A moving experience

I had mixed feelings before I watched Mel Gibsons’ The Passion of the Christ, but I am very glad I did. I tried to forget what all the reviews had said, and to look and listen at the movie with an open mind.

The Passion took me immediately to the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is talking to his Father while his disciples are sleeping. The next scenes with Pilate and Herod, and the many scenes of the suffering of Jesus, are truly realistic. The flogging is shocking and takes maybe more time than one would wish. Mary, the mother of Jesus, remains as close to her Son as possible – She is a moving and heartbreaking figure.

After Jesus’ death on the cross, the movie seems to end but then, in an all too-brief epilogue, I see the flash of the resurrection. It passes so quickly that I hope everyone has seen it.

The Passion was an impressive movie and the words of the well- known hymn – I never knew how much it cost to see my sin upon the cross – now have a very special meaning.

I had gone to see this film with some trepidation. I had heard of how violent and gory it was and also that it was unnecessarily biased against Jesus. But most of all I had heard of the impact it had on people and I was apprehensive about whether I could emotionally stand seeing the whole passion of our Lord in graphic detail. As for the bias against Jesus, I can only say that if the Jews find that the film is biased against them, they must also find the Biblical accounts the same, as the film’s story has kept very closely to the biblical texts.

The violence and gory details were not the sickening sort, the kind of gore we often unfortunately see on our screens. They were more the sort of reality you see in a true documentary of some of the world’s horror spots. In fact, I found myself thinking of such realities through the film, since what I viewed relates so closely to the real experiences of many persecuted and tortured people in our present world. Though the violence was difficult to watch, it also did not seem too much or inappropriate because the real impact of the film for me was the emotional one – or perhaps something even deeper.

From the beginning I sat tense, gripping the arms of my seat, and I didn’t let go. Watching The Passion was a moving experience that I could not even cry – which for me is very unusual. However, I would not have missed it. It enriched my appreciation of Holy Week immensely. Various images and expressions of what happened in the film come back to me, especially during Bible readings and services on Good Friday – not the actors’ faces as much as the overall actions and my experience with them.

I am very glad I saw the film and will try to see it again just before Holy Week next year.