Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Short Review on Perspectives on the Passion of the Christ

I have commented before on the Miramax book called Perspectives on the Passion of the Christ and I am still planning to post my comments on this essay collection here in due course. (Note: this is not the same book as Jesus and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ). Here's a short review on IndyStar.com:

Perspectives on "The Passion of the Christ" (scroll down a bit)
. . . . The book suffers from weak editing. By the third time a writer explained that "synoptic" means "seen together" (as in the synoptic Gospels), I was wishing they'd just put a glossary in the front.

The writers' attitudes toward Mel Gibson's movie range from discomfort to contempt. Surely, they could have found someone thoughtful who flat-out liked the film? Having said that, the essays are generally well-written and cover in detail the reasoning of those who did not love the movie . . . .
I quite agree with these comments -- the weak editing, or lack of editing, is something that I'd like to come back to in my review; it is an element that contrasts with the more recent Webb and Corley edited volume. I also thought that it was pretty depressing reading a book that on the whole was so thoroughly negative about the film, and which was sometimes misinformed and often descended to caricature and polemic.

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