Product Description

The Passion of the Christ focuses on the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life. The film begins in the Garden of Olives where Jesus has gone to pray after the Last Supper. Jesus must resist the temptations of Satan. Betrayed by Judas Iscariot Jesus is then arrested and taken within the city walls of Jerusalem where leaders of the Pharisees confront him with accusations of blasphemy and his trial results in a condemnation to death.System Requirements: Running Time 127 MinFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: FOREIGN/LATIN Rating: R UPC: 024543129752 Manufacturer No: 2222975

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3070 in DVD
• Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
• Released on: 2004-08-31
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: Hebrew
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 126 minutes

Amazon.com

After all the controversy and rigorous debate has subsided, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ will remain a force to be reckoned with. In the final analysis, "Gibson's Folly" is an act of personal bravery and commitment on the part of its director, who self-financed this $25-30 million production to preserve his artistic goal of creating the Passion of Christ ("Passion" in this context meaning "suffering") as a quite literal, in-your-face interpretation of the final 12 hours in the life of Jesus, scripted almost directly from the gospels (and spoken in Aramaic and Latin with a relative minimum of subtitles) and presented as a relentless, 126-minute ordeal of torture and crucifixion. For Christians and non-Christians alike, this film does not "entertain," and it's not a film that one can "like" or "dislike" in any conventional sense. (It is also emphatically not a film for children or the weak of heart.) Rather, The Passion is a cinematic experience that serves an almost singular purpose: to show the scourging and death of Jesus Christ in such horrifically graphic detail (with Gibson's own hand pounding the nails in the cross) that even non-believers may feel a twinge of sorrow and culpability in witnessing the final moments of the Son of God, played by Jim Caviezel in a performance that's not so much acting as a willful act of submission, so intense that some will weep not only for Christ, but for Caviezel's unparalleled test of endurance.

Leave it to the intelligentsia to debate the film's alleged anti-Semitic slant; if one judges what is on the screen (so gloriously served by John Debney's score and Caleb Deschanel's cinematography), there is fuel for debate but no obvious malice aforethought; the Jews under Caiaphas are just as guilty as the barbaric Romans who carry out the execution, especially after Gibson excised (from the subtitles, if not the soundtrack) the film's most controversial line of dialogue. If one accepts that Gibson's intentions are sincere, The Passion can be accepted for what it is: a grueling, straightforward (some might say unimaginative) and extremely violent depiction of the Passion, guaranteed to render devout Christians speechless while it intensifies their faith. Non-believers are likely to take a more dispassionate view, and some may resort to ridicule. But one thing remains undebatable: with The Passion of the Christ, Gibson put his money where his mouth is. You can praise or damn him all you want, but you've got to admire his chutzpah. --Jeff Shannon

DVD features
By including no supplemental features (not even the theatrical trailer), The Passion of the Christ maximizes its disc space to create one of the best-looking and best-sounding DVDs available. The picture and colors are sharp and vivid, and the soundtrack is powerful and envelops the viewer with surround effects. The original Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew language track is available in DTS and Dolby 5.1, and there's also an audio-described track for the visually impaired (in which a narrator recounts the on-screen action in English). Subtitle options are English, English for the hearing impaired (which in addition to the dialogue describes sound effects such as "[yelling]"), and Spanish. --David Horiuchi

From The New Yorker
Mel Gibson's bloody re-creation of the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus is one of the cruellest movies in the history of the cinema. Gibson and the screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald selected and enhanced incidents from the four Gospels and collated them into a single, surpassingly violent narrative in which the incomparable glories of Jesus' temperament-the joyousness, the brilliance, the heart-stopping eloquence-are all but effaced by the spectacle of his physical destruction. The lashing and flaying, often in slow-motion, go on forever, and Gibson displays a curious technical fascination with the details of crucifixion-huge nails being hammered into hands and feet, with James Caviezel's Jesus howling at each blow. Here and there, the movie has a kind of grim power, and Caleb Deschanel's even gray lighting at the Crucifixion is stunning, but this is a sickening, unilluminating, and ignorant show. The filmmakers have also changed in small ways a number of things from the Gospels and ignored what historians know of ancient Judea, all with the result of making the Jewish leaders more, and the Roman leaders less, responsible for the death of Jesus. It's a deeply angry film, and one wonders how believers can react to it with anything but guilt, fear, or loathing. -David Denby
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

