Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
I don't recall that it takes $18 of malt liquor to get him wasted, but I would be in favor of additional field research.
|
Accept.
As for the New Yorker review, I think it's a Protestant/Catholic thing. Retro-Catholics like Gibson are disposed to think that the modern Protestant mind has overly santized the Passion story, so it seemed like Jesus floated through (or, rather, above) the grime and pain and misery of daily life, like some beatified ghost untouched by his surroundings. This particular version of the Passion story is designed to remind us that life in the first century Empire was nasty, brutish, and short, and that is the life that Jesus was born into. Frankly, I think it's an excellent (though subtle) reminder to Protestant wingnuts that the purpose of Jesus's birth was not to fix the date in history when God was most active and life was most perfect. In a sense, that's anti-fundamentalist while being fully retro-Catholic. (Not that they're going to give up on the gay marriage thing, but still.)
That said, I was filled with rage by the depiction of first century Jewish men with long hair. Oh, and the scene in the previews in which Pilate's wife gives some linens to Mary. Yeah, that's true to the Bible, or history, whichever. Total fucking pandering to folk traditions and the modern mind and a sell-out from the supposedly Titanic-like efforts for Biblical realism. Don't even get me started about how wrong the crucifixion scene was --- too tall, wrong design, nails in the wrong place. There's pretty good evidence of what Roman executions were like, and this is dead dead DEAD wrong. Ah, well.
