I wrote the following over at Dean's World and thought so well of myself I suggested that I post it here...and you know what? I agreed to do it!

I agree that the most interesting thing about the movie is that is it one person's witnessing of the passion, much in the same way that 1988's "The Last Temptation of Christ" was a movie about the novelist Nikos Kazantzakis's witnessing of a different kind. I supppose what will not get me into the theatre, aside from the fact that I just do not go to movies and especially bloddy ones, is that for me the awful events of the last 12 hours of Christ's life, the violence done to his body (being the same violence done by the Romans to all criminals of a certain sort - witness the end of "Spartacus" and its highway of the crucified) is pretty well-known ground for me - and not one, for my personal experience of faith, which is especially or singularly overwhelming compared to other elements in the Bible.

But that is one of the important aspects to the faith, confirmed by the textual fact of the multiple perspectives of the four gospels. Once, I heard a very interesting radio essay on the idea that the passion of Christ was something of a counterpoint to Job, whose sufferings at something like God's whim lasted much longer. For my money, if you want an amazing perspective on the Easter story and the passion, read the 1930's novel "Master and the Margarita" by Bulgakov. All are valid witnessings to the same event, which, to the Christian faithful is the one real corner taken in history.