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It's a new year, folks. This small, incremental numeric shift brings about, as it always has, small and incremental changes in our lives. We make new friends, get new jobs, decide to lose a few pounds or quit smoking. Then, in the heartbeat that is the first day back at work, we often decide to fuck all that and keep binging on life. For me, the new year has brought with it the possibilities of a new life away from the dingy, worm-ridden conservationism of southwest Ohio, the ending of a relationship and a beginning of a marriage for two people very close to me. As I type this, wydren is most likely experiencing a domestic tour-de-force in beautiful Jamaica. We'll save the details on that for later. Right now, I've got my mitts on this site all by my lonesome and I'm itching to piss some people off. Let's get started.

Before proceeding bullishly into this review, I want to make my position on religion abundantly clear: I don't like it. Never have. When I was growing up, I was forced to go to a Catholic school, endure a cranky old traditionalist priest, a child molesting baldy of a priest, the infantesimal boredom that is Sunday morning mass, religion classes (and failing them), mass in the bleachers, the faux that is confession, and being a server at mass. Yes, I was a server. You may laugh... now. Sometime during high school, during one of our Friday masses in the bleachers, I decided that I had lost my faith and would not go down to recieve Communion. After high school, however, my views on faith and religion slowly evolved.

Perhaps most instrumental in this development was a little movie a man named Kevin Smith made called "Dogma". "Dogma", for those of you that haven't seen it, is a movie about two fallen angels banished to Earth (played by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon) who try to use a loophole in Catholic dogma to re-enter Heaven. The message in this movie comes often and clear: "... it doesn't matter what you have faith in, just that you have faith." Such as it is, "Dogma" goes to great lengths to separate the concepts of faith and religion. Suffice it to say that after watching the movie, I had a good idea. If you were to categorize me right now, you might say that I'm a non-practicing Christian, but that wouldn't really get to the heart of how I feel about God, and worse, might associate me with some religious splinter. When it comes to faith, I think the most important thing you can do for your relationship with God is to make up your own damn mind. Read the Bible and interpret it your own way. The most stunning revelation for me occurred fairly recently while attending a buisness conference: the Bible says, in quite clear language, that if you believe that Christ is the son of God and died for your sins, then stand up and state it plainly for all to hear. That is the only requisite to entering God's Kingdom. That's it! It really is that simple! Jesus had a couple other directives and God left a baker's dozen more with a dude named Moses in what we call the "Old" Testament but I'll boil it down for you in Keanu-Reeves-speak: "Be excellent to each other and party on, dudes." <Gets down off his soapbox.>

The topic of religion has always been something of a passive discussion between the senior partners of this site. Wydren has his brand of faith, I have mine and we both accept that. Conversely, "The Passion of The Christ" (TPOTC, for brevity's sake) is a movie that created quite a stir when it was released once upon a time. Actor-turned-Writer/Director Mel Gibson gives us quite a bit to mull over in this film. Gibson is what the Catholic Church refers to as a schism which means he, like me, does not conform to the views of the Catholic Church. He more closely resembles an extreme religious conservative. The masses that are held at his own church, for example, are held in Latin and he has publicly opposed women in the priesthood, the use of contraceptives, and equal rights for gays and lesbians. Regardless of what you think of his religious views, you cannot deny that the man is, in his very first production, already an accomplished filmmaker.

The final hours in the life of Jesus Christ (James Caviezel) are depicted in what some would call graphic detail. These final hours are commonly referred to in church as the Stations of the Cross, a boring and excessively depressing ceremony that involves a lot of standing and kneeling at odd angles. To the filmmakers' credit, this movie is nothing like that but is in fact much more. This movie may appear to the layperson to be an excessively violent interpretation of Christ's final hours, but I think it's important to get out there that the movie isn't really all that violent - I play violent video games, I should know. This is one of those rare instances in moviemaking when the component of the movie transcends what it is and becomes 'art', kinda like Steven Speilberg's seminal "Schindler's List."

This is, to date, the most historically accurate and stirring account of Christ's excruciating demise ever put to any medium. The movie contains no English dialogue since people of the time did not speak English. All lines are spoken in their original Aramaic and Latin for the best in authenticity. This is no Sunday school version of the scourging with pretty pictures and a smiling Jesus on the cross.

The movie also goes out of its way to illustrate that Christ himself had mixed feelings on the idea of dying. In the garden, under Satan's (Rosalinda Celentano) watchful eye, Jesus expresses his God in prayer his apprehension about dying. Then, in one fell stroke, the betrayal of Judas (Luca Lionello) becomes clear as he reports Jesus' whereabouts to the Jewish Temple for a bag of coins. The Roman soldiers sieze Jesus and he is taken to the Temple, questioned, and beaten. He is then taken to a reluctantly portrayed Pontias Pilate (Hristo Shopov). All the while he is followed by his mother Mary (Maia Morgenstern), convert and former prostitute Magdalen (Monica Bellucci), and his apostles John (Hristo Jikov) and Peter (Francesco De Vito).

The whole proceeding is cleverly interpersed with flashbacks of Jesus' life before the Cruxifixion. Scenes from the Sermon on the Mount, life as a carpenter and the Last Supper are all portrayed with the same authentic flair as the scourging, injecting feelings and a soul into a man who has all too often been portrayed on a cross who died for our sins. The movie's statement is clear. Jesus was a normal guy with a simple mission: to bring God's message to everyone and to die in order to cleanse us of our sins. He didn't want to die any more than the rest of us would like to die but he submitted himself to it willingly because it was his purpose. It was the reason he was here.

It is in the performances that this movie truly shines. Hristo Shopov absolutely shines as a conflicted Pontias Pilate. Pilate, like any leader, had to contend with his fair share of civil unrest. Due to the concentration of Jews around the Temple, quite a bit of the actual governing policy in the area was built around them - and they liked it that way. Pilate knew that giving up this one man to death would not only save face but also save countless civil and military lives from the revolt that was outside his doorstep by allowing Jesus to live. Jim Caviezel also deserves major props in his performance by humanizing Jesus. All to often in movies, Jesus is 'Disneyized' and put up on a pedestal. TPOTC brings everyone back down to earth and shows Jesus not as God but as God's Son sent to earth in human form. He had the same fallacies and temptations that you and I have.

Gibson has always had a cinematic flair and the cinematography is top notch, as expected. Sweeping views of Golgotha, the path leading up to it and of the Sermon on the Mount are all served up with equal cinematic spleandor. The scourging is not forgiving at all and nothing is sacrificed to make this movie as eye opening as it possibly can be. At many times in the movie I found myself wondering what Jesus was thinking as he dragged his cross to Golgotha.

As I mentioned earlier, TPOTC is one of those rare movies that is well and truly art. Mel Gibson has crafted in TPOTC the most inspiring, unforgiving and uncompromising glimpse of the final hours of Jesus Christ. This is not only a good movie, but a movie that will be shown for generations as an example of what He did for us. I personally believe that stories about people being converted after seeing this movie are grossly exagerrated. If you already have faith, this movie will cement it. If you don't, you'll probably be left scratching your head, but still entertained. Regardless, that's pretty high praise for a movie primarily about torture.

The Passion of The Christ is rated R by the MPAA for sequences of intense violence and is currently available on DVD.