response to the Passion (I might have rivaled BJ in length here)
Becky has allowed me to post on this thread because I am quite interested in the discussion and am eager to take part. I don't attend the Denver Seminary, nor do I have the training that any of you have, but I think I can contribute. Thanks for your indulgence folks, please ignore me if you wish.
Becky and I saw the Passion of the Christ on Wednesday with the Regis crowd. I had, perhaps unwisely, read Dr. Groothuis's letter on the subject and David Denby's New Yorker review (http://newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?040301crci_cinema) before seeing the film. I also went in having little respect for Mel Gibson's work as a filmmaker.
I want to reflect on the following issues in response to both BJ and Dr. Groothuis: Gibson's use of the image in its relation to the word and the role the audience plays in understanding the work.
My chief objection to the film lies in its pedestrian use of the image. In that way, the film seems to attempt to function as an icon painting or a grisly medieval altarpiece. He fails to consider his literate audience and the age in which we live. Icon paintings and the images of suffering that adorned church walls had the aim of cautioning and educating the parishioners who were largely illiterate and who were just coming to acquire written language, thanks to good ole Gutenberg. Gibson's audience has the benefit of widespread literacy and unprecedented access to scripture, and the responsibility to read and understand the word. Gibson allows the "masses" (who I assume he considers lazy) to skate by with reading the image _he_ constructs on-screen.
After making this assumption, he constructs his film using the same methods and techniques as every other latest blockbuster. He ignores the lessons of filmmakers before him in favor of the flavor of today's popular cinema. His compositions and pacing (not to mention music) are derivative of the latest action films. His use of slow-motion and stop frames, borrowing (or stealing) at best from Hong Kong actions films (which are greater testaments to modern catholicism for everyman - John Woo for example) at worst from American films that are derivative of that genre. He references his own films in the most pious manner - Lethal Weapon in the initial chaining of Jesus, the shoulder dislocation scene and the showering/baptism of the guard, and Braveheart in countless images of torture. In the ascension he borrows from the Matrix by whip-panning in motion-control, and then mimics David Fincher by panning through walls and the earth. He copies countless horror films in his depictions of Satan (which by the way border on interesting until he indulges in cheap, thrilling scare tactics, which he employs inconsistently and for shock value.)
While I won't argue that the violence is gratuitous, it seems to play into a game of one-upmanship. The audience was consistently reeling with every new torture and every painful moment. What is next I wonder, or is this the worst of it? (I, for one, was numb by the mid-point of the scourging, so everything thereafter became kind of drab.)
Gibson engages in the worst elements of popular culture for the greatest of goals. Is this appropriate or responsible? In what ways is the evangelical spirit responsible to move beyond the bounds of the aesthetics of the day (or year or decade)? (By the way, _I_ complain about violence in historically based movies, Saving Private Ryan for instance.)
In the style of his film Gibson has constructed an enormously effective device for reaching a culture and audience that can seemingly only respond to an image, and he has created a "visualization" of a universal and transcendent story in a particular and material (and base) manner that conforms to the trends of the day. This is not a film of ideas, it is a series of tableaux meant to appeal to an audience that cannot read or understand, one that can only see.
In understanding this film beyond its filmic elements I am most moved by accounts of insight and as BJ puts it, "a deep and profound spiritual experience with my Lord." These accounts cannot be contested. Was it the suffering, the blood and gore that moved you or your fore-knowledge of what was going on? What made you open to be moved? I found myself most moved by the human interactions that occurred between the violence, in flashback (which seemed rendered with the opposite and equally hyperbolic effect in the bucolic carpenting scene, the Last Supper, the Sermon on the Mount, and even the Resurrection.) I believe that any redeeming qualities of this film happen in the viewer, not as a result of the film itself but as a result of their previously held notions of these events or as a result of subsequent interactions with knowledgeable friends or the word. That one is moved to worship or praise must be the result of the individual, the audience member and their community. Is it consumed at face value or is it reflected upon and does it bring people to the word of God or does it compel us only as far as the image of Mel?
"The best statement I've heard yet came from a young boy who saw the film with his dad (which, by the way, I am against. Let's keep the kids home on this one). The boy is 12 years old. After the film his dad asked him what he thought about it. He pondered for a moment and then said, "This is the kind of film nobody should see and everybody should see." The kid is right on." - I wonder what happened with this boy? Maybe he is right on, but what did he _think_ about it? Was there a discourse or did it end at a thumbs up?
Some final questions:
Does anyone know if any work has been done in Christian aesthetics? I am concerned about the difference between saying something is a "good" work of art and "I was moved by it" in Christian thought. Are these statements the same?
Films that deal with ideas of suffering and redemption and that would spark some fascinating discussions:
Kieslowski - "The Decalogue" and "Three Colours"
Tarkovsky - anything, but in particular "Stalker," "Solaris," "The Sacrifice" and "Andrei Rublev"
Brakhage - "Panels for the Walls of Heaven" and many more
Ming-Liang - "What Time is it There"
Van Sant - "Gerry"
Teshigahara - "The Woman in the Dunes"
Noe - "I Stand Alone" and "Irreversible"*
Dreyer - "The Passion of Joan of Arc"
Von Trier - "Dancer in the Dark" and "Breaking the Waves"*
...there are lots more that I am too swamped to know about
and if any one is interested in some films that constitute interesting critiques of violence in movies:Tarantino - Kill Bill
Miike - "Ichi the Killer" and Dead or Alive trilogy*
Noe - same as above*
Haneke - various*
...there are lots more that I am too swamped to know about
* Not for the faint of heart, as there are accounts of people seizing during screenings of these films
Becky and I saw the Passion of the Christ on Wednesday with the Regis crowd. I had, perhaps unwisely, read Dr. Groothuis's letter on the subject and David Denby's New Yorker review (http://newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?040301crci_cinema) before seeing the film. I also went in having little respect for Mel Gibson's work as a filmmaker.
