A bit of the old ultra-violence

My weekend started with me watching the first half hour of "Irreversible", the most god-awful French film ever made. To give you an idea of how French it is, the first line of the movie (spoken by a naked, old Frenchman) is, "Time destroys all things." To give you an idea of how god-awful it is, it features a 10 minute rape scene that was the most brutal and unrelenting horror show ever recorded on film. I feel a lesser person for having watched it.

I said "was the most brutal", because then I went and saw "The Passion".

I saw it alone because Katie refused to see it, as did my roommate. "Wusses," I thought. This movie is, without a doubt, the most violent thing I've ever seen. Ever. And I play a lot of video games. I laughed at Grand Theft Auto as I ran over innocent bystanders in my tank. I yawned throughout Resident Evil as I blew zombies to pieces. The Passion just pissed me off. A whole lot. I think it was the audience. One woman in the back was yelling stuff at the screen -- I couldn't actually made out what she said, but I think it was something along the lines of, "Judas, you bastard!" Another woman totally lost her shit at around the time Jesus was crucified, and just started sobbing very loudly. All of this kind of pissed me off, because I didn't think all of the torture Jesus was going through was particularly sad. It was unnecessary. Plus, I found myself thinking, "Just DIE already, for Christ's -- er, Your sake." I was counting the minutes until the crucifixion. Then they nailed him to the cross, and I looked down at my watch.

"Shit, there's still 30 minutes left? Fuck me."

I actually considered walking out. I've never walked out of a movie before, and I probably never will, because: a) I need to know how a story ends, even if it sucks, and b) I invested 6 bucks (saw a matinee show) in that motherfucker.
I'm glad I stuck it out until the end and got to see zombie Jesus. Here's my question: Why did Mel decide to have the resurrected Christ still have holes through his palms? Is it just to tip off the audience that this actually is Christ risen from the dead? Because it looked B-level-horror-film cheesy. And people in the audience actually cheered when they saw that crap. "What the hell is wrong with you people? Didn't you see this coming? I mean, it's not exactly an M. Night Shyamalan-esque twist ending."

All that being said, there were parts I did kinda like. Namely, all the stuff that didn't involve Jesus getting scourged. The portrayal of Pontius Pilate, the "cast the first stone" flashback, the very beginning, Peter, and so on. Plus, I learned how to count in Latin (thanks to the aforementioned scourging). And I kind of see why the violence was necessary -- it says a lot about the J-Man that he could get whipped with metal-spike-tipped chains and still say things like, "Love your enemies". So I'm about 50/50 on the whole deal. Would've been more interesting without all the blood.

P.S. Didn't think it was anti-semitic. Of course, since Mel himself started the rumors of anti-semitism by saying, "It's not anti-semitic" 3 months before anyone actually saw any footage, that's probably not surprising. The Jews are a bit like a seething mob of bloodthirsy bastards, but so are most of the Romans. Especially the ones doing the scourging. So it all evens out.