try and make them accurate to what the Bible says. but you would be wrong. The movie was criticized for having an inaccurate depiction of the last couple days, and they basically got almost everything wrong with the crucifixion scene, which outraged many viewers. Other details that were done wrong were the outfits that the characters wore, which is a simple touch, and minor fix, but when done wrong can create a big issue within your film. Lastly, was the painting of the Jewish characters within the film.