Word: jesus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Pier Pasolini’s seminal work The Gospel According to St. Matthew, the vast majority of the film is committed to imparting the teachings of Jesus, as he serenely strolls from parable to parable uttering the familiar sacred idioms that have now been fully disseminated into secular vocabulary. Pasolini often floods the screen with the prophet’s unassuming, uni-browed visage, his immobile facial features accentuating the authority of his compassionate words. His crucifixion and subsequent resurrection are terse and understated, barely even serving their proper roles as climax and denouement to the film. In this Gospel...
Director Mel Gibson takes an emphatically different approach to his subject in The Passion of the Christ, representing the teachings of Jesus through a gore-drenched recreation of the final twelve hours before his death. Here, the son of God is a wholly human figure, and Gibson constantly reminds his audience of this with an unceasing depiction of shredded flesh and spattered blood. The effect is alternately piercing and numbing...
...indescribable atrocities committed upon Jesus’ increasingly carcass-like body in the initial torture scene are heartbreaking, until the recurring image of the elated torturers flaying mercilessly achieves a somewhat tedious tone. The march in which Jesus bears the cross to the point of his crucifixion is similarly excruciating, but he has one too many dramatic falls for the experience to have a fully realized impact. The wounds that the film inflicts on his audience are rarely left fresh, but exposed for so long that they are allowed to scab over...
...endless proselytizing about faithfulness to the Gospels, Gibson strays from the narrow Biblical path quite often. Pontius Pilate is given a disproportionate amount of screen time as he agonizes over his decision to crucify Jesus, while such a conflicted Pilate cannot be found in any of the Gospels. In a blatantly inaccurate flashback to Jesus’ youth, we see an enthusiastic carpenter apparently constructing mankind’s first high table, as Mary remarks, “This will never catch on.” And despite his many triumphant experiments (the film wouldn’t be nearly...
...those unfamiliar with the story, the film barely has a narrative. The Jewish priests decide to kill this guy, Jesus (James Caviezel). To that end, they pay one of his men to betray him and then take him from Roman authority to Roman authority until they find someone who will give them the right to crucify...