Holy horror JESSICA ZAFRA

The Passion of the Christ is Father Peyton’s Holy Rosary Crusade for the generation of moviegoers inured to cinematic violence. For years we have been warned that frequent exposure to killing and mutilation onscreen desensitizes us to violence in real life, i.e., we no longer react with shock or horror when we see a TV news report about the grisly murder of four Americans in Fallujah, Iraq, or a teenage suicide bomber blowing himself and others to bits in Gaza in the Israeli-occupied territories. Director Mel Gibson has made sure that we will be shocked and horrified when we see The Passion. He does this by filming the most graphic, gruesome and sadistic torture scenes in recent memory without allowing viewers the comfort of knowing that “It’s just a movie.” Gibson promotes the illusion that this is not an illusion, that this is exactly what happened in the last hours of the life of Jesus Christ.


The violence in The Passion is entirely different from the violence in, say, Kill Bill by Quentin Tarantino. In Tarantino’s movie the killing and maiming is presented in an over-the-top, cartoonish style which serves as a reminder that it is not real. When a character’s arm is lopped off and the blood sprays around like a garden sprinkler, it’s so ridiculous that you have to laugh. You cannot snicker at The Passion, and not just because the well-coiffed matron sniffling into her lace hankie might smack you with her handbag. Gibson aims for brutal verisimilitude, and he succeeds. continues:
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2004 the year of violence , just like every other year - nothing ever changes.