My heart is ready, Father... My heart is ready.

I saw The Passion of the Christ Friday night. Before I saw it I read several articles about it, but there were two that really stood out for me. Roger Ebert's review and Orson Scott Card's extended essay are both excellent and highly recommended, but they also tainted the way I watched the film.

I think in the end this is good. Honestly, I really don't know much about the Christian faith. I know the basics (as almost everyone in our society does) but I don't know the details. Both Card and Ebert do, and expressed their knowledge of the details in a way that made sense to this movie. Since they were my guides into the film I don't think it's surprising that the two biggest take away's I had were some of their main points. Simply: it was Christ's purpose on earth to go through the brutal violence in this film and if he's going to sacrifice for the sins of humanity it has to be a real sacrifice, it has to be hard.

Those two points made the brutal violence of this film easier for me. I've explained this to some people who didn't see the movie and they didn't get what I was talking about. I think a lot of that has to do with how well the film does with these points. It really is well made.

There was something else I really noticed too. I'm not a follower of the Christian faith, which requires people to buy into the metaphysical aspects of Jesus' life. But I do watch a lot of science fiction and fantasy movies, which require us to buy into all kinds of fantastic things. So when I watched Passion, I did buy in, but I think only in the context of the film - in much the same way that I buy into the fantasy in The Lord of the Rings or Star Wars when I watch them. That said, I purposefully saw the movie with some Christian friends and we talked about it afterwards. My faith was a subject of the conversation and it has lead me to think about the concept of faith some more. I'm thinking about watching Contact and Signs again - two movies with faith as a central theme.

Lastly, as expected, the line I quoted above really is the inflection point of the movie. Before that it's a little violent and rough, after that it's pure brutality.

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