Yet another "The Nativity Story" post . . .
sbroadway saw The Nativity Story the other day, and he posted his views, which are not only remarkably consistent to my own, but to the extent ours differ, I adopt some of his having now had the opportunity to consider them.
We both liked many things critics did not. We both think there is much more character development and character interaction than the critics see, and that the interaction between Mary and Elizabeth was very well done. We are both intrigued by exploring what year 0 Palestine looked like and how people lived (but he points out things that are false, so the film is not reliable). He liked the flight into Egypt, especially the recitation of the Magnificat -- I liked all the travel scenes.
Aside from the many things we did both like, we were in agreement on many critiques. For example: the film trying to do too many things at once and struggling to cover them narratively or intellectually; anachronisms; too much creative license (though some of this filled in blanks about things parents put in this very awkward situation would think, such as "how would I even start to raise such a child); excessive use of whatever bird it was to symbolize whatever it was? The Holy Spirit? The angel Gabriel?; the comic-relief characterizations of the Magi; the Christmas-card type presentation of the star. He has some theological concerns he did not list; I wouldn't mind seeing that, now . . . (wink!).
We part company, however, on the connection between the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, Joseph and Zechariah and their own personal development: I did not see this, and in fact, found Mary's almost matter-of-fact fiat somewhat surprising. In this sense, critics who talk about a plot that won't excite anyone but believers have a point. OK, I agree she can't say, "uh, lemme think about that . . . " but I was not convinced. Keisha Castle-Hughes did maintain an almost deadpan visage throughout the film, not inappropriate for early teeners. Is the crossing of the divine with 0 A.D. teenaged angst the problem?
21st century theological differences are a more likely explanation. The Catholic World Report says the Protestant filmmakers, who tried not to offend Christians with differing Marian teachings, did not understand important Catholic teachings and traditions, to the point that when asked about our belief in Mary's lifelong sinlessness, the director said, "she doesn't sin in our movie." Really? Does showing attitude to your parents count as sin? Does not clearly honoring your father's choice of a husband within a culture that allows him that right? Castle-Hughes' performance is weak here, but the script does not help, and I suspect the directors did not either. Despite critics saying they were refreshed to see an age-appropriate actress in the part, maybe we are seeing why top directors didn't think sixteen-year-olds should take it on in the past, and also an example of the problems you face when you try to do too much with a creative work: I actually could not tell at first whether Mary was more moved by Herod's soldiers taking another girl her age off to be a servant to pay her father's taxes than she was by her own interchange with Gabriel. I am just not persuaded by the "grumpy teenager" who never entirely perks up. If a more "correct Mary" been presented, the total "about face" sbroadway liked would not even have been necessary, but I missed the "about face" looking for subtlety. Yes, Mary has responsibilities now. In some scenes, you see flash of a wise sense of purpose, a quite correct detachment, which is consistent with Scriptural tone. But it's exactly what you expect; I thought of it in a few minutes sitting here just now. Why can't she have fun? Religion does not put that off limits. I am especially intrigued by an impressionistic scene that shows Mary as having been fun and games with her girlfriends, I think prior to Gabriel's visit. You can't tell the meaning: is she being shunned? does she know she left those days behind her when she gave her fiat. Why? Religious duties do not make the people who have them bores. I also thought Joseph's and Zechariah's interactions with Gabriel were opportunities lost.
I'm not beating up on the movie because I didn't like its Mary; I actually did like the broad-brush version: make her a bit of the withdrawn teenager who could grow. But that's not enough. If pressed, I am sure the filmmakers can give you theological and faith-based reasons for why Mary said "yes" to Gabriel, but they cannot explain it in terms of the story their movie tells, divorced from its external source material. I bet it's not the only such question they cannot answer. The reason Mary does not "own" this film is that the principals just never could answer the question of how a regular kid could bear the Son of God and what that meant both for what she had to be beforehand and what she would become. Reason: "a regular kid" couldn't. In fact, a regular kid probably didn't; Mary may have been a consecrated virgin even before her betrothal, though I didn't think that necessary to the film, and I'm not even completely sure I believe it myself. God carefully prepared her; arranged for her Immaculate Conception; and gave her certain parents, family and influences. She could have had other attributes that were simply interesting but fully human. All of this would have resulted in a character "not so different," but different enough even to have agnostics saying, "I don't believe this, but I can see why they do." Instead, the filmmakers probably said, "let's present the 'regular kid' before Gabriel and then show Mary slowly brightening up afterwards. I notice scriptwriters doing things like this all the time and it's why the old genres are best: that's not what any novelist would consider sufficient for a protagonist or even an important character, especially one who we know has to be very complex given what the plot assigns her to do.
