Mel Gibson, Jesus Christ, Catholic Church and Hypocrisy

[CaptainChewbacca]

Hey, if Shatner can make a movie in Esperanto, Mel can do one in Latin.

I ain't gonna watch either.

[Howedar]

He's got every right to make this movie. Big fucking deal. I may not agree with him, but that doesn't really matter.

And we have the right to suspect that something stinks in the House of Gibson.

Naturally.

[Gandalf]

He's got every right to make this movie. Big fucking deal. I may not agree with him, but that doesn't really matter.

And we have the right to suspect that something stinks in the House of Gibson.

Naturally.

I saw we take an angry mob there.

[Peregrin Toker]

Hey, if Shatner can make a movie in Esperanto, Mel can do one in Latin.

There are people who speak Esperanto. However, there are NOBODY who speak Aramaic. On the other, for sheer historical accuracy, I like the idea of a biblical epic shot in Aramaic. Kinda like my idea of an Arthurian movie entirely in Welsh and Olde English.

[CaptainChewbacca]

You'd have to find Welsh actors. That language is just about the toughest there is, except maybe Manx.

[Peregrin Toker]

You'd have to find Welsh actors.

It's not if they don't exist.

[Darth Gojira]

Which Gospel are they using this time? If they're gonna piss off Jews, why won't they try Matthew or something?


Keep the Latin, Hebrew, and Aramaic. I like making dialoge up.

(On the cross)
YESHUA(to sky): I TOLD you it'd never work, but noooooooooo......

or

(Walking on the water scene)
PETER/SIMON(to Diciples[sp]: Remind me to cut back on drinking, this is some scary shit!
or

(trial scene)
YESHUA: I'm not the Messiah!
PRIEST: I don't care! We have to execute SOMEone!

or
ROMAN GUARD: He couldn't be that important if they let his followers go. (With apologies to Larry Gonick)

[Perinquus]

Well, this won't be the first movie where not a word is spoken that is intelligible to the audience (anyone else remember "Quest for Fire"?), but like most other such "art" projects of that kind, I suspect this one will not do well at the box office. The controversy surrounding it will draw in some though.

[BlkbrryTheGreat]

There are people who speak Esperanto.

People speak Klingon too; that dosen't mean that I'll go to see a movie thats in nothing but Klingon (with no subtitles).

[Soontir C'boath]

Only because it's unworthy for our languages. I wonder how Mel's company *or himself* will fund it if no one will watch it.....~Jason

[StarshipTitanic]

Anyway, this had me thinking alot last night, particulalrly about the hypocrisy on all sides regarding the passion of Christ. Any thoughts?

Hail Rome. Three cheers for Proconsul Pilate.

Hows that?

Actually if Pilate had not caved to the pressure of some zealot holy men Christ would not have been crucified and most likely the cult of Mithras would be worshipped today. Thank you Pilate for having no balls.

The cult of Mithras was male-only and was popular mainly with the military, so it would have been pushed aside by Germanic beliefs (probably) during the invasions. Maybe today we'd have Thor as the most popular god. I'd buy into a guy with a big hammer who dresses up like a girl to steal it back.

[Peregrin Toker]

There are people who speak Esperanto.

People speak Klingon too; that dosen't mean that I'll go to see a movie thats in nothing but Klingon (with no subtitles).

But it's not as if there won't be Trek fanfilms shot entirely in Tlhingan'Hol.

[Patrick Ogaard]

You'd have to find Welsh actors. That language is just about the toughest there is, except maybe Manx.

Well, the good Mrs. Michael Douglas would qualify. I have no idea if she speaks any Welsh Gaelic, but Welsh she is. And maybe Tom Jones can get a role in the movie.

For that matter, there are enough Irish speakers of Gaelic available. No one outside the Gaelic-speaking community would be able to tell the difference in any event, and if the Scots are let in, then Sean Connery could have his go at playing Merlin and speaking only Gaelic and Latin.

Just no one ask me. I can't act, and my ancestors, if they were dealing with the Welsh at all, were dealing with Poles and Russians and calling them Welsh. Welsh as a term is derived from the Germanic term for Celts/Gauls, and was later applied to the Gallo-Roman populations of Roman provinces, and eventually just came to mean "incomprehensible foreign jabber and those who jabber in foreign tongues." Thus, by any of those definitions, Arthur seen as a post-Imperial Gallo-Roman tribal leader, is certainly Welsh.

As for the primary thrust of this thread, we'll see soon enough what the movie is like. If it even gets issued. It certainly sounds stupendously boring, and no one is likely to get any of the potentially inflammatory points of the dialogue if no one can understand the dialogue.

And, as a final flourish, the "monkey see, monkey do" syndrome is not something that came into being full-formed as soon as movies and television came about. There was a rash of 19th-century German suicides inspired by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel "Die Leiden des Jungen Werther." The protagonist, the moody and depressed and tragically romantic Werther, ultimately blew his brains out, and so did many a moody and depressed and tragically romantic (wannabe) German youth of the day.

