About Ramon's christa
Part 4A: Why is this the favorite of many?
Again, before I start, I left out (yet another) fun fact. Ramon said a lot of times during filming "perfect", "very good", but during the nailing (that looked pretty realistic, i can't stress that enough), one of the guards accidentally hit the nail in a way that it got way tilted. That moment, Ramon said "no, (that's) very bad".
With that out of the way, we can open this can of worms with endless discussions about the acting, the creative choices, visuals, etc., etc.
A long time ago, on the now extinct crux foundation, Ramon made a thread (yep, he personally wrote on that forum, RIP crux foundation btw) with a clever name: Miss POAG, the miss universe of the POAG cinematic universe (or something like that).
On this thread, Ramon made a poll of which of her models was the favorite, and Bruna almost came with a clean sweep, with around 40% - 60% of the votes, even Ramon himself wondered why she was the most popular with such a difference (the second place had like 25% of the votes).
This means not everyone will like every model/actress, but the case with Bruna is still curious, as she still stands out from the others.
part of the success of this film and its enduring popularity is no doubt due to the gorgeous actress who gave such a great performance.
Mp5stab really
nailed the point (pun intended), this film was mostly
carried by Bruna (last crucifixion pun, I promise). But I do believe this film was practically something like catching a lightning in a bottle, since a lot of factors line up perfectly to combine into this film.
Before starting to fanboy about the film, let's talk about some negatives, which are mostly nitpicks.
First, during the nailing, while Bruna pulls out an incredible facial acting, the fact that the rest of her body is pretty... still (her legs) ruins a little my immersion, since I would think the legs would move in some sort of way as a reaction to the pain or to try and endure it.
Also, I wish there was more variety on the shots, like a prifule view of her, some different close ups of her face, her nailed arms and legs, etc.
Another nitpick usually brought up and that kind of fits with my tastes, she is nailed directly in the palm of her hand, which it's not too real, and makes me wish they used ropes to at least make some sense of "extra support". I know the actress probably needed to hop in and out of the cross quickly, but there has to be a way to tie her wrists without making it a slow process.
This one is more of a personal thing that's borderline fantasy, but it's because I love this actress' performance that I wish they included more, if not all the via crucis stages. At least from the arrest to her death, including the sentencing, stripping her before the whipping, etc. But hey, imagination is free.
Curious as to why there was no complete nudity?
This one is a good one, if Ramon or Bruna did an interview, we could know exactly, but for now, we can only speculate. Since the endless team loincloth vs team nude is a discussion that will continue until the end of times (say hello fellow team loincloth friends). The explanation that I think makes sense has potential two reasons.
First: Ramon was just starting his project, and this early into it he wanted to be really clear with his representation of the female christ. Traditionally, crucifixions have been portrayed with loincloths (because of "decency"), but like many say, it's more likely that they were fully naked. Since Ramon wanted to make some sort criticism of the church. My guess is that he used this image of a crucifixion with a loincloth because of that tradition of using loincloths in most, if not all artistic portrayals of crucifixion, altho he would experiment with full nudity in later productions.
The second reason I believe is more simple, and maybe Bruna just didn't feel comfortable with full nudity, and she was just comfortable showing her breasts, but down there was a no no.
Moving onto more positive feedback, like I said before, I believe this is beloved by more than Bruna's acting alone, and other factors perfectly lined up.
First is Bruna's casting, but not just of her acting skills, but her physic appearance also lifts up the film. Yeah, she isn't a curvy, tall, blonde supermodel but this actually works in the film's advantage. Bruna being a small person with an average body type and curly black hair. All of this works into making her look like an innocent, and most importantly, overpowered.
It's believe no coincidence that almost every single time Bruna and the guards share the screen, Bruna is in the middle of the two taller and stronger guards, outnumbering and outpowering her from both her sides, she is trapped from both sides, powerless to the guards. Add to that the fact that the only time we see her standing up straight is while she's taken by the guards to the whipping post at the beginning, the rest of the time she is crouching, on the floor, laying down, dragged without resistence, etc.
...except I lied, there is one time Bruna is higher then her guards... once she is lifted up on the cross, which is more of a shame as she is exposed on high.
Speaking of the cross, it might sound weird, but I believe the cross is a character on itself. The cross in this film is big, like, really big. It's almost twice the size of Bruna, the wood is thick and it looks heavy, really heavy. Even if the actress had to carry just the crossbeam, it would still overpower her.
The fact that not only the guards, but also the cross itself overpowers her, brings these layers of showing her weak and powerless at the mercy of her cruel fate.
When she hangs from the cross, she is still overpowered, having her arms almost fully stretched and her legs with just enough movement range to barely allow her to lift herself to breath. The cross is really strong, it won't let Bruna escape this misery.
Im not sure if that would be easy, but a thing that makes Ramon, well, Ramon, is the fact that he likes to experiment, and this means using a wide range of models and actresses with different bodies and looks, while also experimenting with lightning, sets (white or black drops, green screens and more), and any variable you can think of.
A more technical aspect that enhances this film is the editing and audio design. We got to be honest, Ramon's editing usually leaves much to be desired. Some productions recycle shots, others have pacing issues, sometimes he even leaves some stuff that shouldn't be in the final cut. The female christ in warm tones video, which is basically an extended version of Bruna's suffering and death has a shot where she moves her feet to adjust her pose, which really. breaks immersion.
The audio is even worse, all productions except maybe two or three have no original sound which really helps. Even when he tries to make up for it with adding voices or sounds in the editing... it doesn't quite fit. The biggest problem is without a doubt, is the music, since a lot of productions feature music that doesn't fit, is obnoxious or really annoying. The passion of the christa does feature an odd music choice, I can't deny that, but we know Ramon has a superior version without the music. And thankfully, the original sounds are left there, with some repeated to fill in some gaps that had a lot of noise.
And the editing, it just has perfect pacing, with an average of each part being 2 and a half minutes. The warm tones video doesnt have a good pacing, but I see that as just bonus footage for the fans.
This part ended up being
way longer than I expected, so I decided to split it in two and tomorrow I will continue with an exercise where to put what I just said to test, I will compare some of Ramon's works with the passion of the christa.
Im going to add the images missing from the last post:
When the actress was dragged to the cross, they had to do some extra shots, and in one of those, the final result was really good... except a guard accidentally took the crown of thorns out of Bruna's head with his roman sword.
let's say Bruna is quite the goofball (in the good sense of the word). When she is not fully in character, she makes silly faces and laugh
(She even pulled a "Rock eyebrow raise" during the whipping, it can't be fully seen but it's still there. If you help me with how to upload a gif, I will upload it)
(Also, a funny moment I forgot to mention, when the guard accidentally whipped Bruna after they said "cut", he rubbed his hand on her back and watches if she's okay, quite the wholesome moment of a guard showing he's sorry).
During the suffering, final struggling and death scenes, Bruna had to fix her crown and move her hair sometimes, and for that, she had to take one feet off the platform and kind of use it for balance, a thing that can be seen in the behind the scenes of other of Ramon's films. She even brought it to the back of the cross at one point.
Sorry for the delay, I hope this long post makes up for it, and I'll see you in tomorrow's post.
Stay tuned!
