Did “The Passion” go too far?
Jim Caviezel on movie violence
“The Passion of the Christ” was both lauded and criticized for its brutal depiction of the Crucifixion. Caviezel’s new film, “The Stoning of Soraya M.” (from the producers of “The Passion”) is rated R for its depiction of the stoning of an innocent woman in Iran. Besides the fact that such depictions, Caviezel says, are less brutal than the realities they reflect, Caviezel says showing such atrocities is part of telling the story of what really happened.
“What I don’t understand,” he says, “is that [these events are] so horrific, but when good filmmakers try to tell a story, it’s almost as if it’s a greater evil that those filmmakers and actors — who are putting their lives on the line to show a story — are showing what really happened than for those men (depicted in “The Stoning of Soraya M.) to have taken that girl and beaten and killed her like that. And that’s what I feel we’ve become in the culture — that (people think) it is a worse evil to show the world what real evil is. It’s 'How dare you take away my naïveté.' That to me is like Marie Antoinette saying 'Let them eat cake.'”