March 31, 2004

From God's Eye

Rubel Shelly considers a moment from near the end of The Passion of the Christ:

One of the wonderful things about art is its subtle ambiguities. The smile of the Mona Lisa. A poet's turn of phrase. The haunting refrain of a piece of music. Or a stunning visual metaphor in a movie. It is precisely the ambiguity of these words, sounds, and sights that creates multiple interpretations.

Toward the end of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ comes the one scene that took me completely off-guard. Since I had read the book before going to see the movie, I knew the story line. The central characters were identifiable. Even the subtler references to persons and events not detailed in the movie were easy to pick up. But one jolted me.