http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,112427,00.html#2
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I believe the New Yorker's film critic, David Denby, makes essentially the same point but with a more focused sort of ferocity...
NAILED by DAVID DENBY Mel Gibsons The Passion of the Christ. Issue of 2004-03-01 Posted 2004-02-23
In The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson shows little interest in celebrating the electric charge of hope and redemption that Jesus Christ brought into the world. He largely ignores Jesus heart-stopping eloquence, his startling ethical radicalism and personal radianceChrist as a paragon of vitality and poetic assertion, as John Updike described Jesus character in his essay The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Cecil B. De Mille had his version of Jesus life, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Martin Scorsese had theirs, and Gibson, of course, is free to skip over the incomparable glories of Jesus temperament and to devote himself, as he does, to Jesus pain and martyrdom in the last twelve hours of his life. As a viewer, I am equally free to say that the movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood, and agonyand to say so without indulging in anti-Christian sentiment (Gibsons term for what his critics are spreading). For two hours, with only an occasional pause or gentle flashback, we watch, stupefied, as a handsome, strapping, at times half-naked young man (James Caviezel) is slowly tortured to death. Gibson is so thoroughly fixated on the scourging and crushing of Christ, and so meagrely involved in the spiritual meanings of the final hours, that he falls in danger of altering Jesus message of love into one of hate.
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http://newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?040301crci_cinema
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DRM