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The Passion of the Christ (Spanish Subtitles) | 
 enlarge | Director: Mel Gibson
Actors: James Caviezel, Monica Bellucci, Maia Morgenstern, Christo Jivkov, Francesco De Vito
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Category: Video
List Price: $14.98
Buy New: $14.23
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Rating:  2000 reviews
Sales Rank: 17067
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: Hebrew (Original Language), Latin (Original Language)
Rating: Unrated
Media: VHS Tape
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 127
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 4.2 x 1.1
UPC: 024543140412
EAN: 0024543133551
ASIN: B00028HBLG
Theatrical Release Date: February 25, 2004
Release Date: August 31, 2004
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 2 to 3 weeks
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Amazon.com
After all the controversy and rigorous debate has subsided, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ will remain a force to be reckoned with. In the final analysis, "Gibson's Folly" is an act of personal bravery and commitment on the part of its director, who self-financed this $25-30 million production to preserve his artistic goal of creating the Passion of Christ ("Passion" in this context meaning "suffering") as a quite literal, in-your-face interpretation of the final 12 hours in the life of Jesus, scripted almost directly from the gospels (and spoken in Aramaic and Latin with a relative minimum of subtitles) and presented as a relentless, 126-minute ordeal of torture and crucifixion. For Christians and non-Christians alike, this film does not "entertain," and it's not a film that one can "like" or "dislike" in any conventional sense. (It is also emphatically not a film for children or the weak of heart.) Rather, The Passion is a cinematic experience that serves an almost singular purpose: to show the scourging and death of Jesus Christ in such horrifically graphic detail (with Gibson's own hand pounding the nails in the cross) that even non-believers may feel a twinge of sorrow and culpability in witnessing the final moments of the Son of God, played by Jim Caviezel in a performance that's not so much acting as a willful act of submission, so intense that some will weep not only for Christ, but for Caviezel's unparalleled test of endurance. Leave it to the intelligentsia to debate the film's alleged anti-Semitic slant; if one judges what is on the screen (so gloriously served by John Debney's score and Caleb Deschanel's cinematography), there is fuel for debate but no obvious malice aforethought; the Jews under Caiaphas are just as guilty as the barbaric Romans who carry out the execution, especially after Gibson excised (from the subtitles, if not the soundtrack) the film's most controversial line of dialogue. If one accepts that Gibson's intentions are sincere, The Passion can be accepted for what it is: a grueling, straightforward (some might say unimaginative) and extremely violent depiction of the Passion, guaranteed to render devout Christians speechless while it intensifies their faith. Non-believers are likely to take a more dispassionate view, and some may resort to ridicule. But one thing remains undebatable: with The Passion of the Christ, Gibson put his money where his mouth is. You can praise or damn him all you want, but you've got to admire his chutzpah. --Jeff Shannon
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1995 more reviews...
 Fantastic movie January 7, 2009
The Passion of the Christ (2004) is a great movie by Mel Gibson. He personally contributed close to 40 million dollars for this film. It depicts the final twelve hours of Jesus' life. It's a movie with a two hour ordeal of Jesus' torture. It is a must see.
If you're so inclined, I found this beautiful new book about Jesus, faith, God and what we will do in the after-life entitled "The Enlightenment, What God Told Me After One Million Prayers: A Message for Everyone" by John H. Eagan. I just finished it. It's really great and deals with God, the creator, Jesus' teachings, and His Passion to the last detail. It brought me to tears. I think you will really enjoy The Enlightenment
NICE SALE December 20, 2008
I WANTED THIS MOVIE FOR XMAS, BUT WAS A LITTLE SHORT ON CASH.
THE QUALITY OF THE DVD WAS EXCELLENT ,AND THE PRICE WAS EXTREMELY
INVITING.
The passion of the Christ on blu ray December 19, 2008
I have remarked to my father several times that this movie should be on Blu-ray. I am elated that this film is finally in high definition. This movie is one of the most technically stunning films I have ever seen. The passion is perfect for Blu-ray, this is a must own for people who like Blu-ray, Christians, and film buffs.
