A reader writes concerning Wednesday’s blog:
I was wondering why the reviews are either extremely positive or extremely negative. I hardly read of any reviews in between. Do you think that reason why most people either love or hate The Passion of the Christ is because it is a high-context movie? Gibson’s desired effect seems to presuppose the viewer’s preexisting devotion towards Christ.
I think that you’ve got it right. When you run across a "love it or hate it" movie, it’s because there is some kind of context to the movie that is needed to appreciate it, meaning that critics who lack that context just don’t "get it."
This movie is "high context" in the sense that it requires some knowledge of what the issues surrounding Jesus were. If someone who knows nothing at all about Jesus were to see it, he’d likely wonder why Jesus is being treated the way he is. Although in theory you could piece this together from what gets said in the film, the overall experience would be confusing.
The movie also requires, if not a preexisting devotion toward Christ, at least openness to the Christian message and to the movie itself. Here is where some critics don’t "get it." They may have a basic knowledge of the issues (at least enough to comprehend the movie intellectually), but they aren’t open to looking at the movie through Christian eyes.
My compadre Steve Greydanus tells me that there are even accounts of critics in some places snoring through the movie. This is simply incomprehensible to me. Even if a person didn’t know anything about Jesus and found himself confused by the movie, it’s so intense that it’s hard for me to imagine anyone dozing off from boredom. Only a person who was completely unengaged with the movie on an intellectual and a human level could do that. Yet some critics, because of their lack of appreciation for the gospel story or because of their anti-Christian (or anti-this-movie) agenda, are unwilling to engage it.