I want to reflect on the following issues in response to both BJ and Dr. Groothuis: Gibson's use of the image in its relation to the word and the role the audience plays in understanding the work.
My chief objection to the film lies in its pedestrian use of the image. In that way, the film seems to attempt to function as an icon painting or a grisly medieval altarpiece. He fails to consider his literate audience and the age in which we live. Icon paintings and the images of suffering that adorned church walls had the aim of cautioning and educating the parishioners who were largely illiterate and who were just coming to acquire written language, thanks to good ole Gutenberg. Gibson's audience has the benefit of widespread literacy and unprecedented access to scripture, and the responsibility to read and understand the word. Gibson allows the "masses" (who I assume he considers lazy) to skate by with reading the image _he_ constructs on-screen.
After making this assumption, he constructs his film using the same methods and techniques as every other latest blockbuster. He ignores the lessons of filmmakers before him in favor of the flavor of today's popular cinema. His compositions and pacing (not to mention music) are derivative of the latest action films. His use of slow-motion and stop frames, borrowing (or stealing) at best from Hong Kong actions films (which are greater testaments to modern catholicism for everyman - John Woo for example) at worst from American films that are derivative of that genre. He references his own films in the most pious manner - Lethal Weapon in the initial chaining of Jesus, the shoulder dislocation scene and the showering/baptism of the guard, and Braveheart in countless images of torture. In the ascension he borrows from the Matrix by whip-panning in motion-control, and then mimics David Fincher by panning through walls and the earth. He copies countless horror films in his depictions of Satan (which by the way border on interesting until he indulges in cheap, thrilling scare tactics, which he employs inconsistently and for shock value.)
While I won't argue that the violence is gratuitous, it seems to play into a game of one-upmanship. The audience was consistently reeling with every new torture and every painful moment. What is next I wonder, or is this the worst of it? (I, for one, was numb by the mid-point of the scourging, so everything thereafter became kind of drab.)
Gibson engages in the worst elements of popular culture for the greatest of goals. Is this appropriate or responsible? In what ways is the evangelical spirit responsible to move beyond the bounds of the aesthetics of the day (or year or decade)? (By the way, _I_ complain about violence in historically based movies, Saving Private Ryan for instance.)
In the style of his film Gibson has constructed an enormously effective device for reaching a culture and audience that can seemingly only respond to an image, and he has created a "visualization" of a universal and transcendent story in a particular and material (and base) manner that conforms to the trends of the day. This is not a film of ideas, it is a series of tableaux meant to appeal to an audience that cannot read or understand, one that can only see.
In understanding this film beyond its filmic elements I am most moved by accounts of insight and as BJ puts it, "a deep and profound spiritual experience with my Lord." These accounts cannot be contested. Was it the suffering, the blood and gore that moved you or your fore-knowledge of what was going on? What made you open to be moved? I found myself most moved by the human interactions that occurred between the violence, in flashback (which seemed rendered with the opposite and equally hyperbolic effect in the bucolic carpenting scene, the Last Supper, the Sermon on the Mount, and even the Resurrection.) I believe that any redeeming qualities of this film happen in the viewer, not as a result of the film itself but as a result of their previously held notions of these events or as a result of subsequent interactions with knowledgeable friends or the word. That one is moved to worship or praise must be the result of the individual, the audience member and their community. Is it consumed at face value or is it reflected upon and does it bring people to the word of God or does it compel us only as far as the image of Mel?
"The best statement I've heard yet came from a young boy who saw the film with his dad (which, by the way, I am against. Let's keep the kids home on this one). The boy is 12 years old. After the film his dad asked him what he thought about it. He pondered for a moment and then said, "This is the kind of film nobody should see and everybody should see." The kid is right on." - I wonder what happened with this boy? Maybe he is right on, but what did he _think_ about it? Was there a discourse or did it end at a thumbs up?
Some final questions:
Does anyone know if any work has been done in Christian aesthetics? I am concerned about the difference between saying something is a "good" work of art and "I was moved by it" in Christian thought. Are these statements the same?
Films that deal with ideas of suffering and redemption and that would spark some fascinating discussions:
Kieslowski - "The Decalogue" and "Three Colours"
Tarkovsky - anything, but in particular "Stalker," "Solaris," "The Sacrifice" and "Andrei Rublev"
Brakhage - "Panels for the Walls of Heaven" and many more
Ming-Liang - "What Time is it There"
Van Sant - "Gerry"
Teshigahara - "The Woman in the Dunes"
Noe - "I Stand Alone" and "Irreversible"*
Dreyer - "The Passion of Joan of Arc"
Von Trier - "Dancer in the Dark" and "Breaking the Waves"*
...there are lots more that I am too swamped to know about
and if any one is interested in some films that constitute interesting critiques of violence in movies:Tarantino - Kill Bill
Miike - "Ichi the Killer" and Dead or Alive trilogy*
Noe - same as above*
Haneke - various*
...there are lots more that I am too swamped to know about
* Not for the faint of heart, as there are accounts of people seizing during screenings of these films
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1:12:00 PM
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