The Passion of the Christ (sometimes referred to as The Passion) is a 2004 American drama film directed by Mel Gibson and starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ. It depicts the Passion of Jesus largely according to the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. It also draws on pious accounts such as the Friday of Sorrows along with other devotional writings, such as those attributed to Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich. The film covers primarily the final 12 hours of Jesus life, beginning with the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemani, the grief of the Virgin Mary, and ending with a brief depiction of His resurrection. Flashbacks of Jesus as a child and as a young man with Mary his mother, giving the Sermon on the Mount, teaching the Twelve Apostles, and at the Last Supper are some of the images depicted. The dialogue is entirely in reconstructed Aramaic and Latin with vernacular subtitles. Certain elements of The Passion of the Christ do not have precedent in earlier depictions of the Passion. In the Garden of Gethsemane scene at the beginning of the movie, Satan appears and attempts to distract Jesus while he is praying. Jesus then crushes a serpent beneath his heel (this is a reference to the protoevangelium, Genesis 3:15 – a prophecy of Messiah); this does not occur in any of the gospels. In another example, Judas Iscariot is tormented by demons who appear as children to him. The film gives focus to the fragile relationship of Tiberius Caesar with Pontius Pilate through Pilates discussion with his wife about imperial orders to avert further Judean revolts. The movie clearly identifies Simon of Cyrene as Jewish, although the Synoptic Gospels provide only his name and place of origin. In the film, a Roman soldier derides Simon (who helps Jesus bear the cross) by derisively calling him Jew. In contrast, Simon is described as a pagan in The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Other scenes unique to The Passion of the Christ include the one in which the crucified thief who taunted Jesus has his eye pecked out by a crow, and the flashback of the carpenter Jesus building an elevated, four-legged table for a Roman. The scene of Satan carrying a demonic baby during Christs flogging has been construed as a perversion of traditional depictions of the Madonna and Child. Mel Gibson described this scene as follows: its evil distorting whats good. What is more tender and beautiful than a mother and a child? So the Devil takes that and distorts it just a little bit. Instead of a normal mother and child you have an androgynous figure holding a 40-year-old baby with hair on his back. It is weird, it is shocking, its almost too much – just like turning Jesus over to continue scourging him on his chest is shocking and almost too much, which is the exact moment when this appearance of the Devil and the baby takes place. The script was written in English by Gibson and Benedict Fitzgerald, then translated by William Fulco, S.J., a professor at Loyola Marymount University, into Latin, reconstructed Aramaic and Hebrew. Gibson chose to use Latin instead of Greek, which was the lingua franca of that particular part of the Roman Empire at the time, so that the audience could easily distinguish between the sound of Italianate Latin and Semitic Aramaic. https://youtube/watch?v=rbFGEWmAK8A
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 08:52:09 +0000
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