This is such an easy trap for a writer, and given that I am writing narrative nonfiction right now, I take it seriously, because forewarned is forearmed! The same rule applies there as here: a two-dimensional protagonist cannot carry an extended plot line nor a plot line of a serious work. I can see how it happened: sometimes when you have these great creative visions, you fail to do the nitty-gritty detail work, assuming that because you are "so right," your grand design will fall together. I think the filmakers did that with Mary, because they had the vision of doing what other films had not and they had the actress who could get that done. They weren't "wrong"; they just weren't finished.
Maybe it was easy. There's a lot of material out there about Mary, both in the Bible and in other secondary sources. The character who fades into the shadow somewhat in the Bible and history is St. Joseph. Here, the filmmakers had to work, and they hit a homerun.
Here are some of the film's great successes, edited from a version of some comments on sbroadway's LJ:
1. Joseph as "alternate protagonist" in a plot over the strength of his faith. I thought this took over the second half of the film, but it did not leave us shortchanged. The drama and suspense was actually huge, and I know the story (wink!). I do not know if Joseph's character developed so much -- well, maybe it did. He does present as a man who is deeply moral, not merely superficially, even at the beginning of the movie, but it's almost as though he doesn't know his own strength in that regard. He spends the first half of the film building a house for Mary while she is with Elizabeth putting off when she has to move in; in any other story, this would be symbolic of everything right about him (think Mr. Darcy), but he is about to become even better than that by becoming a poor emigrant. He chooses Mary because of her character, not her beauty, and until his dream, he struggles with the possibility that though he can't understand it, his good judgment of that character means his faith in her still well-placed. He is a man; she is still a girl. At one point, her parents sort of threaten to throw her out of the house, and she has this sort of idealistic, "well, I haven't done anything wrong and I don't care," response. Joseph, on the other hand, is building a house, talking about family. Sometimes I question how complete is Mary's understanding of the consequences of what is happening, but Joseph is very aware. How his faith develops is therefore better drama.
Joseph's faith journey, starting with the day Mary reveals her pregnancy, through the day of the dream, and then through all the challenges and reversals Joseph experiences afterwards, 2/3-1/2 of the movie, was a pure plot winner to me. I think that was because Joseph was living and expressing what so many "regular people" -- which is what Joseph was in that he was not a priest, specially trained, marked since birth or whatever outward sign one might expect -- so often wonder. In one scene on the way to Bethlehem when they were running low on food and Mary was pretending (?) to be asleep, Joseph fed what should have been his share to the donkey, and then prayed, "Lord, am I doing your will?" The moment is very profound. When I taught Catholic Sunday school, I always tried to get students to think about how "Mary and Joseph would have upset so many cultural norms and therefore were making so many sacrifices and risks." Young people worry about "doing the right thing," and this illustrates how significant was Mary's choice and why we should not now take it for granted. The film shows these risks, if imperfectly.
The real risk, however, is not knowing what God wants, not being able to find Him and not doing His will. I think many experience it and its frustration. I experience it every day. The film shows this very effectively. Any number of times I ask the same question, and I think enough other people do that for that storyline alone, the film will resonate.
2. The consistency with The Theology of the Body. In the plot about Joseph's faith journey, which becomes the film, the scene of Mary washing Joseph's feet (I was tickled at the many moments where I thought, "guess I know how the Father got that notion into Jesus' mind" and sensed the profundity of the parental role -- the Feast of the Holy Family will take on much more significance to me this year than in the past) was an incredible turning point for me, taking into account the reading I have been doing about The Theology of the Body. I saw Joseph leading Mary to Bethlehem as a crude analogy to the priestly, sacrificial way that the man gives of himself in spousal relationship, even in this hard journey, making her problem his own. But she was also receptive to his gift, just as she had been receptive to God's. While he was "laying down his life for her," she was carrying his God's life within her. Their gifts arose from their mutually complementary masculine and feminine roles.
I am sure the filmmakers intended none of this, but sometimes when you are getting foundational points correct, details you do not even notice fall into place. God works in strange ways, and the consistency with JPII's writings at the superficial level I have gotten so far really strikes me.
