I am not a christian. I don't associate myself with any religion, including atheism anymore, choosing instead to use my life experiences to form my own beliefs about the universe. But as someone who was raised in a christian household, Jesus' story was told to me countless times. I knew plenty of stories from the bible and when watching movies like this, I know the morals and ideals following each of Jesus' stories. So I'm judging this solely as a piece of cinema. If you have religious connections or values to this film, I respectfully ask you to put them aside for the sake of understanding the art of cinema behind it.
This wasn't a good movie. There were too many moments of laziness, a complete lack of passion, and too awkward of a pace for there to be any connection. The laziness is what really got to me. Swords looked like toys. Costumes looked thrown together. Poorly used green screens litter the more exciting scenes, detracting any sense of believability from the situation. Jesus' hair is disturbingly flawless for a wanderer in the desert, and everything about him and his followers looks far too clean to be believably nomad. Bloody scenes often lack the necessary damage to look believable. In fact one particular scene blatantly showed him being struck in the back with no damage at all.
But then again, this movie was doomed from the start. This wasn't written or structured to be a film. Rather, the successful miniseries on the History Channel served as not just the base for this film, but the entire narrative. The creators took some footage not shown, as well as some footage from the series, and cut it together for a movie. That doesn't work for me. Especially for a christian company. Are you so passionless about the man who defines your entire religion that you won't take the time to tell his story in the proper medium? Is the extra money really so important that you're willing to sacrifice the emotion of the story behind it? It leads to horrendous pacing problems. The film blows through 30 years of story in about 45 minutes. The rest of this 2+ hour movie is devoted to three days. Sure, it can work. But it doesn't here. It's jarring, frustrating, and becomes dreadfully boring.
Jesus Christ is a character I want to love in literature, but he has the same flaw so many other religious figures and influential characters in film have - they are characters that are incredibly interesting at their core, but are given no personality whatsoever. As a non-christian, Jesus Christ is a fascinating figure to me. Not because of religious value, but rather as a human. Here is a man who's father sent him to earth knowing full well he would be brutally killed. That's an awesome set up for abandonment issues. How about when he raised Lazarus from the dead in his tear-filled desperateness to see his friend alive again? That screams immaturity, possibly from being treated like the messiah he claimed to be for his entire life.
The fascination of Jesus for me comes not from his position as the christian god, but rather as a god made human. That to me suggests an imperfect human. In other words, a human. I wish film makers would use that angle. For the non christians in the audience, let us connect with the characters. Just because we don't believe in the religion doesn't mean we can't appreciate the tragedy or drama of a story about a man betrayed by his best friend and brutally killed, days after being praised as a savior. So this movie might have a powerful effect on christian communities. For for those of us who left religion, or don't believe in it, there's no passion to the story anymore
Rank - 1/5
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