Mel Gibson's The Passion, sparking concern from the ADL.

You already have. Do you believe that is particularly bad? Are there any other, competing types of propoganda out there? Is the religious variety in any way worse in your view?

Well, I guess I don't need to go see the film and make up my own mind about its merits then, do I?

George
Yes, if it incites religious intolerance. The same intolerance that is responsible for murder, massacres, pogroms, inquisitions, holocausts and, etc., thru the ages.

'Passion' critics retract reviews

Early detractors of Mel Gibson's hit film, "The Passion of the Christ," are backing away from their critical remarks after the movie grossed a record-setting $26.6 million on its opening day.
"The Passion," which opened Wednesday on 4,643 screens at 3,006 theaters, set a record for the biggest opening day for a movie released outside the summer (May-August) and winter holiday months (November-December).
It came in third among all movies that have premiered on a Wednesday, bypassed only by "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" ($34.5 million) and "Star Wars: Episode 1 ?- The Phantom Menace" ($28.5 million), according to the movie tracking service Box Office Mojo.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) retracted critical remarks made about the film last April by its ecumenical and interreligious committee, which suggested that the film might be anti-Semitic.
In remarks released Wednesday on Catholic News Service, three staff members of the USCCB's Office for Film and Broadcasting said the film might be overly violent but not anti-Semitic.
"Concerning the issue of anti-Semitism, the Jewish people are at no time blamed collectively for Jesus' death," said a review by Gerri Pare, David DiCerto and Anne Navarro. "Rather, Christ freely embraces his destiny."
The reviewers went on to call the movie "an artistic achievement in terms of its textured cinematography, haunting atmospherics, lyrical editing, detailed production and soulful score."
Hollywood film company Dreamworks also backed away from remarks published in yesterday's New York Times suggesting that Hollywood producers will blacklist Mr. Gibson.
Quoting unnamed studio executives, the article said some of Hollywood's biggest producers were angry over Mr. Gibson's refusal to repudiate remarks by his father, Hutton Gibson, a Holocaust denier.
In a Feb. 16 ABC interview with Diane Sawyer, Mr. Gibson agreed that millions of Jews died in the Holocaust, but refused to condemn his father.
"He's my father," Mr. Gibson said. "Gotta leave it alone, Diane. Gotta leave it alone."
A spokeswoman for Dreamworks founders Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen released this statement:
"Neither one of us has seen the movie yet, and as such, we have not yet formed an opinion, but we respect Mel Gibson's rights as an artist to express his views," it said. "After all, this is America."
Mark Joseph, an entertainment executive in Los Angeles and author of the upcoming book "The Passion of Mel Gibson: The Story Behind the Most Controversial Film in Hollywood History," said the film industry is in shock.
"This town is rocking," he said, "wondering what it all means. This is the film everyone deemed unreleasable."
According to the Feb. 20 issue of Entertainment Weekly, Mr. Gibson told actor Jim Caviezel, who plays Jesus, that "The Passion" could be a career wrecker.
"You don't have to do this," Mr. Gibson reportedly told the actor in fall 2002. "After you finish this film, you may never work in Hollywood again."
Seattle Rabbi Daniel Lapin, the founder of Toward Tradition who has written extensively on Jews and Hollywood, predicted yesterday that the film will take in $100 million in its first three weeks.
"They used to call such treatment 'McCarthyism,'" Rabbi Lapin said, referring to the barrage of negative criticism unleashed on Mr. Gibson and his film. "If the film had bombed, that would have hurt Mr. Gibson's career. Now they are standing in line for it."
Mr. Caviezel, he added, should at least be nominated for an Oscar.
"If not, [Hollywood] will leave itself open to charges of antireligious prejudice," he said. Many in the industry, he added, "are prostitutes, and they will go wherever the money is."
Debate over the film has sprung up across the country. A Denver pastor, the Rev. Maurice Gordon, displayed the message, "Jews Killed The Lord Jesus," in front of Lovingway United Pentecostal Church Wednesday.
The sign outraged Jewish and Christian passers-by. One bystander brought a ladder and removed the word "Jews." Church members removed the rest.
Even Democratic front-runner John Kerry weighed in during a visit to Los Angeles yesterday, telling reporters that the movie could be anti-Semitic.
"I am concerned," Mr. Kerry, a Catholic, told reporters. "I don't know if it's there or not, but there's a lot of it around now. I think we have to be careful."