And, on the matter of Christianity or Mithraism becoming dominant in Europe if, speculatively, the crucifixion had never happened, I suspect we'd all be Jewish. Judaism actually had a surprisingly wide dissemination in the world. Entire Mongol tribes were Jewish (while their neighbors were Buddhists, or animists of some stripe) until Islam swept the plains of Central Asia. At least one of the founding Magyar tribes of Hungary was supposed to be Jewish.

Given a few tweaks to make access to the religion easier for those not born into it, Judaism would have actually made a passable stand-in for Christianity in sociological terms. Of course, that reformed Jewish hegemony would have very likely prevented (just by lack of inspiration) the formation of Islam as a cohesive faith. That would have left Buddhism without a major threat to it throughout Central and Southern Asia. Thus, by the present day, the world would likely as not be divided into the Jewish West and the Buddhist East, with the Hindus stuck somewhat uncomfortably inbetween.

It would certainly make for an interesting alternate history.

[Perinquus]

Well, the good Mrs. Michael Douglas would qualify. I have no idea if she speaks any Welsh Gaelic, but Welsh she is. And maybe Tom Jones can get a role in the movie.

There is no such thing as "Welsh Gaelic". Welsh is a member of the Brythonic family of Celtic languages, along with Breton, and the now extinct Cornish language. Irish is a member of the Gaelic family of Celtic languages, as is Scottish Gaelic, and the now extinct Manx language.

[Peregrin Toker]

Well, the good Mrs. Michael Douglas would qualify. I have no idea if she speaks any Welsh Gaelic, but Welsh she is. And maybe Tom Jones can get a role in the movie.

There is no such thing as "Welsh Gaelic". Welsh is a member of the Brythonic family of Celtic languages, along with Breton, and the now extinct Cornish language. Irish is a member of the Gaelic family of Celtic languages, as is Scottish Gaelic, and the now extinct Manx language.

To deepen it further - Welsh and Gaelic are actually quite different - where you'd use a Q in Gaelic, you'd often use a P in its place in the corresponding Welsh word.

[Patrick Ogaard]

Well, the good Mrs. Michael Douglas would qualify. I have no idea if she speaks any Welsh Gaelic, but Welsh she is. And maybe Tom Jones can get a role in the movie.

There is no such thing as "Welsh Gaelic". Welsh is a member of the Brythonic family of Celtic languages, along with Breton, and the now extinct Cornish language. Irish is a member of the Gaelic family of Celtic languages, as is Scottish Gaelic, and the now extinct Manx language.

Sorry. You are quite correct. My posts get too long and rambling as it is. It just didn't seem like the time to differentiate between Goidels (like the Irish, Scots and Manx) and Brythons (like the Welsh and Cornish) and the differences between their particular versions of the languages of the Celtic world. The differences, while obviously there and quite significant, should go entirely unnoticed by those not in the know.

It's a bit like the English-subtitled German version of "Das Boot." How many in the audience who were not German-speaking would have even been able to tell the difference if the German dialogues had all been in Plattdeutsch instead of High German? In that situation, the dialogues could have been in Wendish and the audience would have been none the wiser.

The thing is, the worldwide audience for a major blockbuster movie done entirely in assorted Celtic languages would be nearly as irrelevantly small as that of a movie done entirely in Latin and Aramaic. Not enough people will be there to watch the Celtic movie to justify the costs of making the movie, even if one were to include speakers of Breton.

It's an utterly daft idea to shoot the Christ movie entirely in Aramaic and Latin. No one, outside of a very small circle of specialized academic folk, really still speaks Latin fluently enough to be able to hold a conversation or to follow movie dialogue. There are still some native speakers of Aramaic, but I doubt that they're going to buy 50,000 tickets each to make the movie a success.

The movie, if made that way, is obviously going to be a vanity production, never intended to actually make any money. If Gibson has the cash to spare to do that, bully form him.

[Rubberanvil]

Maybe today we'd have Thor as the most popular god. I'd buy into a guy with a big hammer who dresses up like a girl to steal it back.

Just to let you know, it was Loki's idea to have Thor dress up as a woman, with Loki doing all of the talking.

[Perinquus]

It's an utterly daft idea to shoot the Christ movie entirely in Aramaic and Latin. No one, outside of a very small circle of specialized academic folk, really still speaks Latin fluently enough to be able to hold a conversation or to follow movie dialogue. There are still some native speakers of Aramaic, but I doubt that they're going to buy 50,000 tickets each to make the movie a success.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that. As I pointed out with "Quest for Fire" earlier, there are films which are meant to tell the story entirely visually, and this film is going to be one of them. If they are done well, they are even critically acclaimed, as "Quest for Fire" was. They still have limited appeal, because such a film does not really appeal to a mass audience, but they can be somewhat successful.