What's the Beef with the Passion? December 19, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
[Whether you like the film will depend on multiple factors that should be covered by the 2000-some reviews below. On this Blu-Ray release, you will hate it or love it in the finest video quality possible -- a marked improvement over the DVD.]
A film has managed to spark thought--or gut reactions, at any rate--among Americans of all ilks like few before. Everyone in the media and intelligentsia, movie reviewer or not, feels obliged to give us his or her impressions. And the impressions they got! Fascistic, sadist, virulently anti-Semitic, a sickening death-trip, pornographic, soul-deadening, relentless savagery, etc., are the labels attached. What sounds like the unholy lovechild of Jud Suess and The Silence of the Lambs is, of course, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.
By now everyone is talking about this "religious splatter art film" (Richard Corliss, Time), "the Gospel according to the Marquis de Sade" (David Ansen, Newsweek), this "repulsive masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film" (Leon Wieseltier, New Republic). The attack comes from every imaginable angle, and by the time you get done reading all the reviews about it, you may even understand Mel Gibson's oddly paranoid behavior when talking about the film, seeing conspiracies everywhere. When I finally saw the film, after over a year of hoopla surrounding it, its director, and the director's father, I found it to be a wholly unremarkable film. It is a frank, albeit very graphic, depiction of the 14 Stations of the Cross and the seven last words of Christ on the cross. Why the outrage?
Anti-Semitism.
The most obvious accusation leveled against The Passion is that of anti-Semitism. Christopher Hitchens finds The Passion to be anti-Semitic in intention and its director even anti-Semitic by nature! Leaving aside little details such as the difference between anti-Semitism (a rather modern concept twist on an old theme) and the "more traditional" anti-Judaism that has been the scourge burden of the Jewish people for millennia, this points to one of the biggest problems of The Passion, Mel Gibson. Characterized by Hitchens as a coward, bully, bigmouth, and queer-basher, Gibson is probably the cause of much of this ire. Had the same film been made by Bernardo Bertolucci (not to say that it's Bertolucci's style to make such films), the reaction might have been one of surprise and perhaps slight concern, but hardly this kind of vitriolic lashing out that started even before the New York Times Magazine ran a lengthy article on Mel Gibson's highly controversial father a year ago.
As a German atheist, I find the idea of salvation by the cross to be one of the most pervasive lies and/or misunderstandings in the history of modern man. To anti-Semitism and Holocaust deniers I react no less sensitively than Abe Foxman. But what has Mel Gibson's disturbing father got do with The Passion? Or, for that matter, must we see this film through the mind of Mel Gibson's rather orthodox Catholicism that includes the rejection of Vatican II, one of the few things that I find positive about the Catholic Church?
I came away with a very different picture of The Passion than Hitchens, Krauthammer, Sullivan, and Co. The depiction of the Passion has some inherent difficulties, Gibson or not, and even the Gospel itself can be a divisive issue. But is this really what springs to mind when seeing the film? I find it hard to believe that people would leave the theater any more anti-Semitic than they had or had not been before seeing this film. As Christopher Hitchens points out in his article ("Schlock, Yes; Awe, No; Fascism, Probably," in Slate), an inscription of the Lovingway United Pentecostal Church in Denver that read "Jews Killed the Lord Jesus" was posted before the movie even opened. Such despicable attitudes are present in the murky waters of some unfortunate people's brains, but The Passion does not cause them. And if the film were to elicit such a public show of disgrace, the reaction of the public should rein it in. We need not attribute the word fascism to the film to that end.
The polarizing figure of Gibson aside, the fact that Gibson would not allow critics to see the film ahead of its opening provoked the ire of many journalists, who were consequently hurt in their professional egos (The Nation's Stuart Klawans all but admits so much). Beyond that, is the actual film anti-Semitic? I don't think it is. While it would be disingenuous and stupid to claim that the film can't be anti-Semitic because Jesus and his followers were Jews themselves, the film does not visibly go out of its way to portray Jews per se as particularly malevolent. There are characters who are portrayed with all of Hollywood's skills available as evil and vengeful and many of them happen to be Jews, but that alone does not make this picture anti-Semitic.
