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Well, if the Pope likes it...

Sinclair

Moderator
I'm not religious in the slightest, but it seems Mel Gibson's controversial movie is liked by His Holiness. I may see it, albeit on dvd, just because it has spurred so much controversy within the religious community and it may help to give me better insight into why others believe in what they do.

The Passion of Christ
 
Well, you better brush up on your Aramaic, unless they break down and caption the DVD. In fairness to Mel, it is impossible to imagine making a film about Christ without someone objecting to something about it. Geeze, you would think he was Ronald Reagan, or something! ;)
 
From what it said on the cnn site , Jewish and catholic groups said it was 'Historicaly Inaccurate' well what do they expect ? it is Hollywood after all :LOL:
 
Jewish groups are pissed because it portrays Jews betraying him and generally doesn't make them look very good. But that's the way it is in the Bible. Besides, B'nai Brith et al are even more bitchier about this stuff than other minority "advocacy" groups. The one thing that may lend credence to the detractors is Mel's very fundamentalist beliefs. But I consider all of Hollywood to be wacko anyway, Mel just handles his differently.

I, for one, am dying to see it.
 
My Aramaic is pretty rusty, JJ. I'm hoping the film is subtitled at the theater. :LOL:

I'm also looking forward to seeing it, if only because so many people and groups don't want me to. :p
 
Not quite as controversial as "The Last Temptation of Christ" (which is a great movie by the way), its subject matter is practically guaranteed to piss people off. Anything remotely religious-themed gets people touchy anymore.

Although I'm still scratching my head at the whole concept of true-to-time language, I think it's pretty cool that this actually got made in Hollywood. This ain't the History Channel here. It just goes to show that there is still a little bit of room for the intellectual crowd at the cinema.
 
Last I heard, there would be NO subtitles for the theatrical release. If anyone has heard different, please let us know.
 
Oh, Hell...Where did I leave my Aramaic-to-English dictionary?

Seriously, why would a director/producer release a film in the vernacular without subtitles? I would think doing so would drastically limit his box office numbers. And it's not like (gasp) French, which some people actually speak these days. Aramaic is a dead language, unless I'm mistaken, like Latin, spoken only by a few scholars. I'd venture to say that more people speak Klingon than Aramaic today.
 
You're probably right about there being more Klingon speakers than Aramaic speakers, and certainly there are FAR more Latin speakers, since studying Latin is still not uncommon. I'm sure the objections you raise have been made to Mel, but since he is financing the project, he can do what he wants. I'm not totally clear on his motivations, but have read that he did it to be as accurate as possible. That seems a bit odd to me, unless they have some early copies of the Gospels written in Aramaic. I think that he might have thought the film would be less controversial that way, since few could parse the words. If so, that didn't work. The point has been made, though, that most who see it will know the story well anyway. I'll go on the record as saying that it should have subtitles.
 
OK, I found an article on NewsMax, citing the Associated Press as its source, that the script is in Aramaic and Hebrew with English subtitles. I can live with that. :)

When I was in college (a Benedictine Catholic school), we were required to take a minimum number of religious studies courses. I took one titled "The Four Gospels," which dealt with the subject in a historical context. The professor was a multiple Ph.D., who spoke nine languages, two of which were Aramaic and Latin. His descriptions of the crucifixion were graphic and uncomfortable to listen to. If Gibson sticks to the facts, there should be a lot of surprised moviegoers.
 
Mel's point is that the story is almost completely visual. It would be easy to know what's going on without subtitles, if only because everyone knows what happens.

Here's a spoiler: Jesus is crucified.
 
Glad to hear there will be subtitles. I know he was having a very hard time finding a distributor. Maybe he had to compromise that way to get one.
 
...(snip)

Here's a spoiler: Jesus is crucified.

:(

And I was so hoping to be surprised. *cries*

Forgive me. But I think that seeing a movie in a language you have no hope of understanding would be a bit unsatisfying.

Has art form gone insane here? :confused:

I'm sorry, I know I'm an ignorant English-only speaker. :eek:

But if you want to make a silent film, then make it silent.

I wonder, what did the actors have to go through to learn their lines? :eek:
 
I watch a lot of foreign films with subtitles, so subtitles don't bother me at all. Without the subs, and in a dead language, WOULD be going to far, even for an "art for art's sake" guy like me, no matter how well known the story. But, lots of people like opera, in languages they don't know.
 
I for one have never seen the big deal in the portrayal of how Jesus is captured and put to death - so he pissed off some of the Jewish leaders, and they handed him over to the Romans for death. Like that's never happened before... :rolleyes:

And the gospels are quite clear that it wasn't the Jewish people as a whole who were responsible, but some (and only some) of the religious leaders.

I just think some people are just overly sensitive about these things.
 
Am I then the only person hear who would love to give it a shot? A purely visual, graphic film about a story we all know?

The dialogue isn't the point. It would be incidental, just one of many many sounds in the action.

Oh well.
 
If it were made as a silent film, old Mighty, I'd agree with you. But just how much of the film are you talking about?

An entire film, with a sound element, that I couldn't appreciate would annoy me.

I am no fan of opera, but do like how opera houses are now getting into the whole idea of "wow, maybe it's even better if people know what the heck is going on". :rolleyes:
 

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