janelle
01-21-2004, 10:39 PM
by Joal Ryan
Aug 12, 2003, 5:30 PM PT
Is Mel Gibson's film about the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus "the truth" or the potential catalyst for "turn[ing] back the clock on decades of positive progress" between Jews and Christians?
As the Hollywood hyphenate's new film, The Passion, makes the sneak-peek rounds, there is little middle ground among viewers. They're either shocked or awed.
On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League, the hate-group watchdog organization, officially positioned itself among The Passion's critics.
"Sadly, the film contains many of the dangerous teachings that Christians and Jews have worked for so many years to counter," said the ADL's Rabbi Eugene Korn in a statement.
Korn saw the film at an invite-only screening last Friday in Houston. About 50 other religious leaders were in attendance.
On the same day, some 3,000 miles away, in Anaheim, California, about 30,000 devotees of the Harvest Crusades, a Christian fest, watched a four-and-a-half-minute preview highlighting Gibson's bloody and graphic depiction of the Crucifixion.
Dan Walker told the Los Angeles Times he had no reservations about allowing his four young children to watch the scenes. "It's the truth," Walker said.
The ADL begs to differ, calling on Gibson to "modify" his film until it is "historically accurate, theologically sound and free of any anti-Semitic message," per a statement from the group's national director, Abraham H. Foxman.
For now, Gibson, who Oscar'd for directing and coproducing the life story of 13th century Scottish warrior William Wallace in Braveheart, is standing firm.
"Neither he nor his film are inspired by anti-Semitism," publicist Alan Nierob told the Associated Press.
The statement echoes one released by Gibson in June after taking heat for months from both Jewish and Catholic leaders, their concerns as much fueled by a script that its makers say wasn't the final version, as by comments by Gibson's father, Hutton, in the New York Times Magazine.
In that March article, Hutton Gibson had strong word for the Second Vatican Council, a historic, 1962-65 convening of the Catholic Church's bishops that ruled Jews as a group were not to be blamed for Jesus' death. The elder Gibson charged that it was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews," and cast doubt on the events of Holocaust. "Go ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," Hutton Gibson said. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, 6 million?"
His famous son, currently building a traditionalist Catholic Church, maintains his movie is "meant to inspire not offend."
The $25 million film, financed, directed and cowritten by Gibson, doesn't yet have a release date, or a studio home. The star's agents tell the L.A. Times the movie may skip the usual distribution route and find its way into theaters with the backing of a single theater chain.
Angel Eyes' Jim Caviezel stars as Jesus, with Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene.
While the ADL has been quick to issue its thumbs down, others have been just as quick to leap to its defense.
A sampling of the early buzz:
"It is an awesome artifact, an overpowering work...The moral of this Christian story--of Mel Gibson's film--is that we all killed Jesus--Jew and Gentile alike--and tortured him, and we do so every day," civil-rights activist David Horowitz wrote on his Website, FrontPageMagazine.com.
"Some of the bad guys are Jewish, some of the really bad guys are Roman, and virtually all of the good guys are Jewish," conservative commentator/film critic Michael Medved told the Los Angeles Times, hailing The Passion as "the finest Hollywood adaptation ever of a biblical story."
"I thought it was incredible...I actually thought they'd taken a camera and put it in the scene 2,000 years ago," the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of National Association of Evangelicals, said in the Houston Chronicle.
"You can quote me--Mel Gibson's The Passion is not anti-Semitic," Hollywood's top lobbyist Jack Valenti, of the Motion Picture Association, told Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd. "...I found it genuinely moving, serious, a compelling tale."
And while the ADL charges Gibson's film portrays Jews as "enemies of God and the locus of evil," Valenti has a different take: "The villains are the Roman soldiers."
Aug 12, 2003, 5:30 PM PT
Is Mel Gibson's film about the last 12 hours in the life of Jesus "the truth" or the potential catalyst for "turn[ing] back the clock on decades of positive progress" between Jews and Christians?
As the Hollywood hyphenate's new film, The Passion, makes the sneak-peek rounds, there is little middle ground among viewers. They're either shocked or awed.
On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League, the hate-group watchdog organization, officially positioned itself among The Passion's critics.
"Sadly, the film contains many of the dangerous teachings that Christians and Jews have worked for so many years to counter," said the ADL's Rabbi Eugene Korn in a statement.
Korn saw the film at an invite-only screening last Friday in Houston. About 50 other religious leaders were in attendance.
On the same day, some 3,000 miles away, in Anaheim, California, about 30,000 devotees of the Harvest Crusades, a Christian fest, watched a four-and-a-half-minute preview highlighting Gibson's bloody and graphic depiction of the Crucifixion.
Dan Walker told the Los Angeles Times he had no reservations about allowing his four young children to watch the scenes. "It's the truth," Walker said.
The ADL begs to differ, calling on Gibson to "modify" his film until it is "historically accurate, theologically sound and free of any anti-Semitic message," per a statement from the group's national director, Abraham H. Foxman.
For now, Gibson, who Oscar'd for directing and coproducing the life story of 13th century Scottish warrior William Wallace in Braveheart, is standing firm.
"Neither he nor his film are inspired by anti-Semitism," publicist Alan Nierob told the Associated Press.
The statement echoes one released by Gibson in June after taking heat for months from both Jewish and Catholic leaders, their concerns as much fueled by a script that its makers say wasn't the final version, as by comments by Gibson's father, Hutton, in the New York Times Magazine.
In that March article, Hutton Gibson had strong word for the Second Vatican Council, a historic, 1962-65 convening of the Catholic Church's bishops that ruled Jews as a group were not to be blamed for Jesus' death. The elder Gibson charged that it was "a Masonic plot backed by the Jews," and cast doubt on the events of Holocaust. "Go ask an undertaker or the guy who operates the crematorium what it takes to get rid of a dead body," Hutton Gibson said. "It takes one liter of petrol and 20 minutes. Now, 6 million?"
His famous son, currently building a traditionalist Catholic Church, maintains his movie is "meant to inspire not offend."
The $25 million film, financed, directed and cowritten by Gibson, doesn't yet have a release date, or a studio home. The star's agents tell the L.A. Times the movie may skip the usual distribution route and find its way into theaters with the backing of a single theater chain.
Angel Eyes' Jim Caviezel stars as Jesus, with Monica Bellucci as Mary Magdalene.
While the ADL has been quick to issue its thumbs down, others have been just as quick to leap to its defense.
A sampling of the early buzz:
"It is an awesome artifact, an overpowering work...The moral of this Christian story--of Mel Gibson's film--is that we all killed Jesus--Jew and Gentile alike--and tortured him, and we do so every day," civil-rights activist David Horowitz wrote on his Website, FrontPageMagazine.com.
"Some of the bad guys are Jewish, some of the really bad guys are Roman, and virtually all of the good guys are Jewish," conservative commentator/film critic Michael Medved told the Los Angeles Times, hailing The Passion as "the finest Hollywood adaptation ever of a biblical story."
"I thought it was incredible...I actually thought they'd taken a camera and put it in the scene 2,000 years ago," the Rev. Ted Haggard, president of National Association of Evangelicals, said in the Houston Chronicle.
"You can quote me--Mel Gibson's The Passion is not anti-Semitic," Hollywood's top lobbyist Jack Valenti, of the Motion Picture Association, told Daily Variety columnist Army Archerd. "...I found it genuinely moving, serious, a compelling tale."
And while the ADL charges Gibson's film portrays Jews as "enemies of God and the locus of evil," Valenti has a different take: "The villains are the Roman soldiers."