rj_anderson (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rj_anderson) wrote2003-10-30 08:03 pm
rj_anderson) wrote2003-10-30 08:03 pm
Entry tags:
Go. See. NOW.
I took the evening off and drove out to our nearest Mega-Cinema-plex thingmy to see The Gospel of John last night. And I'm so glad I did, because it was just... wow.
I feel sorry that more people didn't know about this film before it came out, and that even now that it's in wide release across North America, hardly anybody seems to have heard about it. But it's still out there if you want to see it on the big screen. And I would heartily recommend that you do. Or at least see the DVD/video when it becomes available.
Beautifully filmed and acted, with real reverence and attention to detail -- this is the LOTR of Biblical films, only more so. Not that it's full of eye-popping special effects, or anything of that sort; the filmmakers were smart enough not to load the film down with those kinds of distractions, and when they show supernatural or miraculous elements it's done without glitz or fanfare. No, it's just a faithful, comprehensive, high-quality dramatization of John's gospel. And even though the film clocks in at just under three hours, it never drags.
Christopher Plummer's superb narration helps a lot, to be sure. It's difficult to complain about having the gospel of John read to you in its entirety, word for word, when a voice like that is doing the reading. Jeff Danna's gorgeous, haunting score enhances the story's drama. And when the film is further enhanced by an absolutely brilliant performance by Henry Ian Cusick in the central role... well.
A movie like this really stands or falls on the portrayal of Jesus Christ, and until now I'd really never seen a film that I thought did Him justice. Many times He comes across as a remote, otherworldly figure, blandly serene and detached from the rest of humanity -- an insipid sort of God and an even less attractive Man. Or, as in some more recent films, speculation and conjecture have run rampant and presented us with a Christ plagued by self-doubt and buffeted by myriad temptations -- not Godly at all. In both cases it's difficult to imagine what the disciples see in this Jesus person, or to understand how His message could turn the first-century world upside-down and resonate across the centuries to touch millions of people.
Not so with this film. Cusick's portrayal is nothing short of amazing* -- he makes Christ's every word ring with such conviction and authority that you can completely understand the temple guards' testimony that "No one ever spoke like this man," and yet in his face-to-face conversations with His disciples and others there is such a wealth of compassion and sympathy and understanding that you can readily see why so many people loved Him. This Jesus's emotions are real, not contrived; His answers are thoughtful, never pat; and yet He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt who He is and what He has come to do. This is the Jesus I recognize from reading the gospels, and it's a real thrill to see the Biblical account of His life and words taken seriously.
For me, the most moving part of the film was the death and resurrection of Lazarus -- the grief of Mary and Martha, and of Jesus Himself, is so deep and real that I was sniffing and blinking back tears of my own. But I also chuckled at several points -- most notably the bit where the Chief Pharisee is lambasting the temple guards; all it took was a flicker of the chief guard's eye and one quick shot of an innocent-looking Nicodemus, and I started giggling. You'll understand why if you see it.
To avoid accusations of anti-semitism similar to those being levelled at Mel Gibson's upcoming film The Passion of Christ, The Gospel of John takes care to present its message without giving needless offense. Right from the beginning of the film it's emphasized that Christ and all His disciples were Jewish, and that the religious leaders, not the general populace, were the ones who opposed Jesus and sought His death -- a death which could not have been effected without the involvement and cooperation of the Roman authorities as well. That information is already there in the text of John's gospel, so the emphasis is not unwarranted, and goes a long way toward defusing controversy.
Anyway, I could go on in this vein all day, but it boils down to this: The Gospel of John is really good, and a considerable number of reviewers, even secular ones, appear to agree. So if you're even just a little bit interested, and you've got the chance, it's worth seeing. Really.
--
* I do have one misgiving, however. This would be it. Isaiah prophesied of the Messiah that "There was no beauty in him that we should desire him," and the gospels likewise give no indication that anyone was drawn to Christ on account of his appearance. But Henry Ian Cusick's Jesus is distractingly good-looking and buff, and it's hard to concentrate on deep theological insights when you are suppressing a mad urge to wibble.
8:03 p.m. -- Edited to correct the implication that Gibson's Passion of Christ is demonstrably anti-semitic -- further reading, including a number of reviews written by Jewish commentators who have seen a rough cut of the film, seems to indicate that this is not the case.
I feel sorry that more people didn't know about this film before it came out, and that even now that it's in wide release across North America, hardly anybody seems to have heard about it. But it's still out there if you want to see it on the big screen. And I would heartily recommend that you do. Or at least see the DVD/video when it becomes available.
Beautifully filmed and acted, with real reverence and attention to detail -- this is the LOTR of Biblical films, only more so. Not that it's full of eye-popping special effects, or anything of that sort; the filmmakers were smart enough not to load the film down with those kinds of distractions, and when they show supernatural or miraculous elements it's done without glitz or fanfare. No, it's just a faithful, comprehensive, high-quality dramatization of John's gospel. And even though the film clocks in at just under three hours, it never drags.
