I finally got a chance to watch the Passion of the Christ on Sunday. I thought it was very well-done for what it was and an interesting take on the story of the Crucifixion (I'm not very religious myself, so I don't know all the details of how the Bible tells it).
I particularly thought the portrayal of Satan as being an androgynous-looking person in a hooded robe with a distorted voice was pretty interesting. I also liked the flashbacks to the past at various points in the movie. They gave Jesus a little bit more of a "ordinary" perspective to contrast with the perspective of him as the Messiah and Son of God.
I'd heard that Gibson wanted to do the movies without subtitles at all and I think it might have been even more effective had it not had subtitles and just relied on the action on-screen to convey what was happening as he intended originally. As it was, I chose to turn the subtitles on so I knew what was happening, given that I'm not that familiar with everything in the story.
The one thing that did bug me a little was that it seemed like slow motion shots got WAY overused at points, in particular the point where the priest throws Judas his 30 pieces of silver. I think it's gotten to the point where slow motion scenes in movies are cliched in general so it took away from the movie a little bit, IMHO.
Of course, I'd heard that the gore was extreme in this movie so I wasn't surprised by the depiction of the scourging or the crucifixion itself. I've got a strong stomach for gore, though the scourging did get a big wince from me, especially when they started using the cat o' nine tails and when they showed the courtyard with the blood spattered everywhere after Jesus was taken away. Yeeeesh.....
While I don't want to get into a big debate about it, I honestly couldn't see how this movie was portrayed as being anti-Semitic, although the populace certainly were shown as crying out for Jesus to be crucified. If this movie took place somewhere else in the world, I think you'd have the same results: the typical mob mentality crying out for blood, without the purported anti-Semitic connotations. ::shrug::
At any rate, I'd have to say that it was a very powerful film. I loved Braveheart and definitely was interested in seeing the Passion when I heard Gibson would be writing and directing. It's nice to see that he made it his way and had the courage to release it despite the controversy over it.
