At NRO:

Jeffrey Stout, a scholar of religion and film, faulted the The Passion for being “not an especially self-conscious important work of art.” He contrasted Gibson’s masterpiece unfavorably with The Passion of Joan of Arc, the 1928 silent film in which the heroine is tortured with instruments that resemble a film projector and reel, in order to symbolize the director’s involvement in the act. Stout consigned Gibson’s Passion to the schlock heap along with vulgar films like Spartacus and Rocky.

After hearing that Jesus didn’t suffer much, and listening in on a left-wing rant and a postmodern assertion of cultural superiority, I remembered the senior who had told me four years ago that “God forgot 1879 Hall” (home to Princeton’s religion department). Indeed, only one faculty member, Politics professor Robert P. George, tried to answer the central question of the controversy surrounding Gibson’s film: “Who is responsible for the death of Jesus?” His answer was powerful: “I am. It was for my sins that Christ died.”

George’s words met with prolonged and deep applause.