Christopher Plummer's superb narration helps a lot, to be sure. It's difficult to complain about having the gospel of John read to you in its entirety, word for word, when a voice like that is doing the reading. Jeff Danna's gorgeous, haunting score enhances the story's drama. And when the film is further enhanced by an absolutely brilliant performance by Henry Ian Cusick in the central role... well.
A movie like this really stands or falls on the portrayal of Jesus Christ, and until now I'd really never seen a film that I thought did Him justice. Many times He comes across as a remote, otherworldly figure, blandly serene and detached from the rest of humanity -- an insipid sort of God and an even less attractive Man. Or, as in some more recent films, speculation and conjecture have run rampant and presented us with a Christ plagued by self-doubt and buffeted by myriad temptations -- not Godly at all. In both cases it's difficult to imagine what the disciples see in this Jesus person, or to understand how His message could turn the first-century world upside-down and resonate across the centuries to touch millions of people.
Not so with this film. Cusick's portrayal is nothing short of amazing* -- he makes Christ's every word ring with such conviction and authority that you can completely understand the temple guards' testimony that "No one ever spoke like this man," and yet in his face-to-face conversations with His disciples and others there is such a wealth of compassion and sympathy and understanding that you can readily see why so many people loved Him. This Jesus's emotions are real, not contrived; His answers are thoughtful, never pat; and yet He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt who He is and what He has come to do. This is the Jesus I recognize from reading the gospels, and it's a real thrill to see the Biblical account of His life and words taken seriously.
For me, the most moving part of the film was the death and resurrection of Lazarus -- the grief of Mary and Martha, and of Jesus Himself, is so deep and real that I was sniffing and blinking back tears of my own. But I also chuckled at several points -- most notably the bit where the Chief Pharisee is lambasting the temple guards; all it took was a flicker of the chief guard's eye and one quick shot of an innocent-looking Nicodemus, and I started giggling. You'll understand why if you see it.
To avoid accusations of anti-semitism similar to those being levelled at Mel Gibson's upcoming film The Passion of Christ, The Gospel of John takes care to present its message without giving needless offense. Right from the beginning of the film it's emphasized that Christ and all His disciples were Jewish, and that the religious leaders, not the general populace, were the ones who opposed Jesus and sought His death -- a death which could not have been effected without the involvement and cooperation of the Roman authorities as well. That information is already there in the text of John's gospel, so the emphasis is not unwarranted, and goes a long way toward defusing controversy.
Anyway, I could go on in this vein all day, but it boils down to this: The Gospel of John is really good, and a considerable number of reviewers, even secular ones, appear to agree. So if you're even just a little bit interested, and you've got the chance, it's worth seeing. Really.
--
* I do have one misgiving, however. This would be it. Isaiah prophesied of the Messiah that "There was no beauty in him that we should desire him," and the gospels likewise give no indication that anyone was drawn to Christ on account of his appearance. But Henry Ian Cusick's Jesus is distractingly good-looking and buff, and it's hard to concentrate on deep theological insights when you are suppressing a mad urge to wibble.
8:03 p.m. -- Edited to correct the implication that Gibson's Passion of Christ is demonstrably anti-semitic -- further reading, including a number of reviews written by Jewish commentators who have seen a rough cut of the film, seems to indicate that this is not the case.
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Good Lord, yes.
Oh, oops. Sorry. :) In any case, I suppose that is the movie world for you. No one was supposed to find Frodo sexy, either.
Glad you liked the film, and I will put it on the "future Netflix orders" list.
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*sits back to wait for the DVD*
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(Anonymous) 2003-10-30 01:33 pm (UTC)(link)Do you think you'll see The Passion for comparison's sake, or is all the bad press too much to bear?
Em
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In any case, AMC Barton Square is showing it -- after this review I'll have to check it out.
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GOD, I love Celtboys.
Coin Flip
From the September issue of Time Magazine:
The Problem With Passion
It is a wrenching tableau. A brutalized Jesus is displayed by Roman Governor Pontius Pilate, who announces derisively, "Ecce Homo," behold the man. A mob, ostensibly made up of Jesus' fellow Jews, responds with a bloodthirsty roar. They fill a massive courtyard; there must be a thousand of them.
And oops, there it is. Long before The Passion's full release (the scene is from a trailer), Mel Gibson's film has already ignored the guidance of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1988 for dramatizers of Christ's last hours. The advisory warns, among other things, against "changing the small 'crowd' at the Governor's palace into a teeming mob." Why? Such an exaggeration, the bishops claim, would misleadingly suggest that the Jews as a body, indeed as a race, wanted Jesus dead.
Gibson is a traditionalist Catholic who may care little what the more liberal Bishops' Conference thinks. But the guidelines' very existence and concerned tone suggest the sensitivity of the issue facing anyone translating the Passion for stage and screen: Is it possible to do a biblically accurate drama about Jesus' trial and death without feeding anti-Semitism?