In "Mel Gibson's blood libel" (in the Washington Post) Charles Krauthammer is right to point out the history of interpretation of the Passion, that it is one including utmost horror and thus cannot be considered in splendid isolation. For many Christians and non-Christians, Vatican II is the "disclaimer" of sorts for the story of the Passion. Mel Gibson's rejection of Vatican II, for whatever reason (there might be other ones involved than his desire to attribute the death of Jesus to the Jews for all eternity) is unfortunate in this light, but The Passion itself does not come with a disclaimer one way or the other. The context we give the Passion is that which we provide ourselves. That is the reason why it is important to know history and the Bible well when seeing this movie. Everyone who doesn't will fail to understand the film altogether.
Gibson's "singular act of interreligious aggression" can't be whitewashed with the "Leni Riefenstahl defense" (all Krauthammer) of having had other intensions? Oh, boy . . . the crux is that Krauthammer thinks it is impossible to have an artistic vision and not impose one's personal interpretation at the same time. This is a problem that many, Christian and non-Christian, viewers or non-viewers alike have mentioned to me: "We don't want Mel Gibson's version of the Passion stuck in our head." To the degree that the four Gospels, told as one, lend themselves to interpretation, one of the single most positive surprises to me was the fact that in telling the story Gibson succeeds remarkably in making it a very matter-of-fact account of the 14 stations. Why ten minutes of sadistic flogging and not "zero, as in Luke?" I suppose that's the focus on the suffering, more of which later. But it is hardly to drill home the point about what bastards the Jews were--or the Romans, who do all the flogging.
Retelling or Propaganda?
When I mentioned that I found the film rather unremarkable, I meant mostly that the story of the Passion is not particularly new to me, as a European. From Johann Sebastian Bach's Passions to Gruenewald's altarpiece (see Ionarts posts on February 29 and March 5) to the sullied history of the Oberammergau Passion play to more harmless little Passion plays and school, I have been surrounded with this story often enough. I don't know the exact effects of the Oberammergau staging and its contribution to the Holocaust, but growing up long after World War II, the last thing I took away from these depictions was a particular hatred for anyone. Indeed, Gibson's account, save for the graphic nature of it, corresponded surprisingly well with the naively benign picture I had about the Passion from childhood on. German though I am, I would object to the claim that I must have grown up amidst rabid Jew-haters and that I was nurtured with propaganda fostering "interreligious aggression."
Mel Gibson either did not try or did not succeed in making this his story; it is the story of Christ. Whatever his personal beliefs, untimely as they are to me, I believe he tried to make a depiction of the Passion as faithfully as he could, being a religious man, and as good a movie as he could, being an artist. That's what he does. Movies. Tricky as this may be, I believe he succeeded. This is not The Lord of the Rings or Erin Brockovich, where a director imposes his view of a book or story onto a subsequent film. It is not Moses in The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston. This is a director making moving pictures out of a moving account of Jesus with the means that he knows from his trade.
But Chris Lehmann, writing for The Revealer ("Picturing the Passion"), makes the point that it is precisely not "a faithful, realistic account of the [...] the greatest story ever told, [but] Gibson's loudest command ever barked." Am I one of the unthinking victims of his insidious Leni Riefenstahl propaganda flick? Sorry, I don't get it. Am I naturally inoculated against the message or too ignorant to discern it? Sure, there were a few moments in which I thought that Gibson the director had taken over from Gibson the "faithful" storyteller. Especially when the cloth, which Veronica holds after cleaning Jesus' face with it, looks suspiciously like the Holy Shroud of Turin. Or when Jesus gets thrown over the cliff only to dangle in front of Judas. Where was that again in the Bible? But neither that nor the italicized Latin nor all the beautiful tall people nor Satan's four cameos really justify the claim that the film is trying to "bend it" or "stretch it" whenever "it comes to the Jews" (Krauthammer) or to whatever else. The link that Krauthammer draws between Satan and the Jews among which he (Satan, not Krauthammer) moves in two of those four appearances--concluding cynically with "a perfect match: Satan's own people"--is pugnacious, or at least silly.
