The Passion and the Power

So, last night, bethje and I finally watched The Passion of the Christ. I found it to be very over-the-top. I mean, everyone knows it was over-the-top in terms of gruesome violence, but that isn't all of it. When it first started, Jesus and his disciples were all melodramatically play-acting being nervous. I had to wonder if the fact that it was in a foreign language and of religious significance was supposed to partially obscure the fact that the acting wasn't very good. All of the Roman guards who tortured Jesus were incredibly ugly. Barrabas, after being freed, made a bunch of goofy faces and stuck out his tongue. There was so much slow motion that, if I didn't know better, I'd probably think it was made by a film student who'd just discovered how to use that effect. And I know I'm not the first one to say this, but what was up with the bald, androgynous Devil? There was one scene near the beginning where Satan sent a snake out from under his robe after Jesus, and Jesus stepped on it. I know it was from Satan and an unclean animal and all, but is Jesus being a brutal snake killer really within the character he's usually thought to have had? That just rubbed me the wrong way.

I don't really see the film as being something that would be particularly useful as a conversion tool, either. You'd pretty much have to have already had it drilled into your head that Jesus went through all that torment to atone for the sins of mankind. While this was mentioned in the movie, it really seemed to be downplayed in favor of gruesome torture scenes. The resurrection was also downplayed, and seemed to basically just be an afterthought in the film. The whole thing gives more of the impression that Jesus was an innocent man abused by a corrupt justice system than that he was the Messiah. Mind you, I've never been particularly fond of the "You should come around to our way of thinking because we're showing you gruesome images" way of proselytizing.

After watching the movie, we saw a few minutes of it accompanied by what was called "commentary for the visually impaired." The guy doing the commentary started out describing the Icon logo, and then said, "Words appear" as the opening quote from Isaiah was shown on the screen. And then it continued like this.

Later that night, I had a dream that I somehow ended up driving two strange girls to a party or something. They were bringing a turkey (like a Thanksgiving turkey, not a live bird) with them, and it was really messy, so I ended up putting it on top of a towel that I had in the car. The girls were going to a house located near my first home, and it had a really long address. I noticed that the first house on the block had "Noon" as its number, which reminds me of an earlier dream where my digital clock said "HOTEL" at 2:59 AM. The rest of the houses had actual numbers, but the numbering system didn't make any sense. I don't remember if there was any more to that dream, but I do remember another dream where I was playing with my Game Boy, which had a lot of functions you could use without actually putting a game in it.