Ich bin faul, deswegen werde ich keine deutsche Bewertung für die Passion Christi schreiben, sondern die englische, die ich schon verfaßt habe, hier posten. Ich hoffe, den Interessierten macht mein Englisch nicht mehr Mühe als mein Deutsch. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" /> Aber im Großen und Ganzen hat mich der Film nicht überrascht sondern entspricht genau dem, was ich dank der Berichte im Vorfeld erwartet und wir im Forum schon auch öfter angesprochen hatten:

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I am not a Christian man, but I still think that this movie is highly overrated as far as religious matters are concerned. It concentrates on a very small part of the biblical history and thus can't satisfy in religious terms. And this fact is also the source of the accusations of being anti semitic. Yes, the Jewish people are depicted as a wild and ruthless bunch, yes Jesus is shown as the poor suffering guy, yes the Romans - especially Pliatus - are those who don't have a choice but killing Jesus. And that is why one can regard this movie as anti semitic in this way, being an exaggerated and excessive portrait of that time.
But that is not the bible. As I said, I am not a Christian person and actually I despite today's mass religion, but the bible happens to be one of the most influential books of all times - and other than the fact that it is largely written in a very simple way, it is still a very interesting book, too. And it consists of more than Jesus' last 12 hours. In fact, Jews are a significant part of it either and the bible - however sometimes extreme - is not really a book which could be called very anti semitic. And especially the story of Jesus Christ is an example of being open hearted and love each other no matter where people are from and what they believe.
But that is not the message of the movie. The movie is just a tour de force and shows us how badly Jesus suffered. Even though Jesus himself is the nice lad he is said to be, the pure concentration on his sufferings makes it more or less impossible to show other aspects of the Christ history. Why he became who he was... why the people did what they did... there is no background in the movie. It starts with pain and ends with pain. And therefore it is not a good religious movie at all.

From a more generally cinematographic point of view, one can say that we have an ordinary hero movie here. You have a sympathetic hero and you have the evil villains. And the hero has to suffer some things but never ever gives up his believes. I don't know how many of you have watched Braveheart, also by Mel Gibson, but you should compare the torturing of William Wallace with the whole Passion of Christ. It's basically the same... the poor hero is tortured to death but never gives up. Even the sounds both guys make are quite similar... you should check it out. The thing with Passion of Christ is that it is really very graphical in its depiction of the violence. I think that is the next step for hollywood to make even more violent movies - if they don't have an interesting story, they stun you with "violence and bloodshed" (if I may again quote Manowar here).
But what else? Not much... on a scale from 0 to 10, I would give Passion of Christ a 7 - mainly because of the outstanding performance of James Caviezel as Jesus... the rest of the movie is rather slightly above average.

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Nigel Powers: "There are only two things I can't stand in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures... and the Dutch!"