Director Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ represents the teachings of Jesus through a gore-drenched recreation of the final 12 hours before his death. Here, the son of God is a wholly human figure, and Gibson constantly reminds his audience of this with an unceasing depiction of shredded flesh and spattered blood. The effect is alternately piercing and numbing. Nevertheless, Gibson eventually succeeds in overwhelming his audience with potent visual poignancy, finding narrative might in the passion plays’ minor characters. There are only glimpses of Christ’s words in the movie, and his resurrection is given minimal screen time, but these are provided in such well-timed respites that their resounding impact is ultimately The Passion’s greatest, most awe-inspiring achievement. (BBC)
There are three fatal flaws that damage Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ for nonbelievers: almost no characterization or narrative, a spectacularly large amount of violence and almost all of the Jews are evil Christ-killers. In Gibson’s mania to present the extent of Jesus’ suffering, character is lost, and by the end of the film, Jesus begins to resemble a piñata more than a man. The effect is that it is hard to understand quite what the point of all this is. It is never clear why he is so dangerous. It is never clear why everyone is so passionate about this presence, who, in the film, shows as much depth as Tyrese in 2 Fast 2 Furious. The film’s violence is physically exhausting and, ultimately, numbing; ultimately, these shots begin to resemble pornography, complete with a money shot. (SAW)
SPARTAN
After the President’s daughter is kidnapped from Lowell House, shadowy super Secret Agent Scott (Val Kilmer) is assigned to track her down using whatever means necessary, in writer-director David Mamet’s newest film. Although the dialogue often bounces with Mamet’s rat-a-tat flair, this movie’s deep flaws destroy the elegantly crafted political thriller that might have been. Cheap budgets, mind-numbing incoherence and nonsensical plotting overshadow the few genuine surprises and admirable political idealism to leave only a square-jawed action movie for pseudo-intellectuals that never lives up to its ambition. (SAW)
TOUCHING THE VOID
This story of a 1985 Andes mountain-climbing disaster comes courtesy of director Kevin MacDonald, whose film One Day in September won the Oscar for Best Documentary a few years ago. But in the vein of his last work, Touching the Void, is not a clear-cut documentary; the events it examines are real, but MacDonald uses re-enactments of the story’s events to supplement a narrated account from the disaster’s survivors. The nut of their crisis: halfway through a climb, one of the two team members falls and breaks several leg bones. The other climber decides to lower his injured partner to safety, 300 feet of rope at a time, until he accidentally lowers him over a precipice. Knowing that soon both of them would tumble to their deaths, he makes a critical decision and cuts the cord. (BJS)
THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE
Sylvain Chomet’s film aims for a multinational texture and is largely devoid of dialogue, but nevertheless retains a distinctly French sensibility with a penchant for shrewd cultural allusions. A clubfooted widow, Madame Souza, trains her chubby grandson Champion to become a stick-thin cyclist with the help of bulky canine Bruno and her restless whistle. One day, Champion is mysteriously kidnapped, along with two of his fellow Tour de France riders, by amusingly ominous members of the French mafia. In hot pursuit, Madame Souza travels to the Dionysian metropolis Belleville, where she enlists the help of the eponymous triplets—former scat singers turned household-item instrumentalists—in liberating Champion from the clutches of a diminutive wine magnate. A marvelous fusion of color, music, and caricature, each splendid offbeat frame restores faith in traditional hand-drawn animation. (TIH)
THE UNITED STATES OF LELAND
Seemingly intelligent high school student Leland P. Fitzgerald (Ryan Gosling) has just killed an autistic boy for no clear reason. In juvenile hall, he has to come to terms with what he has done. Outside, his alcoholic father (Kevin Spacey), his girlfriend (Jena Malone) and others in the community grapple with the repercussions of this terrible act of violence. What does it mean for their community? Although many critics have mocked the film as a now predictable execration of the darkness behind modern suburbia, in this time of school shootings and anti-depressants, Leland at least stands out as an interesting and intentionally boundary pushing work. (SAW)
WILBUR WANTS TO KILL HIMSELF
Although this is not a title you’d normally associate with humor, Lone Scherfig’s Sweedish film is a dryly sweet comedy. Harbour and Wilbur have inherited their father’s used book store and Harbour has inherited the task of taking care of his suicidally depressed younger brother. One day, Alice and her young daughter Mary walk into the book shop and sparks fly. Soon, a romantic quadrangle develops and this man who has never liked life learns to love it. (SAW)
—Happening was compiled by Ben B. Chung, Tiffany I. Hsieh, Elsa B. Ó Riain, Will B. Payne, Sarah L. Solorzano, Benjamin J. Soskin, and Scoop A. Wasserstein.