Funmurphys: the Blog

Still More Passion

Who knew that a movie about Christ's death would be a murder mystery. A lot more gory than my favorite, Miss Marple or her Americanization, Jessica Fletcher, but a murder mystery nevertheless. I suppose the whole "Who Shot J.R.?" thing was so unpopular, certain Jewish groups figured turning The Passion into "Who Killed Christ?" would hurt it at the box office. Based on the press, it reminds me of The Jagged Edge, in that even when the killer is revealed, my wife and I couldn't tell if it was Jeff Bridges or not. What these groups failed to realize is that I, along with nearly all other Christians, already had an answer to that particular mystery from around the time of my acceptance of Jesus as Lord, and the answer is we all did.

Reviews are all over the map - some were intellectually engaged,more than one thought it profound, some some moved by it, some hated it, and some don't want to see it at all. Oddly enough, none of them saw it as a murder mystery.

One of the interesting things about the movie is how people describe Gibson's take on Pontius Pilate. Andrew Sullivan proclaims "Pilate, the Saint". Others are more nuanced in that they say Pilate stands in for us - if he were a brute, we couldn't identify with him. When Mel Gibson talked about Pilate in his interview with Bill O'Reilly, this is what he said:

"He actually condemned a man to death who he had proclaimed he thought was innocent. ... He's a monster."

I'm both looking forward to seeing it, and dreading it at the same time.