Here it is, ten months after Mel Gibson’s THE PASSION hit the big screen, and it’s still bugging me. Forget the fact that Gibson is a homophobic, religious fanatic. Forget the fact too, that THE PASSION struck out on Golden Globe Award nominations. Doesn’t anyone find it unsettling that in this day of war in Iraq and the religious right trying to curtail our liberties, the third highest grossing film of the year is Mel Gibson’s religious, gore-fest THE PASSION? (Thank God for cartoons and comic books. SHREK and SPIDER-MAN 2 beat Jesus at the box office.)
Violence and religion are today’s staples, while good old sex is being pushed more and more to the sidelines. Why is it that violence is so acceptable and sex, something that should be a celebration between people, is so abhorrent? I’ve ranted about this before: to my friends, on my old website, on this blog… it gets tiresome, I’m sure, but I just don’t understand it. I haven’t seen THE PASSION, nor do I plan to. Some will say that you can’t criticize what you haven’t seen, and I agree with that, so I won’t say anything else about the film.
I saw a couple of good films this weekend. Annette Bening shines in BEING JULIA, a delightfully fun film about the theatre in 1930’s London. On DVD I caught a quiet and intriguing French film by Andr? T?chin? called STRAYED. (Ironically, the latter film was about the effects on everyday people during the German invasion of France during World War II. There is very little violence, and it makes the point quite effectively.)