[walden]

I saw it yesterday with one of my best friends and one of my daughters. It was devastatingly powerful-- not a movie so much as a religious experience. We wept and then we came home and thought and talked about it.

My daughter is a believer but wasn't raised in the church-- I only came back to faith a year ago myself-- but after we were home, she pulled out her bible for the first time and I showed her where to start reading, in each of the Gospels, the story she had just seen on film. Later, I went and re-read the Gospels myself, and time and again, I was struck when some incident or detail that I had thought wasn't in the Gospel was there in one or the other of them.

My view is that God is very, very pleased with Mr. Mel Gibson. This is a movie for the ages.

"It is as it was."

[Mr. Thorne]

Similar experience.

Wife cried through the scourging, the via dolorosa.

Biggest hits on me? Well, first off, the beginning, the agony in the garden, was well done, and I was doing fine: good movie, says I. Then...

Malchus reaction to his healing...
The denial of Peter... the first 'blow to the gut' feeling I had.
The Mother of Christ and The Magdalene wiping up the blood after the scourging; Magdalene's reminiscence.
Jesus and Mary meet on the Via Dolorosa. "... I make all things new."
Simon's statement; the statement Jesus COULD have made...
Veronica wipes the face of Jesus...
"It is accomplished." I've seen that rendered 'it is finished,' 'it is done,' etc. Somehow, this seemed more powerful.
The Resurrection.

Mel says he was inspired. I don't know, and I cannot convince those who find this movie offensive for whatever reason, but I believe him.

This strikes me as a work of devotional art, in a medium I would not have thought possible.

"It is as it was," indeed.

IMHO, of course.

PS. Wife and I will probably go again on Good Friday.

[Eala]

It was devastatingly powerful-- not a movie so much as a religious experience. We wept and then we came home and thought and talked about it.

Absolutely.