Gibson's movie is being made so that it won't matter (supposedly) that you can't follow the dialogue; it's the visuals that will tell the story. This is meant to be an "art" project. It may still be vanity on Gibson's art, but I'll wait till I see it before I make up my mind that it's going to be stupid.

[Drooling Iguana]

Maybe today we'd have Thor as the most popular god. I'd buy into a guy with a big hammer who dresses up like a girl to steal it back.

Just to let you know, it was Loki's idea to have Thor dress up as a woman, with Loki doing all of the talking.

What story is this, and where can I find more information on it?

[Perinquus]

Maybe today we'd have Thor as the most popular god. I'd buy into a guy with a big hammer who dresses up like a girl to steal it back.

Just to let you know, it was Loki's idea to have Thor dress up as a woman, with Loki doing all of the talking.

What story is this, and where can I find more information on it?

Norse mythology. How Thor got his hammer back after it was stolen by the giants. If memory serves, you can find it in the Elder Edda.

[Patrick Ogaard]

It's an utterly daft idea to shoot the Christ movie entirely in Aramaic and Latin. No one, outside of a very small circle of specialized academic folk, really still speaks Latin fluently enough to be able to hold a conversation or to follow movie dialogue. There are still some native speakers of Aramaic, but I doubt that they're going to buy 50,000 tickets each to make the movie a success.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that. As I pointed out with "Quest for Fire" earlier, there are films which are meant to tell the story entirely visually, and this film is going to be one of them. If they are done well, they are even critically acclaimed, as "Quest for Fire" was. They still have limited appeal, because such a film does not really appeal to a mass audience, but they can be somewhat successful.

Gibson's movie is being made so that it won't matter (supposedly) that you can't follow the dialogue; it's the visuals that will tell the story. This is meant to be an "art" project. It may still be vanity on Gibson's art, but I'll wait till I see it before I make up my mind that it's going to be stupid.

The film itself may quite possibly turn out to be non-stupid. I suspect that if there are any even remotely favorable reviews or comments about the movie, I'll even watch it. The problem is that the concept behind keeping the dialogue entirely inscrutable is very much stupid. Deliberately hamstringing the audience like that is a bad idea in my book, at least for something that should have understandable dialogue.

In a film like "Quest for Fire," or a docudrama about the conjectural last days of the ancient corpse pulled out of the Oetztal glacier, keeping the language unintelligible is halfway reasonable. It provides for an "alien" air and tends to prevent nitpicking by linguists as well as breaking suspension of disbelief by using modern turns of phrase or references. In a film about neolithic people yet unaware of the deliberate working of metals, for instance, any dialogue references to metals would be disbelief-inducing.

Unintelligible dialogue as a style choice can work, if there is at least some justification for it. A film shot from the point of view of a hearing-impaired protagonist, someone not familiar with the language of the majority, etc. would be justifiable. Just shooting a movie in obscure, effectively dead languages to prove that one can do it and that the audience will take it without complaint seems more a deliberate insult to the "ignorant" audience than a stylistic choice. I do rather hope I'll be proven wrong on that count.

It's really just the apparently deliberate lack of even the option of subtitles -- which has yet to be substantiated -- that seems like a terribly bad idea. I can deal well enough with subtitles, and having subtitles would probably provide for a sufficient audience base to eventually recoup the production costs.

Referring to the film as a vanity production was not so much a reference to Mel Gibson's vanity -- though that certainly played its part in my choice of words -- as to the film apparently being the movie equivalent of books spewed out by so-called vanity presses or vanity publishers. In this case, it may well be that Mr. Gibson, instead of paying a printer to churn out 5,000 copies of a book no one will want to buy and stacking the boxes full of ultimately unwanted books in a capacious garage to molder away, may end up doing the same with his movie.

It also, just to be long-winded about it, bugs me that he should be so concerned with utter historical accuracy with this subject -- regardless of how close to his heart it may be -- when he was not so concerned about such historical accuracy with "Braveheart." I liked the movie, will watch it again eventually, and don't regret shelling out the bucks for the pair of VHS cassettes, but it is still grossly historically inaccurate, right down to Wallace "inventing" schiltrons with long spears, woad-dabbled medieval Highlanders, short kilts, Wallace not being equipped the same as the Englishmen, or the portrayal of Longshanks as little more than a vicious one-note psychopath with a will to power. By all accounts, Longshanks was a nice enough fellow for a king, someone who could laugh at losing a footrace to a washerwoman and send her off with a gold coin as her prize. He just loathed the Anglo-Scots Borderers, like Wallace, and disliked Scots in general. For that matter, why was everyone speaking either modern English or modern-sounding French (or a few lines of Latin)?

Like I said before, I tend to ramble on a bit.