From a Case-Western Reserve prof

Whether or not they were accustomed to the violence, however, most Christian students see the film in terms of divine incarnation and vicarious atonement. They recognize the Jesus in this movie as the incarnation of God, and they understand that he’s there, in flesh and blood, to be sacrificed as expiation for their sins. One student said she cried during the movie, not because she was overwhelmed by the violence but because she felt that it provided a “visible reality” of what she already knew about Christ’s sacrifice on her behalf. It is this sense of sacrifice that Christian students say they “get” in the film..

On the other hand, those non-Christians (religious or not) who see it come away baffled — “at a complete loss,” “clueless” as to what this movie is doing for their Christian colleagues. One of the students who saw the film with a group from the Muslim Student Association on our campus said she simply could not see what lesson such morbid suffering could have for humankind. Some recognize how the film could contribute to anti-Jewish sentiments, especially in its treatment of the Jewish mainstream as a collective mob controlled by an insecure cabal of lawyer-priests. But what repels most non-Christian students is what they see as utterly meaningless violence. Indeed, it’s this sense of meaninglessness that repels them most. The movie gives them no way to interpret the violence, no way into its symbolic world. As a result, they come away alienated, feeling like outsiders.

I suspect that this outsider feeling is entirely intentional. But it is less an effect of the film’s excessive violence and anti-Jewish tendencies, and more an effect of its biblical basis: the Gospel of John…..

…Likewise The Passion. Indeed, it is something of a filmic version of John’s Gospel in this respect. It works the same way on its viewers that the Gospel of John does on its readers, bringing insiders together and affirming their special knowledge while snubbing the rest. It makes little effort to help them “get it.” Those who know the truth see it, it seems to be saying, and those who don’t can’t.