3. New Feminism notions consistent with The Theology of the Body arguably inform the entire film. One secular critic said he was impressed that the film seemed to applaud and glorify motherhood and womanhood, both in the perspective from which the story is told and the filmmaking (the director if female; the actresses seem particularly well chosen, etc.). Surprise! Surprise! It is a story of a child being born -- really two children, and other critics who complain that the story does not challenge viewers have a limited point here, because you get what you expect. I do think the film presents "the genius of women," very effectively, however, which is not necessary to the story, and the "woman's story," could well have been told very differently had a second-wave feminist with a related agenda been in charge or the Herod-v-God theme taken on a more significant role. Instead, we see panoramas of women working together, joking together, women teaching and nurturing children. We see women working very hard, not always on exclusively women's work. Mary responds to Joseph later in the film with a "woman-as-woman"'s gift of self both by carrying Jesus and helping Joseph help her. The analogy fits so well with The Theology of the Body. And this has New Feminist overtones -- she uses her feminine genius in her gift, but she does so freely, shown by her fiat. All around her we see this community of strong women doing more than supporting their men in our "outmoded" pre-feminist world; they are supporting each other, too, making the contributions JPII, for example, calls on women to make and that I suspect most women actually did make throughout history.
My instinct is to bristle at the notion that all Biblical films have to be (or even should be) "The Passion of the Christ," but I do wish The Nativity Story had been more like "Howard's End." Those thoughts led me to some others. Does every Biblical film need to be an epic? Should they be? Do you do justice to the subject when you make The Nativity Story, and you aren't more careful about some of the things I mention above? Is it really responsible to make "a nice little Xmas story," that is this seductively simple but bury important theological and historical imperfections/uncertainties and do so almost unaware of the Pandora's boxes of other issues you may be opening? We ask some of these questions of films about historical subjects; I have a lot of problems with Mel's Braveheart for these reasons. Folks, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but they hadn't yet discovered the rights of man in William Wallace's Scotland, and Robert the Bruce was too young to be seen as a potential king at that time, let alone to undermine Wallace. So why should I give The Nativity Story a free pass? I don't know.
I know this: the current Pope would quite properly disapprove of anything came out that might undermine the faith of the "little people," a subject for later (including my tad bit of irritation with him for constantly using that nomenclature), and to some degree, I have come to a modified agreement with him. Interestingly, the Vatican is pleased with this film. The Church should not keep knowledge and wisdom from us, though warnings about how we may choose not to exercise our free will are welcome in a world of finite temporal resources as far as I am concerned. There are huge costs to "Mary Magdelene was Jesus' girlfriend" and even Mel's art Biblical epic where I respect it as art but while I would never stop it, I don't think it "helps" in other ways. We are very quick to assert our right to express anything we want anytime, anywhere, but being permitted to do something does not make that thing responsible to do. There are times when indulging intellectualism at the risk of souls is a dangerous game.
Let's not complain too shrilly about The Nativity Story.
We both liked many things critics did not. We both think there is much more character development and character interaction than the critics see, and that the interaction between Mary and Elizabeth was very well done. We are both intrigued by exploring what year 0 Palestine looked like and how people lived (but he points out things that are false, so the film is not reliable). He liked the flight into Egypt, especially the recitation of the Magnificat -- I liked all the travel scenes.
Aside from the many things we did both like, we were in agreement on many critiques. For example: the film trying to do too many things at once and struggling to cover them narratively or intellectually; anachronisms; too much creative license (though some of this filled in blanks about things parents put in this very awkward situation would think, such as "how would I even start to raise such a child); excessive use of whatever bird it was to symbolize whatever it was? The Holy Spirit? The angel Gabriel?; the comic-relief characterizations of the Magi; the Christmas-card type presentation of the star. He has some theological concerns he did not list; I wouldn't mind seeing that, now . . . (wink!).
We part company, however, on the connection between the angel Gabriel appearing to Mary, Joseph and Zechariah and their own personal development: I did not see this, and in fact, found Mary's almost matter-of-fact fiat somewhat surprising. In this sense, critics who talk about a plot that won't excite anyone but believers have a point. OK, I agree she can't say, "uh, lemme think about that . . . " but I was not convinced. Keisha Castle-Hughes did maintain an almost deadpan visage throughout the film, not inappropriate for early teeners. Is the crossing of the divine with 0 A.D. teenaged angst the problem?
