Love you, Mel

So I finally broke down and watched "The Passion of the Christ" last night. Yesterday I ended up in this conversation with someone about Oliver Stone flicks. My friend said that he had this thing for Alexander the Great biographies, and he felt like that had been "his thing" since childhood. Then he said that he wasn't sure how he felt about going to see "Alexander" because he hated Oliver Stone movies.

I know Stone is controversial and just plain weird, but I told my friend I thought he should go see the flick just because Oliver apparently feels the same way about Alexander. Stone has been an Alexander junkie since childhood also (and that is a whole lot longer time to be passionate about something) and had to bust his balls to get that flick made.

So then I thought about my whole premise I just laid out. Because someone has made a film and considers it to be their life work - they committed so much passion and energy into making sure that it happened - you should go see that intense passion encapsulated into a two hour flick.

So I felt bad. I hadn't seen Mel Gibson's passion, just because I thought I wasn't interested in the subject at hand. Truth be known, I wasn't interested at all, I didn't want to go see some flick and experience a religious conversion and come home to Jesus.

But I loved it. Not for the religious significance, but because ol' Mel did a really great job. I agree it isn't Oscar worthy, because it isn't that exceptional of a movie artistically, but as far as laying out a picture of what we have only heard or read.... it was nearly perfect. I had to explain to Zee a lot of Mel's rationale for doing certain things, because Mel is a fundamentalist and reads the good book line by line. We know that certain elements were not correct because we are a little more aware of the finite details. However, the big picture, minus the details, as described in the book was shown on screen.

Am glad I changed my mind and decided to watch it. Most likely one of those films that just "needs to be seen". Also glad Zee didn't have a stroke when I asked him to watch it with me. It brought discussion to the table, and most films you watch don't do that anymore. Now I am off to go steal Dad's "South Park-The Passion of the Christ" episode.