From the first scene of “The Passion of the Christ,” when Jesus prays to God in a misty garden, knowing his death is near, Kailoni Moody was wiping her eyes with a pink tissue.
By the time she and her friend Greg Rhodea left the downtown Chicago theater, they felt their lives had changed forever.
“I just want to rush home and pray and pour my heart out to the Lord,” said Rhodea, a 21-year-old Evangelist. “I can’t think about all His love in the same way, now that I have seen this movie.”
Mel Gibson’s R-rated film about Christ’s crucifixion opened Ash Wednesday in about 3,000 theaters to audiences who have anxiously awaited its debut.
The film has provoked controversy among some Jewish leaders who say it holds Jews collectively responsible for the death of Christ. Joanne Stein, a member of a Skokie synagogue, said she left the theater angry.
“I’m Jewish. I wanted to decide for myself,” said Stein, of Wilmette. “I don’t know how anyone could come out of there and not feel like the Jews are responsible.”
But as much as many felt their lives might be transformed, some wondered if it was Gibson’s skill as a filmmaker that made the difference, or if people longing for a tool to evangelize would seize on any opportunity.
“People are searching for something,” Maureen Collins, 65, said at the church-organized screening. “People are tired of all the materialism and secularism in the world. They are waiting for something to change their lives.”
