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Leon Wieseltier, not surprisingly, has a blisteringly negative review of Gibson's film in the March 8 issue of TNR. Along the way, though, Wieseltier's article is inadvertently insightful. Here is his description of the violence of the torture: "There is only the relentless destruction and dehumanization of a man, who exists here to have his body punished with an almost unimaginable fury. He falls, he rises, he falls, he rises; he bends beneath the blows, but never mentally; his flesh is ripped, his head is stabbed, his eye is beaten shut, his hair a wig of dried blood, he is a pulp with a cause."
For a Christian believer, this is perhaps a disturbing description, but it is also wonderful in a way that Wieseltier cannot realize. For the "man" who is thus dehumanized is God, and the unimaginable fury of the torturers is the fury of man against his Creator.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, March 09, 2004 at 07:08 PM
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