BELLEVUE -- Alison McKenzie stopped eating her popcorn. Michael Griffin needed Kleenex. And Jimmy Huffaker was nearly speechless.
The three moviegoers were among 1,100 people who saw an advance showing last night of "The Passion of the Christ," a highly anticipated movie riding a wave of publicity, with many Christians excited about its potential for evangelism and some Jews worried about anti-Semitic repercussions.
The film depicts the final 12 hours of Jesus' life, including an unflinching look at the arrest, trial, scourging and crucifixion of the man whom Christians regard as the savior of humanity. (Passion comes from the Latin "passio," meaning suffering.)
Though the movie doesn't open until tomorrow -- on Ash Wednesday, the start of the Lenten season -- an Eastside church reserved two screens last night at the Bellevue Galleria.
"We thought it was important to engage our community in a dialogue," said Peter Van Breda, senior pastor of The Gathering Place, a Bellevue church. "We encouraged (members) to invite people to the film. The movie will speak for itself."
Even if some audience members nearly couldn't.
"It's going to take awhile to decompress, to take it in," said Griffin, a Seattle resident who doesn't consider himself to be a "religious person."
"Go see it for yourself, but bring Kleenex. Be prepared for a lot of emotions. It's one of the best movies I've seen in some time -- whether you believe in God or not."
The film, which is rated R for vivid scenes of brutality, was sobering for McKenzie.
"I shed tears of anguish and sorrow to realize the sacrifice" of Christ, the Mountlake Terrace woman said.
The film made her think about eternal matters, "where we'll be when we're no longer here. The decision is in your heart."
Huffaker, a Bothell teen, came with three friends, all of whom said the movie "made you feel like you were there."
He found it difficult to express his sentiments. "I'm thinking of a lot of things right now," Huffaker said softly.
Nationally and locally, many churches view the film as practically a heaven-sent opportunity for evangelism. In addition to The Gathering Place, Cedar Park Assembly in Bothell bought out three screens last night at a Woodinville theater.
Antioch Bible Church and The City Church, both in Kirkland, are encouraging members to go outside theaters to answer moviegoers' questions, offer prayers and invite viewers to church.
Overlake Christian Church in Redmond will hold discussions at the Tully's coffee shop near Bella Botega Cinema after the evening showings tomorrow, Friday and Saturday, and March 5-6.
The violent depiction of Jesus' last hours likely will stay with viewers. Director and producer Mel Gibson has said that he wanted the film to "push the viewer over the edge" so that people could understand "the enormity of that sacrifice; to see that someone could endure that and still come back with love and forgiveness."
As for whether such a depiction should lead viewers to blame the Jews for Jesus' death, Gibson and Christians disagree, saying that all of humanity is responsible.
"The truth is, you and I are culpable for his death," said Rolfe Carawan, associate pastor at Lake Sammamish Foursquare Church in Redmond, during his sermon Sunday.
When Wendell Smith, pastor of The City Church, saw an earlier private screening of "The Passion," he said he wept and recalled Isaiah 53:5, which Christians view as a key prophecy about the Crucifixion:
"But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed."
Rabbi Daniel Weiner of Temple De Hirsch Sinai, a Reform Judaism congregation in Bellevue and Seattle, attended last night's Bellevue screening. Van Breda's interfaith invitation was "unique in terms of what's going on in the country," Weiner said before seeing the film. Weiner expressed concern that a movie so "wonderful on so many levels" would be tainted by Gibson's portrayal of Jews in the most negative light, making it appear that all Jews were culpable.
"Jews and Christians are going to see two different movies," Weiner said. He wants Jews to more broadly understand what the death of Jesus means to Christians, and Christians to know how the Passion has been used against Jews for centuries.
Weiner doesn't believe the film will lead to violence in the United States -- there are "no pogroms in Pittsburgh," he said -- but will have a subtle anti-Semitic effect.
Christian scholars say that references in the Bible to the role of "the Jews" in the death of Jesus refers only to some Jewish authorities at the time, not all Jews alive then or throughout history.
Jewish concerns are fueled in part by Gibson's particular Catholic background. He belongs to a traditionalist sect that rejects the Second Vatican Council teachings of 1965, which said that Jews were not collectively responsible for Christ's death.
He also has deviated from Scripture in some instances in his movie, filling in some gaps in the narrative, though the script remains essentially true to the Gospels, weaving a single story from the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Michael Medved, a film critic who hosts a national talk radio show in Seattle on KTTH, has said that Jewish "overreaction (to the film) will provoke more anti-Semitism than the movie itself."
Many Christians are "incredulous" that some Jews believe that watching the movie will transform the most Jewish-friendly gentiles into "snarling, Jew-hating predators," agreed Rabbi Daniel Lapin, president of Toward Tradition, an organization that promotes traditional Judeo-Christian values.
Medved and Lapin are Orthodox Jews and Mercer Island residents.
Before last night's showing, Amy Rush, Griffin's girlfriend, said she was "going into it with an open mind." The Seattle woman was reared Catholic and attends church, but not regularly.
Afterward, she said she was glad that she saw it.
"I think it's the truth," she said. "I think the truth is hard to take."
P-I reporter John Iwasaki can be reached at 206-448-8096 or johniwasaki@seattlepi.com