2008 Woodie Awards
As Roman soldiers selected a spiked whip from a table laden with torture devices, the audience gasped. But that was the only sound viewers would make during a Wednesday night showing of "The Passion of the Christ."
"It was very gruesome," said freshman Eugene Meyers after watching Mel Gibson's highly anticipated but controversial chronicle of Jesus Christ's crucifixion. "It's real, but it's accurate."
"Passion," which opened in theaters Wednesday, had the fifth highest mid-week movie opening in history, despite accusations from several Jewish groups and scholars that the film is anti-Semitic and portrays Jews as responsible for the death of Jesus.
In 1965 the Vatican retracted any blame the church had placed on the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus.
In the film, the Jewish priest Caiaphas urges Roman prefect Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus, after members of the Jewish community beat him up for supposed blasphemy.
Pilate, portrayed as merciful in the film, says he can punish Jesus severely but is unwilling to bear responsibility for killing him. The Roman soldiers eventually crucify Jesus, after urging from the Jews.
Marc Saperstein, director of the University's Judaic Studies program, said this "does not fit any historical understanding" of how the Romans governed because the Romans were always quick to execute messianic figures.
"The high priests are visually identified as Jews and they are caricatures, cartoon figures, with no attempt to picture them as human beings living in a historical environment," Saperstein said. "There's no attempt to explain their position ... whereas the governor (Pilate) is presented in a kind of context with a human dimension."
Gibson told The New Yorker that his film was a strict interpretation of the Gospels, a part of the New Testament that is based on eyewitness accounts of Jesus' death.
He also defended his father, Hutton Gibson, who recently said the Holocaust was "all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it," according to The New York Times.
"It was very gruesome," said freshman Eugene Meyers after watching Mel Gibson's highly anticipated but controversial chronicle of Jesus Christ's crucifixion. "It's real, but it's accurate."
"Passion," which opened in theaters Wednesday, had the fifth highest mid-week movie opening in history, despite accusations from several Jewish groups and scholars that the film is anti-Semitic and portrays Jews as responsible for the death of Jesus.
In 1965 the Vatican retracted any blame the church had placed on the Jewish people for the crucifixion of Jesus.
In the film, the Jewish priest Caiaphas urges Roman prefect Pontius Pilate to crucify Jesus, after members of the Jewish community beat him up for supposed blasphemy.
Pilate, portrayed as merciful in the film, says he can punish Jesus severely but is unwilling to bear responsibility for killing him. The Roman soldiers eventually crucify Jesus, after urging from the Jews.
Marc Saperstein, director of the University's Judaic Studies program, said this "does not fit any historical understanding" of how the Romans governed because the Romans were always quick to execute messianic figures.
"The high priests are visually identified as Jews and they are caricatures, cartoon figures, with no attempt to picture them as human beings living in a historical environment," Saperstein said. "There's no attempt to explain their position ... whereas the governor (Pilate) is presented in a kind of context with a human dimension."
Gibson told The New Yorker that his film was a strict interpretation of the Gospels, a part of the New Testament that is based on eyewitness accounts of Jesus' death.
He also defended his father, Hutton Gibson, who recently said the Holocaust was "all - maybe not all fiction - but most of it," according to The New York Times.
