Watched The Passion of the Christ last night. I entered the cinema with hangups because I don't agree with Mel Gibson's very traditionalist view of Catholicism and I detest the methods by which the film was promoted here. Then after a while I realised that most of my fellow patrons might not be Christian and so to them this would be just another film. Reality check: The film is not the Gospel, and Jim Caviezel is no Jesus. No point getting angsty. I relaxed :)

The film is best seen as an adaptation of the Passion found in the real Gospels, and a bit of a loose one at that. A lot of it is fairly modern reasoning along the lines of: "Yeah, Jesus really loved his mum so he must have done this, she must have done that, Pontius must have did this etc etc." This explains in part the heavy emphasis on the mother-son relationship between Mary and Jesus, and the insertion of elements like Pontius's wife Claudia (shades of Julius Caesar here), the Devil skulking around, and the philosophical whitewashing of Pontius Pilate. I suppose these had to be in there to keep the movie interesting for modern moviegoers. Spiritual texts don't really translate well into crowd-pleasing blockbusters.

The film wasn't that anti-Semitic imho -- some effort was made to insert dissenting Jewish characters and give them some screen time, but Caiphas resembled a sneering WWF wrestler more than a High Priest. Good two-dimensionality there.

The digitally-altered hazel eyes were uncanny. Weirded me out. Having one of Jesus's eyes swollen shut early on was quite clever 'cos it forced the audience to focus on that one eye for the rest of the movie. And yes, it also paves the way for lots of looking scenes.

Add to the mix melodramatic acting (Judas gets lots of time to agonise over his betrayal), flashbacks with modern touches (an adult Jesus being playful with Mother Mary?), slow-mo overkill (pun intended!), a ponderous music score that has an erhu pop up when the Devil's onscreen and also morphs into a military march at the end, and did I mention the gratuitous slow-motion?

What I really want to know is: what does the Lord think of the movie?