More "Passion of the Christ" musings

In the days since I saw the film, my negative feelings toward it have grown stronger. My reaction is based primarily on the massive public attention the film has been receiving, and the opinions of many who are discussing it.

One of the big discussion points relating to the movie revolves around its "accuracy." This is a fool's discussion, in my opinion. The most historically "accurate" "The Passion of the Christ" can ever hope to be is asymptotally very near to 0%. For starters, we have absolutely nothing purely "factual" to compare it to. So the argument dies there.

But furthermore- and this is really what gets me- anyone who sees this movie, with all of its dramatic lighting, its super slow-motion, and its melodramatic music, and honestly believes that it's possible for a real-life event to have in any way resembled what the film depicts, demonstrates an inability to separate themselves from the dramatic devices used by the filmmaker.

I've heard a professional film critic- Joel Siegel- refer to the film as "documentary style." "The Passion of the Christ" is anything but, and I fear that a lot of decent, honest people who believe in the events depicted in the film are being taken advantage of because, as believers, of course they want to believe what they are seeing. Clearly, the film arouses strong emotions in them- why would they challenge the source of these emotions?

The real daring, artful film about the last twelve hours of Jesus's life would have been twelve hours long and would have contained no music or slow motion. Imagine how much more powerful that would have been, witnessing in true documentary-style the real-time brutality against this man, with no melodramatic music, just the sounds and the pace of the reality.

That would have been a film I would have respected artistically.