Killing Jesus: Bill O'Reilly's film is touted as history. But facts aren't sacred to him

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Killing Jesus: Bill O'Reilly's film is touted as history. But facts aren't sacred to him

Brook Wilensky-Lanford
Sunday 29 March 2015 13.25 BST

Killing Jesus - the adaptation of Bill O’Reilly’s book premiering on 29 March - is not history. This might seem like an obvious statement, but it bears repeating, given how the three-hour “television event” is being pitched to viewers: as a restrained Biblical history, suitable for believers and non-believers alike.

We rarely think and talk about “Bible movies” as products of artistic interpretation - instead, we often treat them as “historical” or “religious” films. But Exodus is a Ridley Scott movie; Noah is a Darren Aronofsky movie. If we’re to go by the same guidelines here, let’s call Killing Jesus not some generic “history,” but a “Bill O’Reilly movie.”

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Much is being made of the show casting a young Muslim actor of Middle Eastern descent as Jesus, possibly in hopes of avoiding charges of Christian bias, or as a way of emphasizing the human qualities of Jesus. (Islam considers Jesus human, and prophetic, but not divine.) Promotional videos tout the “real authenticity” gained by filming in the Moroccan desert. The show’s credibility is buoyed by its association with the National Geographic Channel, which also produced other O’Reilly TV movies, such as Killing Lincoln and Killing Kennedy.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

O’Reilly’s telling takes as fact a number of time-worn myths that have been repeatedly disavowed by scholars. Characterizing the apostle Paul as a Christian is an anachronism: Christianity didn’t begin until a century after the crucifixion; Jesus and all his apostles died Jews. Scholars have noted with irony that in depicting the Pharisees as legalistic, hypocritical evildoers, O’Reilly, ironically, picks up on a caricature originally created by Reformation-era Protestants to ridicule Catholics. Even the show’s air date belies its historical, universalist veneer. If Killing Jesus is supposed to be history suitable for Christians and non-Christians, why on earth does it premiere on Palm Sunday, the start of the Holy Week leading up to Easter?

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/29/killing-jesus-bill-oreillys-film-is-touted-as-history-but-facts-arent-sacred-to-him

[gordianot]

1. The only death Billo is qualified to chronicle is the truth. n/t

[cbayer]

3. Well played!

[cbayer]

2. Lol, even if I could see it, I would skip it.

[BlueJazz]

4. I wouldn't watch the God-Damn thing if given a 100 dollars. (Really)

[still_one]

5. one of the most hate filled personalities claims to be an authority on Jesus?

[mr blur]

6. Well he was there you see, reporting from Calvary. Almost got taken out,

by a stray Centurion.

"Bill O'Reilly, our man in Golgotha..."

[Gothmog]

7. O'Reilly is an idiot

I would not trust this idiot on any thing to do with facts or history

[struggle4progress]

8. Bill O'Reilly Kills Jesus All Over Again

Jay Parini
03.29.15

... The script is a whole lumberyard of wooden dialogue, bits and pieces lifted from various gospels or invented ... Haaz Sleiman plays Jesus as a kind of innocent but suddenly inspired country bumpkin from Galilee. I can only assume that the weird accent that this version of Jesus and his followers use — something like the all-purpose ethnic speech that Anthony Quinn employed in Zorba the Greek — is meant to suggest a dialect of Aramaic ... The few scenes we get of Jesus as teacher in Galilee seem uninspired. The Sermon on the Mount — the true center of Christian ethics — is nothing but ludicrous as depicted here, with Jesus mumbling a handful of the Beatitudes from a ledge ... Even Jesus seems bored by his recitation ... There is much talk of Zealots in this film, as it’s good for suspense. Rebels are plotting against Rome, and Jesus is himself accused of being one of them. The historical issue, of course, is that the Zealots were not really a force in Palestine at this time. They identified as a movement in the ’60s, 30 years after the death of Jesus ... The film skips the great story of the Road to Emmaus, where none of the followers of Jesus even recognize him, and when — after a long day — they do, he goes up smoke: poof ...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/29/bill-o-reilly-kills-jesus-all-over-again.html

[struggle4progress]

9. 'Killing Jesus' is a clunker

March 29, 2015 5:56 pm
By Gail Pennington

... Unfortunately, the movie opens with a sequence that feels like parody: Kelsey Grammer as King Herod, in terrible wig and fluffy fake beard, roaming around, seeming to channel Scrooge from "A Christmas Carol" ... I'm not giving "Killing Jesus" any stars ...

http://www.stltoday.com/entertainment/television/gail-pennington/tv-review-killing-jesus-is-a-clunker/article_769a5ac2-1518-5bc8-82a4-52c4fb7275d3.html

[struggle4progress]

10. Biblical Tale Retold, Softer on Its Politics

By NEIL GENZLINGER
MARCH 26, 2015

... at least the book, which was written in a breathless, ticktock style, tried to have a pulse. The television adaptation turns what an earlier film called “The Greatest Story Ever Told” into one of the snoozier stories ever told ... . The story has been adapted for screens large and small so often at this point that any new effort has to make clear why it needed to be made and what it’s bringing to the task that we haven’t seen before. This one never does ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/27/arts/television/review-killing-jesus-biblical-tale-retold-softer-on-its-politics.html?_r=0

[struggle4progress]

11. A lackluster telling, but with wigs

By Matthew Gilbert
GLOBE STAFF
MARCH 26, 2015

... The script, by Walon Green, opens with some terribly overbaked material, as Grammer plays King Herod addled by a nightmare vision. Stuffed into a bushy wig, Grammer gives a fondue performance, in that it’s coated with cheese and a small bit of it goes an awfully long way. His death scene is particularly cheesy, and hammy, too, as he collapses with the kind of writhing to-do you might find in a bad amateur theater production ... Jesus is something of a cipher, without much charisma or divinity. He’s just another man in “Killing Jesus” with a bad wig, eating from plateware that looks just a little too Pottery Barn for the first century ...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/television/2015/03/26/killing-jesus-lackluster-telling-but-with-wigs/2rdbSVBLRYnmMwibGtFsKJ/story.html#