It was inspired by a story over 2,000 years old. It has raised controversies just as old. Feb. 24, lines of moviegoers curved through the parking lot of Hollywood Premier Cinema for a preview showing of “The Passion of the Christ.”
Never in Hollywood Cinema Premier history has a movie sparked as much interest, said Janice Curran, one of the managers of the theater.
But the interest sparked by the film is both positive and negative. The film is, by most accounts, ultra-violent, depicting the suffering of Christ in graphic detail. The film’s graphic nature garnered an R rating by the Motion Picture Association of America.
The film’s violent reputation has not deterred people from seeing it, however. It has done exceptionally well at the box office, raking in nearly $120 million since it opened last week.
“The phones are always ringing and people are driving out to get tickets. We are having to turn people away because we are selling out for each showing,” Curran said.
But despite the film’s box-office success, some critics have blasted it, calling it tasteless and anti-Semitic.
A movie based on the life of Jesus was bound to produce controversy, said senior philosophy and religion and communication major Leslie Ann Shoemake.
Shoemake denies the validity of arguments that the film is anti-Semitic in nature.
“Jesus was crucified. It happened. It’s a historical account,” Shoemake said. “I saw all the brutality in Schindler’s List, yet I don’t hate Germans. But then again, I am not Jewish.”
New York Times columnist William Safire wrote in his column Monday that the film’s graphic depiction of violence serves three purposes: to shock the audience, to bring the audience to pity for the tortured Christ and finally to bring them to outrage. And the outrage, Safire wrote, will lead audience members to cast blame.
“The villains at whom the audience’s outrage is directed are the actors playing bloodthirsty rabbis and their rabid Jewish followers,” Safire wrote. “This is the essence of the medieval “passion play,” preserved in pre-Hitler Germany at Oberammergau, a source of all Jews as ‘Christ killers.'”
While many are strongly divided on the issue, some say they don’t care much about it.
“I’ll probably end up seeing it, but it’s not pressing,” junior Tom Hackman said. “The guys I knew that were Christian were like, ‘Wow. It’s my favorite movie.’ The people I know that aren’t Christian were like, ‘It’s just another movie.'”
While some praised the movie for the clear picture it gives of the last day of Christ, others said it was historically ambiguous.
Shoemake said if she had not been familiar with the Biblical accounts of the life of Christ, she would have been confused by the movie.
“There is not enough background information. If I hadn’t known that the people were Jews or that Ciaphas was high priest, I would have been unclear on what all was going on,” Shoemake said.
However, she said she was impressed with Gibson’s depiction of the scriptural accounts of Jesus.
“Mel Gibson did a good job of depicting an account of Jesus’ life, based on Scripture. He does a great job appealing to the dramatic tendencies of our culture,” Shoemake said.
Michael Ball, director of the Baptist Student Union at Mississippi State, said he hopes the movie will provoke curiosity about Jesus and Christianity.
“So far, I think it has been a lot of Christian groups going to see the movie. Hopefully, people from different backgrounds and beliefs will make a point of going. It is a movie that makes you ask questions,” Ball said.