I saw "The Passion of the Christ" last Saturday. It was a film I dearly wanted to like, but I came away dissatisfied and depressed. Since when is a movie about Jesus supposed to be a downer?

Mel is definitely a throwback in his esthetics. The movie is a Medieval Passion Play with 21st century special effects gore. Midget babies, crows pecking eyes out, gallons of blood in scene after scene... Weird. Not uplifting at all, as you would expect a film about Jesus to be. I usually rate films on their DVD-ability, as in "would I like to buy the DVD?" For Mel's "Passion," the answer is, unfortunately, NO. I did find the Latin and Aramaic interesting. Having recently studied Arabic, I was surprised about how many words I could recognize. And the simplified Latin was Italianate, so that didn't even need subtitles.

If you want to see a good film about Jesus, see Zefirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth." Zefirelli preserves the mystical beauty of the Gospels, which is something Mel's version is sorely lacking.