Post by dipsydoodle on Dec 15, 2008 23:28:48 GMT -5
I just watched it on DVD. A coworker lent it to me saying he finds it beautiful and uplifting. This is about as beautiful and uplifting as "American Psycho." Actually, I liked "American Psycho" because it was actually lampooning yuppies and Wall Street. "The Passion" has no such redeeming value. It's strictly gratuitous violence and brutality--with blood, lots and lots and lots and lots of blood.
"The Passion of Christ" is bloody violence virtually nonstop. In fact, if you read "American Psycho" the novel, you'll know that the movie cuts out all the sick, depraved torture, vivisection, dismemberment and cannibalism in the book. The reason is that no one could possibly make the book into a movie in a straight one-for-one blow-by-blow account because it would be too excruciating and unbearable to watch.
Brett Easton Ellis, the author, creates a Patrick Bateman that is so out of control and over the top that any attempt to depict the way Ellis created him would be impossible--no one could watch it. He pins women to the floor with a nailgun, uses an electric drill to remove their teeth and gums, cuts off a woman's arm with a power saw and then beats the woman in the face with it until her face caves in. He ties up another woman, removes her scalp and cuts open her skull while she is conscious and eats her brain--smearing Grey Poupon on it as he greedily chews it and swallows it all the while filming it with his video camera to show to a future victim before killing her. He shoves a starving rat into another woman's vagina and then when he gets bored watching her freak out, he cuts her in two with a chainsaw so fast that he has time to hold her severed lower half up to her face so she can see it before she dies. He ties up a woman and thoroughly mutilates her breasts with a pair of pliers and describes her insane agony with relish. He kills a little boy at a zoo for no reason than to see if killing a child has more thrill than killing an adult but decides afterward that it doesn't. He slits the throat of a Chinese delivery boy because he decides he hasn't killed an Asian for a while and it was time again. He pulls out a woman's intestines and shoves then into his mouth and describes the taste and texture as well as the "dark paste which smells bad" that he finds inside the intestines. He shoots a street musician between the eyes just to see the look of shock on his face as he dies. He's disgusting. So when they made the movie--none of that is shown. There's blood but no gore and no torture. They retain the dark humor of the book and imply the violence more than they show it.
Not so "The Passion of the Christ." They show you every little thing in excruciating detail. If "American Psycho" depicted this kind of violence, it would have been called sick, disgusting trash and they'd be right. Jesus is tortured in ways here that are never described in the gospels. He's whipped with a cat o' nine tail made of chains with little spikes on the end which bury themselves in Jesus' flesh so deeply that the torturer has to rip it loose in order to free it. You hear tearing flesh and gurgling blood very loudly. Jesus is beaten savagely on his legs and thighs with wooden rods--you hear the wind whooshing past them as they are swung through the air to land with sickening smacks and thuds on Jesus' defenseless body while he writhes and moans in helpless agony. And there's THREE guys beating him this way simultaneously! Earlier when he was first arrested, people take turns slugging him in the face!! This tag team of torturers lay one horrible torture after another that would have killed him had any such thing really happened and you get to hear bones snapping, flesh tearing, blood spattering very up close and personal--nothing left to the imagination.
Then Jesus--lacerated from head to foot and covered with blood--is marched off to Golgotha when nails are pounded into his body causing great gouts of blood to spurt all over the place. Then as Christ hangs on the cross, a centurion stabs him and is drenched in a high pressure shower of blood spurting from the wound. When Mary kisses him as his lowered from the cross, her face is smeared with his blood. Jesus' face is shown with a crushed nose, split lips, swollen eye, his arms and shoulders criss-crossed with bloody whip marks and welts.
Why is the depraved brutality and torture that would have condemmed "American Psycho" as a movie not only OK in a movie about Jesus but is actually called "beautiful and uplifting"
? Isn't that a bit of a double standard? Isn't that glorifying gratuitous violence in movies? Can you imagine an audience of Buddhists munching popcorn in a movie theatre while watching a movie about the life of Buddha that shows a bunch of guys kicking the living s*** out of him?
What is literally wrong with this picture??
"The Passion of Christ" is bloody violence virtually nonstop. In fact, if you read "American Psycho" the novel, you'll know that the movie cuts out all the sick, depraved torture, vivisection, dismemberment and cannibalism in the book. The reason is that no one could possibly make the book into a movie in a straight one-for-one blow-by-blow account because it would be too excruciating and unbearable to watch.
Brett Easton Ellis, the author, creates a Patrick Bateman that is so out of control and over the top that any attempt to depict the way Ellis created him would be impossible--no one could watch it. He pins women to the floor with a nailgun, uses an electric drill to remove their teeth and gums, cuts off a woman's arm with a power saw and then beats the woman in the face with it until her face caves in. He ties up another woman, removes her scalp and cuts open her skull while she is conscious and eats her brain--smearing Grey Poupon on it as he greedily chews it and swallows it all the while filming it with his video camera to show to a future victim before killing her. He shoves a starving rat into another woman's vagina and then when he gets bored watching her freak out, he cuts her in two with a chainsaw so fast that he has time to hold her severed lower half up to her face so she can see it before she dies. He ties up a woman and thoroughly mutilates her breasts with a pair of pliers and describes her insane agony with relish. He kills a little boy at a zoo for no reason than to see if killing a child has more thrill than killing an adult but decides afterward that it doesn't. He slits the throat of a Chinese delivery boy because he decides he hasn't killed an Asian for a while and it was time again. He pulls out a woman's intestines and shoves then into his mouth and describes the taste and texture as well as the "dark paste which smells bad" that he finds inside the intestines. He shoots a street musician between the eyes just to see the look of shock on his face as he dies. He's disgusting. So when they made the movie--none of that is shown. There's blood but no gore and no torture. They retain the dark humor of the book and imply the violence more than they show it.
Not so "The Passion of the Christ." They show you every little thing in excruciating detail. If "American Psycho" depicted this kind of violence, it would have been called sick, disgusting trash and they'd be right. Jesus is tortured in ways here that are never described in the gospels. He's whipped with a cat o' nine tail made of chains with little spikes on the end which bury themselves in Jesus' flesh so deeply that the torturer has to rip it loose in order to free it. You hear tearing flesh and gurgling blood very loudly. Jesus is beaten savagely on his legs and thighs with wooden rods--you hear the wind whooshing past them as they are swung through the air to land with sickening smacks and thuds on Jesus' defenseless body while he writhes and moans in helpless agony. And there's THREE guys beating him this way simultaneously! Earlier when he was first arrested, people take turns slugging him in the face!! This tag team of torturers lay one horrible torture after another that would have killed him had any such thing really happened and you get to hear bones snapping, flesh tearing, blood spattering very up close and personal--nothing left to the imagination.
Then Jesus--lacerated from head to foot and covered with blood--is marched off to Golgotha when nails are pounded into his body causing great gouts of blood to spurt all over the place. Then as Christ hangs on the cross, a centurion stabs him and is drenched in a high pressure shower of blood spurting from the wound. When Mary kisses him as his lowered from the cross, her face is smeared with his blood. Jesus' face is shown with a crushed nose, split lips, swollen eye, his arms and shoulders criss-crossed with bloody whip marks and welts.
Why is the depraved brutality and torture that would have condemmed "American Psycho" as a movie not only OK in a movie about Jesus but is actually called "beautiful and uplifting"
? Isn't that a bit of a double standard? Isn't that glorifying gratuitous violence in movies? Can you imagine an audience of Buddhists munching popcorn in a movie theatre while watching a movie about the life of Buddha that shows a bunch of guys kicking the living s*** out of him?What is literally wrong with this picture??
