From 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
Amazon.ca
Acteur populaire (
Mad Max, L’arme fatale, Signes), l’australien Mel Gibson a également fait ses preuves derrière la caméra (
Braveheart. Mais c’est avec son troisième film,
La Passion du Christ, projet qui le hantait depuis une douzaine d’années, qu’il a suscité le plus de controverses—et de ventes en salle.
Après un dernier souper avec ses apôtres, Jésus de Nazareth prie sur le Mont des Oliviers en tentant de repousser Satan. Mais, trahi par Judas, il se fait arrêter et traduire devant la justice des grands prêtres juifs qui l’accusent de blasphème. Ces derniers le livrent alors au consul romain Ponce Pilate pour obtenir sa condamnation à mort par crucifixion.
Si le film a pu être taxé d’antisémitisme, alors qu’il caricature avec aussi peu de subtilité les Juifs que les Romains, c’est avant tout son extrême violence qui le place au banc des accusés. Non content d’abuser de ralentis sanglants et de gros plans choquants, La Passion du Christ emprunte, en outre, à une imagerie gore déplaisante, notamment pour les scènes de vision. Visant à faire ressentir aux spectateurs la souffrance des dernières heures de la vie du Christ, Gibson soumet son personnage (campé par Jim Caviezel) aux pires tortures sous les yeux effarés de Marie (la roumaine Maia Morgensen) et de Marie-Madeleine (Monica Bellucci). Tourné en araméen et en latin par souci d’authenticité, La Passion du Christ se révèle au final un moment de cinéma particulièrement éprouvant. – Helen Faradji
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