Maccabees movie

[TJ]

All the news surrounding this movie seems to be regarding the controversy of Mel Gibson taking on a Jewish strory. But aside from that, I'd find a movie about what took place in Judah between Malachi and Matthew fascinating.

Maccabees

[lavritt]

me too!

[retroHelen]

When Mel Gibson took on The Passion of the Christ it was described by many news reviewers as:"'The Passion of the Christ' so relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus' final hours that this film seems to arise less from love than from wrath, and to succeed more in assaulting the spirit than in uplifting it." David Edelstein, Slate's film critic, dubbed the film "a two-hour-and-six-minute snuff movie – The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre – that thinks it's an act of faith", and further criticised Gibson for focusing on the brutality of Jesus' execution, instead of his religious teachings.Film critic Roger Ebert, said in his review:The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen.

Theologians wrote that there were strange inaccuracies and included Satan depicted as a hideous androgenous person with a baby when Christ is flogged and Judas tormented by small childlike demons?! Gibson's comment was:"I think that my first duty is to be as faithful as possible in telling the story so that it doesn't contradict the Scriptures. Now, so long as it didn't do that, I felt that I had a pretty wide berth for artistic interpretation".

Many felt Mel was projecting unchecked anger and violence rather than passion in this film, so how will he treat anything about the Maccabees? If it's his 'artistic interpretation' then it might not be worth wasting your eyeballs on! We await it's reviews and certification and make our personal decisions.

[TJ]

Those are excellent points Helen, and I'd certainly expect dramatic license to be taken with the story just like with Braveheart for example. I just appreciate historical dramas that help me to visualize the age better. There are currently a ton of movies that put us in the middle of the Roman world, but not many that put us in pre-Roman world.

Maccabees would take place after Alexander the Great put the promised land under Greek influence and so would feature, to some extent, the early history of the ongoing struggles between the King of the North and the King of the South. As for the message of the film and so forth, one should always take that with a grain of salt.

[Hallett 82]

I would like to learn more about the Maccabees but not put Mel into the mix. His 'issues' are a bit too intense and as Helen said, my eyeballs are precious and it will turn out to be 2hrs of my life I cannot get back.