The Passion of the Christ is a deeply moving and thought provoking movie. It lived up to everything people have been saying about it- its scope, its effect, its violence, its portrayals of the characters, and its controversy.

It also left me feeling slightly ill as I left the cinema. There came a point in the extremely lengthly crucifiction scene when, as Jesus fell for the umpteenth time, I thought, with mild annoyance, All right, I get the point already. He's suffering. I know he's suffering. Do you really have to belabour the point?

Which I feel is the chief weakness of the movie. That in striving for maximum visual and emotional impact, Mel Gibson has reduced what is a moving and affecting story of sacrifice and redemption into a comic book caricature, full of violence and gore and melodrama but lacking the dignity which Jesus conducted himself with.

My other impression is how much it resembles Monty Python's Life of Brian (soon to be re-released in a cinema near you). It's as if Gibson studied the movie's mise en scene, cinematography, costumes, and various characterisations (especially of the Romans) and based Passion closely on that!