"There is a prophetic episode of "The Simpsons" in which the celebrity guest star Mel Gibson, directing and starring in a remake of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," enlists the help of Homer Simpson, who represents the public taste (or lack of it). Homer persuades Mr. Gibson to change the picture's ending, replacing James Stewart's populist tirade with an action sequence, a barrage of righteous gunfire that leaves the halls of Congress strewn with corpses. The audience flees the theater in disgust. "
That's not the part that grossed me out. It was the screenshot from the move which accompanies this review.
Oh, and:
"'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."
Funny, that's my feeling about a lot of fundamentalist religion... abundent religious conviction that seems totally hollow and unspiritual, just nasty.
"On its own, apart from whatever beliefs a viewer might bring to it, "The Passion of the Christ" never provides a clear sense of what all of this bloodshed was for, an inconclusiveness that is Mr. Gibson's most serious artistic failure. The Gospels, at least in some interpretations, suggest that the story ends in forgiveness. But such an ending seems beyond Mr. Gibson's imaginative capacities. Perhaps he suspects that his public prefers terror, fury and gore. Maybe Homer Simpson was right after all."
I am so not going to see this movie. Urgh.
I think I will go back and reread The Master and Margarita, which also contains a retelling of the death of Jesus, but also manages to be funny, irreverent, probably blasphemous (I'm Jewish so I don't know from blasphemy), and very very moving. Yeah, everybody — skip this movie and go read the book (or see the play at ACT in March).
--> "Good and Evil Locked in Violent Showdown", New York Times, February 25, 2004, movies2.nytimes.com/2004/02/25/movies/25SCOT.html