Customer Reviews

Preaching to the converted
The other night, I went to see Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" again. I must admit I didn't like it any better this time. I thought that, on second viewing, the movie would just fly by, as so often happens when you resee a film. On the contrary, I found it long and, at one point, I actually started nodding off. (Not during the flogging scene, I can assure you of that. I felt more distant and remote then, less viscerally affected by the violence.) While I didn't like "The Passion" any better, I did come away with a greater understanding of the imagery Gibson uses -- more specifically, its roots in scripture. For instance, I realized that he was portraying Judas as mad -- possessed, in fact -- based on the gospel verse that says, "The devil entered into him." At the beginning, when Jesus steps on the serpent and kills it, that echoes a verse in Genesis: "He shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for his heel." This verse has traditionally been seen as God's promise of a Redeemer for a fallen humanity. The problem is, how many moviegoers today will be aware of these biblical references -- even Christians? Gibson's film is obviously a testament to his own faith. But he has made the assumption that everybody else shares that belief, and has thus made a film that, in effect, preaches to the converted. What about those who do not believe, or who simply do not know about Jesus? Gibson's "Passion" will not reach them because it does not speak, does not even try to speak, their language. The other problem is that Gibson's version of the death of Christ is a hodge-podge of biblical influences, popular piety and his own idiosyncratic touches. Jesus's trek along the Via Dolorosa reflects, not the gospels, but the Stations of the Cross you find in every Catholic church. Many of the 15 stations portray events not mentioned in the gospels. Again, how many people in the audience will be able to separate fact from fiction? One final note: "The Passion" has been accused of fostering anti-Semitism, yet it tells the story of One who was Himself a Jew. More than that, His death took place against the backdrop of one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar, Passover. When Mary says, "Why is this night different from all other nights?" she echoes the question asked by the youngest male member of every observant Jewish family on Passover night. And Jesus's Last Supper was a Passover meal. This is hinted at, but not fully brought out in the film. In short, Gibson takes too much for granted, assumes that his audience shares his knowledge of the Christian faith -- and misses a golden opportunity to explain that faith to others.

the scourging alone would have killed him
This is a good film which closely follows the testimony of the New Testament Gospels. The filming is graphic and detailed and the decision to have people speak in their original languages was very intelligent. The film has been accused of being antisemitic--partly because of Gibson's escapades-but I don't see it. It is no more antisemitic than the Gospels, themselves. Yes, I think it can be argued that the Gospels show an anti-Pharasee bias--make that an anti-establishment bias--but they can't be antisemitic. The early Christians, precisely the ones who wrote the New Testament, were all Jews. It is hardly credible that they were antisemites. They were, however, members of a new wave of Judaism, a wave that witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem and the razing of Herod's Temple. They didn't like the Temple Establishment and their writings show it, sometimes even glossing over the Roman responsibility for Jesus' crucifixion.

The film is both detailed and excruciating. It emphasizes Jesus' suffering for mankind. It's difficult to 'overdo' something as hideous as death by crucifixion but I think the directors come close. The scourging is overdone to the point of unbelievability. It goes on far too long and is laid on with too much force. The scourging of the type depicted may have killed a man without the necessity of a cross. Of a near absolute certainty, a man so scourged would never be able to pull--even with help--the cross up to the hill of Golgotha.

Other than that I have only one other technical comment and that involves the cross, itself. The cross has become the living symbol of many Christian faiths but many people believe that there was never a cross. There is evidence that, in some places, the uprights were always kept in place on the execution ground. The condemned man carried the crosspiece on his shoulder to the place of execution.

In A.D. 70, Jerusalem fell to a Roman army and thousands were crucified around its walls. It seems highly unlikely that full crosses were used in the executions.

Ron Braithwaite author of novels--"Skull Rack" and "Hummingbird God"--on the Spanish Conquest of Mexico

Powerful.
The Passion of the Christ was much-hyped when it was released in 2004. Mel Gibson who wrote and directed this film took a lot of heat, critics said this epic was a direct insult to Jewish people. I watched this film a few years ago and this film is violent but I don't think the point of view takes aim at any religion in particular, I think every religion had a part in the horrible death of Jesus Christ. This film uses sub-titles so get ready to read dialogue. James Caviezel is a splendid actor, hope he continues to make more incredible films in the future. Mel Gibson may have been used as punching bag but you can't ignore the brilliance of this controversial drama.