The main action in The Passion of the Christ consists of a man being horrifically beaten, mutilated, tortured, impaled, and finally executed. The film is grueling to watch — so much so that some critics have called it offensive, even sadistic, claiming that it fetishizes violence. Pointing to similar cruelties in Gibson’s earlier films, such as the brutal execution of William Wallace in Braveheart, critics allege that the film reflects an unhealthy fascination with gore and brutality on Gibson’s part.
He had called it "the berry incident" with a grin that made her cheeks warm, though the real story was quieter: two kids, a forbidden patch behind the old greenhouse where the sun pooled and the raspberries grew wild. They'd trespassed because the sign said "No Picking" and because trees seem smaller when you're a little bit brave. The berries were sweeter in secret—more vivid than the ones in the store, sticky and bright, stained onto their fingers like tiny suns.
They ate until the light thinned and their hands smelled faintly of juice and sap. On the way back, she tripped over a root he'd said wasn't there; laughter tripped over itself, then sobered when she felt the sting. He watched, helpless and astonished, while she pressed a palm to the crescent that would later be more than a story. little innocent taboo patched
Later, patched with a bandage and a whisper, the moment reassembled into something softer: not a crime but an initiation. The scar was small and obedient; it didn't shout. It hummed, a private keepsake tucked beneath hair and daylight. When people asked, she called it an accident and changed the subject. When he looked, she let the memory do the speaking—their shared misdemeanor rendered innocent by the tenderness after. He had called it "the berry incident" with
Years on, the greenhouse was gone, the sign repainted, the bushes tamed into neat rows. The scar remained, faithful and unremarkable, a tiny marker that the world could be bent, briefly, into a shape you chose. It was proof that rules could be tested gently and that some taboos, once touched, turn out to be only small, human things—patched over, smiling from the other side. They ate until the light thinned and their
She kept the tiny scar like a private punctuation—soft, pale, a crescent where the skin had mended. It lived at the nape of her neck, usually hidden by hair and laughter, revealed only when she tilted her head just so or when the wind decided to be curious. To everyone else it read as nothing: a small proof of childhood mischief, a bicycle scrape or a clumsy fall. To her, it was a map of a single, deliciously forbidden afternoon.
The original DVD edition of The Passion of the Christ was a “bare bones” edition featuring only the film itself. This week’s two-disc “Definitive Edition” is packed with extras, from The Passion Recut (which trims about six minutes of some of the most intense violence) to four separate commentaries.
As I contemplate Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, the sequence I keep coming back to, again and again, is the scourging at the pillar.
Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League declared recently that Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ is not antisemitic, and that Gibson himself is not an anti-Semite, but a “true believer.”
Link to this itemI read a review you wrote in the National Catholic Register about Mel Gibson’s film Apocalypto. I thoroughly enjoy reading the Register and from time to time I will brouse through your movie reviews to see what you have to say about the content of recent films, opinions I usually not only agree with but trust.
However, your recent review of Apocalypto was way off the mark. First of all the gore of Mel Gibson’s films are only to make them more realistic, and if you think that is too much, then you don’t belong watching a movie that can actually acurately show the suffering that people go through. The violence of the ancient Mayans can make your stomach turn just reading about it, and all Gibson wanted to do was accurately portray it. It would do you good to read up more about the ancient Mayans and you would discover that his film may not have even done justice itself to the kind of suffering ancient tribes went through at the hands of their hostile enemies.
Link to this itemIn your assessment of Apocalypto you made these statements:
Even in The Passion of the Christ, although enthusiastic commentators have suggested that the real brutality of Jesus’ passion exceeded that of the film, that Gibson actually toned down the violence in his depiction, realistically this is very likely an inversion of the truth. Certainly Jesus’ redemptive suffering exceeded what any film could depict, but in terms of actual physical violence the real scourging at the pillar could hardly have been as extreme as the film version.I am taking issue with the above comments for the following reasons. Gibson clearly states that his depiction of Christ’s suffering is based on the approved visions of Mother Mary of Agreda and Anne Catherine Emmerich. Having read substantial excerpts from the works of these mystics I would agree with his premise. They had very detailed images presented to them by God in order to give to humanity a clear picture of the physical and spiritual events in the life of Jesus Christ.
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