All Suffering, No Love?
Another frightfully ill-perceived criticism comes up surprisingly often. Somehow, the claim is that The Passion of the Christ is too much about the suffering and not enough about "the message" of Christ. Kenneth Turan from the LA Times complains that the film "fosters a one-dimensional view of Jesus, reducing his entire life and world-transforming teachings to his sufferings, to the notion that he was exclusively someone who was willing to absorb unspeakable punishment for our sins." Smarty-pants David Denby from The New Yorker, too, finds that "Gibson is so thoroughly fixated on the scourging and crushing of Christ, and so meagerly involved in the spiritual meanings of the final hours, that he falls in danger of altering Jesus' message of love into one of hate."
Now I am only a non-believer, but isn't the suffering precisely the point? The quibble that there is no focus on the message and doing of Christ--say, a juicy quote from the Sermon on the Mount--but only this assemblage of carnage misses the point spectacularly! If you are looking for Hippie-Jesus with a smile and a bumper-sticker quality quote on love and peace on his lips you might want to try your corner bookstore's esoteric section. Don't look for it in Catholic thought, though--and don't look for it in this film.
The very message of Jesus was his suffering, was his sacrifice. Every doing and saying of Jesus makes sense only in light of his crucifixion, his willingness to die for our sins. It may sound pretty stupid to Krauthammer and me, but that's the belief. And if and only if you understand that can you look beyond the film as Gibson's "personal obsessions" and "a sickening death trip" (Denby). Focusing on a part and making it the whole is, perhaps singularly, appropriate when it comes to the Passion. That's why people unfamiliar with the story should not see this movie, and by "not unfamiliar" I mean "very familiar"! Not because there is something to hide from anyone else, but simply because it won't make sense otherwise. It would then indeed be nothing but an oddly spiritual gore-fest. But if understood rightly, it ought to be the feel-good movie of the year.
Amen.
Unfortunately, the apparent inappropriateness of expressing strong, "outdated," and politically incorrect faith in public rubs many people the wrong way. Take that, Mel Gibson's personality, the hurt ego of journalists, the hype, and the incredible ignorance that many reviewers brought to the subject matter and apparently you get the loathing response that is still being poured out over this venture. I don't suppose that the criticism is any more anti-Catholic than the film is anti-Semitic, but it's surprising and pathetic in both of the meanings of the word.
All the more interesting what professional movie critics have to say: A calm and a no-nonsense approach come from Roger Ebert ("Ebert & Roeper") and Richard Roeper (Chicago Sun-Times): "It's the only religious film I've seen, with the exception of The Gospel According to Matthew by Pasolini, that really seems to deal directly with what happened instead of with [...] cleaned-up, postcard versions of it," says the former. The latter concludes, "Mel Gibson's [Passion] does not preach that anyone--past, present, and future--must bear sole responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ. [...] It is not a work of hate. It is a powerful and important film, helmed by someone with a sincere heart and a warrior's sense of justice. It is [...] ultimately a message of redemption and hope."
Ultimately, it is not a film for a thumbs up or down, perhaps in the same way you wouldn't give the Bible a thumbs up or down. But many of the overblown attacks on this film deserve a big thumb down. The frothy mouthed critics should try again: this time perhaps with more love, less hate.
 2 stars out of 4 December 18, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
The Bottom Line:
If you enjoy sadistic depictions of pain or feel that Christ's suffering the sentence of any common criminal was more important than his teachings than you may like this film; if you prefer not to see egregious use of slow-motion, ridiculous anachronistic jokes about tables, and 90 minutes of graphic torture than you may not.
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