Schools showed thousands of children "Amastad". That was no more and no less "propaganda". Of course, from all accounts so far, "The Passion" is historically accurate. Amastad was not, yet school children were tested for their knowledge of the "facts" portrayed in that movie that were clearly not historical fact. If you want to worry about propaganda, worry about teaching lies to school children because we prefer them to reality. That you are surprised that church groups would want to see a film about Jesus is one of the funniest things I've ever read. Why you seem to think that's evidence of something we should worry about, I neither know nor care.

It's just a movie.

The Bible is not a history book and "The Passion" is not historically accurate.

How do you know?

Intolerance takes many forms and exists everywhere. The holocaust was the act of an avowedly atheistic political system. Communist totalitarianism in the 20th century destroyed more lives than any other scourge from any quarter.

The Zionists who created Israel ended up practicing the same forms of intolerance on their Palestinian victims as those that motivated their flight from Europe. Certainly a cruel historical irony that they didn't intend, but true nonetheless.


Intolerance and injustice are the acts of human beings. Don't blame God or religion for that.

By reading history.

Neither are most of the history books you and we have read.

I disagree that the film is summarily anti-Semitic except for the soft treatment of Pontius Pilate and the cut aways to the Jews in the crowd making them look dark and evil. Granted there are the Jews who help and seem compassionate but they are image bites that falter and fade away quickly. I have to agree here with georgeob1 on the fact that there has been intolerance throughout history and not always with a religious base. We don't have a comprehensive body count on what lives were taken in the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance from religious persecution but I would easily believe it was comparable. The point is these lives were taken by those who supposedly followed the teachings of Christ.

It's no doubt that the film will have a respectable gross and we'll have to see in a few weeks what the drop off of box office brings. The film will have to hit 100M Mel sees his cost covered and that depends on how much is spent on promotion, especially TV ads.

The historical descriptions of Pontius Pilate are in accord that he was not as portrayed on the screen. The evidence about Crucifixion does not included railroad spikes driven through the palms.

I'm with LW. How can the bible be a history book, when it was written so many years after the "fact?" Ever see what happens when several people see the same crime as witnesses? People's memory aren't all that good, nor that dependable - even when people claim it's the "word of god."

I don't recall this movie being touted as a history lesson so much as Mel Gibson's interpretation of events that are written about in the bible.

Why are so many up in arms about that? As Scrat said, it's just a movie.

These seem like reasonable, informed comments LW. Well done.

It's Mel's Bible lesson who now imagines that he knows exactly what happened. If he didn't, he would be dishonest committing it to film.

It's just a movie that scrat seems to be unable to divorce himself from making comments on when he has not seen it.

It's an average movie when compared to the best and box office will, as usual, mean nothing as to the quality of the film. How many are going to see it for the brutality and blood? We'll never know -- it's a given that Christians will flock to the cinema but the horrible fact there is they are dragging along young children. Even Mel has warned it is not for children. It should have been NC17 if he really believed that parents wouldn't take young children. He can't get past the Hollywood fakery in the movie to claim it is anything but a commercial movie -- he was against the sub-titles as he did want it to be taken as a (fine) art film. It's pop entertainment if you can call two hours of an unglorified fixation on maiming and blood entertainment or even a religious experience.

None of the film critics who panned the movie are backing away from their reviews.

Gee, scrat, don't make me retract anything I've said you didn't agree with

George
The holocaust was caused [killing of the Jews] by the centuries of venom preached by the Catholic Church against the Jews and the Jewish religion. The holocaust was certainly not the first mass killing of Jews and if some have their way will not be the last. I should remind you that overtime the passion plays were put on in Europe it was murder the Jew time. IMO the Catholic church was indirectly or maybe directly responsible for the Holocaust and the Anti-Semitism that exists to this day.
Is the film Anti-Semitic in itself I suppose not? Will it incite anti-Semitism? Based on what has happened in the past, I would say yes.

As for Israel that is an entirely different subject. However, IMO it is traceable directly to the treatment the Jews endured at the hands of Christian Europe. Would there ever have been the crying need for Israel if it was live and let live in Europe.

I think to Gibson it was a work of devotion, a "giving back" to the God he believes has given him so much. I would hope that would not make the movie a bad thing or less valuable in anyone's eyes.

And I don't think I need to see the movie to comment on the vitriol being spewed about it by many who likewise have not. (I never liked Clinton but I've spoken up when people wrote things that were just patently untrue about him.) This isn't about me being an advocate for the movie; it's about me being an advocate for reason and fairness.

I don't really believe that was Mel's soul motivation. There's Mel's ego to consider -- his false magnanimity.