[freebilly]

The audience comes into the film with such a powerful belief system that they think they have a religious experience. It's quite an interesting and disturbing phenomenon," he said.

God can't use a movie to assist people in having a religious experience? Quite an interesting and disturbing idea he has of God's power....

[cvq3842]

"Reviewers" who see some kind of reveling in sadism in The Passion are tremendously disturbing to me. Did "Roots" or "Schindler's List" get accused of glorifying violence? Or of TELLING THE TRUTH about horrific events?

Why do people hate Christians so? Why do so many not see that hatred, or somehow excuse it?

Again, the great cultural divide is evident.

Good thing Gibson didn't make a film about the Boy Scouts!

[per loin]

In the 15 years since it came out, "The Last Temptation of Christ" has earned a massive Total Gross: $8,373,585.

[VRWC_minion]

Mel Gibson (news)'s new film on the crucifixion is violent and disturbing. and consistant with the bible.

[VRWC_minion]

The audience comes into the film with such a powerful belief system that they think they have a religious experience.

Sounds jealous doesn't he ?

[bereanway]

To call the Last Temptation a humanist story would be about the best anyone could say of it. Nothing more than the vain ramblings of an unregenerate mind.

Obviously, the so called Calvinist (wonder if either the author or Schrader understands the term) upbringing didn't much take.

[Robin Hood]

"This is not the sort of film Hollywood likes," he said. "But Gibson was uniquely positioned to make it and he successfully tapped into a ready-made audience made up of conservative religious groups."

This statement is very telling. Hollyweird makes movies for itself and Mel 'just happened' to make a movie for a large portion of the public. Go figure.

[Puddleglum]

Mel showed to make the modern world see what a real scourging and crucifixion would have been like. The world or at least this li'l screenwriter doesn't like to see what it was and is capable of. That willful blindness is an interesting psychological phenomena to me. Likewise, I'm sure the fact that the film's violence does not feed into nihilism is a culture shock to many.

[Paradox]

I managed to catch The Last Temptation of Christ on late night TV. I expected the worst, so I was pleasantly suprised. I liked it. Jesus was triumphant in the end, good guys win! Maybe I am shallow or something..

[macamadamia]

"It's a well-made movie but it's very violent and infused with a great sense of self-flagellation."

Amazingly, he's NOT talking about Raging Bull. Raging Bull is a good movie in my opinion, but if Jake LaMotta (as Schrader/Scorcese envision the man) did not engage in "self-flagellation" than Schrader has some cryptic (gnostic) notion of the word.

Personally, I think he's just dancing fast to hide his snobbery. "Hey, Gibson, my violence is better than your violence. It's intellectual! Your's...is just...just so low brow."

[Ciexyz]

Oh my, what a disturbing thought to a faux Christian -- that people go to a religious movie and actually have a religious experience! How novel!

[Eva]

I read a post that claimed that he had received an e-mail from some Democrat web site, encouraging Democrats to not pay to see the Passion, to buy a ticket for another movie instead and then just walk into the screening of the Passion. I started thinking about the movie that has knocked the Passion out of the number one spot and am wondering if this was the result of a concerted effort by the left. I don't know, maybe that's just conspiracy thinking, but it is possible.

[Aquinasfan]

The audience comes into the film with such a powerful belief system that they think they have a religious experience. It's quite an interesting and disturbing phenomenon,"

Because?

And the writer has no "powerful belief system"?

[aegiscg47]

I love the "violence" claims by the media and left to try to get people not to see the film. I recently saw Dawn of the Dead and that film has ten times the violence that was in the Passion!

[weegee]

The media is still using that heart attack to blame this film as "evil" when it was an unrelated coincidence.

[TravisBickle]

But the screenwriter, who penned such cinematic classics as "Taxi Driver" and "Raging Bull," distanced his film from Gibson's.

With my screen name, I feel obligated to weigh in:

Obvioulsy, I admire much of Shrader's work, but in this case, I disagree with him.

I believe a screenwriter, or director of a film attempts to express his point of view, or evoke a specific emotion through the story. They prefer to control the story. And Gibson's Passion is no different. In Mel Gibson's view, each wound represents Jesus' willingness to pay for our sins. That the film is so brutal, only points, in my mind anyway, that the sins of the world are many.

In Taxi Driver, Shrader used Travis Bickle as a flawed character who wished to rid the world of sin--and he became an accidental hero because of it. Some find that film quite disturbing.

Perhaps Shrader is disturbed about The Passion because it doesn't allow for the individual to create their own redemption. We are powerless, but God has all power. That idea can be either liberating or constricting, depending on your point of view.

I guess we know where Shrader's stands.

[betty boop]

The audience comes into the film with such a powerful belief system that they think they have a religious experience.

What a fascinating thing to say! Seems kind of like a stock fixture of the Left "progressive" imagination to suggest that some people are so deluded or dumb that they can't even tell whether they've really had an "experience."

Seems to me that an "experience" is quite a factual thing because it is a lived thing, not something that just happens in one's (self-deluded) imagination, something impotent to actualize in "reality"....

If you feel it -- if your total body and your emotions are resonating to something such that physical changes are taking place -- then that something is likely to be "real" enough....

For this dude, there is no genuine religious experience here -- for the simple reason that there is no such thing as a "genuine religious experience" in principle: Such are only in the deluded imaginations of backward, unprogressive, superstitious Christians....

But of course, an experience of this sort is unimaginable to this guy; ergo, such cannot possibly happen in the "real world." (I.e., he makes himself the measure of what is possible.)

What is wrong with people like this? Folks like this so often appear truly demented to me, not to mention relentlessly uncharitable (and baselessly judgmental) towards their fellow human beings. They do not seem to live in the same world as the rest of us...or want to.

Maybe they are just firmly planted in a relentless denial of Reality.

Which would call for our pity, compassion. Still, I do get a little sick of the manifest arrogance of this attitude so common in the ranks of our self-appointed cultural elites.

Thanks for the post, presidio9.

[NYCVirago]

Here's my question for Paul Schrader if you think The Passion can be a "disturbing" influence on people, do you feel any moral responsibility for writing Taxi Driver, a movie which John Hinckley said inspired him to try to assassinate Ronald Reagan?

[cupcakes]

A 56-year-old woman died of a heart attack in Wichita, Kan., last month while watching the film's climactic crucifixion scene.
____

Why is this constantly brought up? This woman probably would have had a heart attack at the exact same time were she home cooking dinner. It was her time.
I sat through 2 viewings now of the The Passion and I'm 7 months pregnant with hypertension(managed with meds). I got emotional, but no more so than I do dealing with the rages of my autistic son.

[Ronzo]

"It's a well-made movie but it's very violent and infused with a great sense of self-flagellation,", screenwriter for "The Last Temptation of Christ," told Reuters. As soon as I read that statement, I knew I was going to be in for a long, tedious rant...

I must have completely missed the "self-flagellation" in the movie, but I do remember a scene where ROMAN SOLDIERS whipped Christ --it's flagellation, but hardly self-flagellation.

There is no possible way anyone with the least trace of intellectual honesty can even make a claim like that. The statement was absurd before he even spoke it.