Reviews for "The Passion..."

[dissention]

From yesterdays and todays IMDB Studio briefings:

Although film critics had been expected to crucify Mel Gibson when his The Passion of the Christ was released, the reviewers have turned out to be about equally divided over its merits. Roger Ebert in the Chicago Sun-Times, for example, anoints it with four stars, although commenting, "This is the most violent film I have ever seen." (Earlier in the week, Richard Roeper, Ebert's colleague on his syndicated TV show, commented "This is the most powerful, important and by far the most graphic interpretation of Christ's final hours ever put on film.") Ebert adds: "The film is unsuitable for younger viewers, but works powerfully for those who can endure it." Clearly, some critics have not been able to endure it. Writes Gene Seymour in Newsday: "This movie is little else besides a depiction of punishment so ruthless and unyielding that watching it unfold feels like punishment. (And what, one wonders, did we do to deserve such punishment?)" Indeed, some critics who find much to praise about the movie, wind up concluding that the unrelenting violence in it makes it virtually unwatchable. In the words of Lou Lumenick in the New York Post: "Passion is the closest we've come to a must-see movie this year, but the real question is: How many audience members will have the stomach to actually satisfy their curiosity?" There is also the criticism voiced by early viewers of the movie. Jami Bernard in the New York Daily News writes in a review published on the newspaper's front page: "Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the most virulently anti-Semitic movie made since the German propaganda films of World War II. It is sickening, much more brutal than any Lethal Weapon." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times is not among the film's boosters either, and he remarks that the polarized reaction to it has left him in "the grip of a profound despair." He writes: "What is profoundly disheartening is that people of goodwill will see this film in completely different ways. Where I see almost sadistic violence, they will see transcendence; where I see blame, they will see truth." Still others point out that the film represents Gibson's vision. Richard Corliss, in Time magazine, while critical of much of that vision, nevertheless writes: "In dramatizing the torment of Jesus' last 12 hours, [Gibson] has made a serious, handsome, excruciating film that radiates total commitment. Few mainstream directors have poured so much of themselves into so uncompromising a production. Whatever the ultimate verdict on Gibson's Passion, it's hard not to admire Gibson's passion."

...and todays new reviews:

A few film critics have actually waited until today, the official opening date of The Passion of the Christ, to weigh in on the movie. Among them, A.O. Scott in the New York Times, who writes: "The Passion of the Christ is so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus' final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it. Mr. Gibson has constructed an unnerving and painful spectacle that is also, in the end, a depressing one. It is disheartening to see a film made with evident and abundant religious conviction that is at the same time so utterly lacking in grace." Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal: "I found myself stunned, then horrified, then defensively benumbed, by a level of violence that, in another context, would be branded as pornographic. No one who watches Mr. Gibson's dramatization of Christ's final hours will come away unaffected by its intensity. Yet this work of manifest devotion, financed by the filmmaker himself, is ultimately overwhelmed by his obsession with physical suffering to the exclusion of political and metaphysical context." Carrey Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Even for the faithful, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is too much Good Friday and not enough Easter Sunday. Emphasizing Jesus' agony over His ecstasy, Gibson has delivered a blood-drenched epic more stunning for its brutal violence than for its depiction of the Calvary. This work of obvious devotion may well be the first spiritual splatter film." Chris Vognar in the Dallas Morning News: "Controversy aside, it is dramatically intense, skillfully constructed and often harrowing, in ways that should have an impact on people of any or no particular faith. Just be ready for oceans and oceans of blood." Claudia Puig in USA Today: "Despite controversies swirling around the movie, one cannot deny that Gibson has made a stunning film, beautifully photographed in contrasting dark and golden hues by Caleb Deschanel. However, the one thing The Passion is not is enjoyable. The nearly half-hour march to Golgotha, the site of Jesus' crucifixion, is excruciating."