The first challenge is the Gospels themselves. All four describe complicity by at least some Jews in Christ's execution. But they differ on details, such as the community's unanimity and its influence with Pilate, Jerusalem's Roman ruler. Matthew, Mark and Luke accuse individuals and Jewish subgroups but leave room for the (likely) possibility that many rank-and-file Jews sympathized with Jesus or were indifferent. John, however, repeatedly refers to "the Jews" as a whole, implying collective guilt. Matthew provides the only report of a seemingly damning oath by the spectators at Jesus' trial: "His blood be on us and on our children."
Modern theologians find such passages highly subject to interpretation. They point out that Jesus and the Apostles saw themselves as Jews; John's wholesale condemnation of the faith, they speculate, may reflect Christian-Jewish rancor in A.D. 95, when that Gospel was written, more than the politics of Jesus' era. The great Catholic scholar Raymond Brown concluded upon meticulous examination that the "blood on our children" line was a specific group's oath of responsibility rather than an assumption of eternal, racial guilt.
Such exegetical niceties, however, eluded the Christians who pioneered the Passion as theatrical entertainment back in the Middle Ages. What came to be called Passion plays were harder edged than the Gospels, dropping Jesus' earlier teachings on tolerance and love to focus on his moment of supreme self-sacrifice. They also imbibed the malignant anti-Jewish spirit of their age, when peasants believed that Jews mixed the blood of Gentile children into Passover matzos. Consistent with such prejudice — and with the black-hat, white-hat needs of early dramaturgy — Passion plays presented Jews as money-grubbing Christ killers, a dramatic rendering that enjoyed a centuries-long run. Attending Oberammergau's famous staging in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler said enthusiastically, "Never has the menace of Jewry been so convincingly portrayed."
The Holocaust caused much Catholic rethinking. It contributed to the Second Vatican Council's 1965 decision to clear the Jews of deicide. It also lurks behind the bishops' 1988 guidelines, which, in micromanaging prospective productions, strive so earnestly to help modern auteurs sidestep the Passion plays' excesses. "Presentations ... should [avoid] any implication that Jesus' death was a result of religious antagonism between a stereotyped 'Judaism' and Christian doctrine," they warn. "It is not sufficient for [artists] to respond to responsible criticism simply by appealing to the notion that 'It's in the Bible.' One must account for one's selections."
It is an accounting that, regardless of whether he heeds the advisory, Gibson will no doubt be asked to make.
Re: Coin Flip
Anyway, John is a great deal less condemnatory of his own nation than a lot of the prophets were -- as I'm sure you know, the Tanakh is full of forceful statements about the wickedness of Israel and Judah and their need for repentance before God brings judgment on them. If the prophets are not anti-semitic for speaking out against their own people even when their criticisms are levelled at the whole nation, I don't see how John is anti-semitic for speaking negatively of one sub-group of his own people.
As for Mel Gibson, believe me when I say that I have no vested interest in supporting his movie at any cost, because a) I'm not Catholic, b) I am not a Gibson fan and c) I'm already quite happy with Gospel of John, so I feel no imminent need for another movie. As such, I was quite ready to believe that the film was anti-semitic when I first heard the charges.
However, it appears that all the articles so far written which have condemned the film and accused Gibson of anti-semitism were based on a rough trailer and a lot of assumptions, rather than on the actual film. Those Jewish commentators who have seen the film itself appear to be okay with it, and do not consider it a threat to their safety and integrity or to the safety and integrity of the Jewish people as a whole.
See Michael Medved's online chat at Washingtonpost.com (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A21289-2003Aug5?language=printer); and especially David Horowitz's commentary (http://www.frontpagemag.com/blog/BlogEntry.asp?ID=190) after seeing the film, and if you disagree you can take it up with them -- having not seen the film, I don't feel I'm in a position to pass judgment on it myself.
Re: Coin Flip
I have read the ones you linked to, and will be glad to actually *see* the movie before making such rash judgements about it again, how does that sound?
Re: Coin Flip
I can sympathize with your concerns, though. Because anti-semitism is a real and an ugly thing, and anything that feeds it should be challenged and, if need be, fought.
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(Anonymous) 2003-12-14 02:55 am (UTC)(link)hi cusick
Eep! Never underestimate the power of the ego-surf...
well yeah, but
Re: well yeah, but
REALLY nice fan page, by the way. Have you heard from HIC yet? If he left a comment on my LJ, he must be ego-surfing, so it's only a matter of time before he finds your page if he hasn't already. I can't help thinking he'd be impressed...
Re: well yeah, but
Since you asked, yes, I have heard from the man himself ... he's been very supportive and is just a great guy, even nicer than I'd imagined. He has a fan for life here!
Hope to be adding more to the web site in the New Year!
Happy Holidays!