21st century theological differences are a more likely explanation. The Catholic World Report says the Protestant filmmakers, who tried not to offend Christians with differing Marian teachings, did not understand important Catholic teachings and traditions, to the point that when asked about our belief in Mary's lifelong sinlessness, the director said, "she doesn't sin in our movie." Really? Does showing attitude to your parents count as sin? Does not clearly honoring your father's choice of a husband within a culture that allows him that right? Castle-Hughes' performance is weak here, but the script does not help, and I suspect the directors did not either. Despite critics saying they were refreshed to see an age-appropriate actress in the part, maybe we are seeing why top directors didn't think sixteen-year-olds should take it on in the past, and also an example of the problems you face when you try to do too much with a creative work: I actually could not tell at first whether Mary was more moved by Herod's soldiers taking another girl her age off to be a servant to pay her father's taxes than she was by her own interchange with Gabriel. I am just not persuaded by the "grumpy teenager" who never entirely perks up. If a more "correct Mary" been presented, the total "about face" sbroadway liked would not even have been necessary, but I missed the "about face" looking for subtlety. Yes, Mary has responsibilities now. In some scenes, you see flash of a wise sense of purpose, a quite correct detachment, which is consistent with Scriptural tone. But it's exactly what you expect; I thought of it in a few minutes sitting here just now. Why can't she have fun? Religion does not put that off limits. I am especially intrigued by an impressionistic scene that shows Mary as having been fun and games with her girlfriends, I think prior to Gabriel's visit. You can't tell the meaning: is she being shunned? does she know she left those days behind her when she gave her fiat. Why? Religious duties do not make the people who have them bores. I also thought Joseph's and Zechariah's interactions with Gabriel were opportunities lost.
I'm not beating up on the movie because I didn't like its Mary; I actually did like the broad-brush version: make her a bit of the withdrawn teenager who could grow. But that's not enough. If pressed, I am sure the filmmakers can give you theological and faith-based reasons for why Mary said "yes" to Gabriel, but they cannot explain it in terms of the story their movie tells, divorced from its external source material. I bet it's not the only such question they cannot answer. The reason Mary does not "own" this film is that the principals just never could answer the question of how a regular kid could bear the Son of God and what that meant both for what she had to be beforehand and what she would become. Reason: "a regular kid" couldn't. In fact, a regular kid probably didn't; Mary may have been a consecrated virgin even before her betrothal, though I didn't think that necessary to the film, and I'm not even completely sure I believe it myself. God carefully prepared her; arranged for her Immaculate Conception; and gave her certain parents, family and influences. She could have had other attributes that were simply interesting but fully human. All of this would have resulted in a character "not so different," but different enough even to have agnostics saying, "I don't believe this, but I can see why they do." Instead, the filmmakers probably said, "let's present the 'regular kid' before Gabriel and then show Mary slowly brightening up afterwards. I notice scriptwriters doing things like this all the time and it's why the old genres are best: that's not what any novelist would consider sufficient for a protagonist or even an important character, especially one who we know has to be very complex given what the plot assigns her to do.
This is such an easy trap for a writer, and given that I am writing narrative nonfiction right now, I take it seriously, because forewarned is forearmed! The same rule applies there as here: a two-dimensional protagonist cannot carry an extended plot line nor a plot line of a serious work. I can see how it happened: sometimes when you have these great creative visions, you fail to do the nitty-gritty detail work, assuming that because you are "so right," your grand design will fall together. I think the filmakers did that with Mary, because they had the vision of doing what other films had not and they had the actress who could get that done. They weren't "wrong"; they just weren't finished.
Maybe it was easy. There's a lot of material out there about Mary, both in the Bible and in other secondary sources. The character who fades into the shadow somewhat in the Bible and history is St. Joseph. Here, the filmmakers had to work, and they hit a homerun.
Here are some of the film's great successes, edited from a version of some comments on sbroadway's LJ:
1. Joseph as "alternate protagonist" in a plot over the strength of his faith. I thought this took over the second half of the film, but it did not leave us shortchanged. The drama and suspense was actually huge, and I know the story (wink!). I do not know if Joseph's character developed so much -- well, maybe it did. He does present as a man who is deeply moral, not merely superficially, even at the beginning of the movie, but it's almost as though he doesn't know his own strength in that regard. He spends the first half of the film building a house for Mary while she is with Elizabeth putting off when she has to move in; in any other story, this would be symbolic of everything right about him (think Mr. Darcy), but he is about to become even better than that by becoming a poor emigrant. He chooses Mary because of her character, not her beauty, and until his dream, he struggles with the possibility that though he can't understand it, his good judgment of that character means his faith in her still well-placed. He is a man; she is still a girl. At one point, her parents sort of threaten to throw her out of the house, and she has this sort of idealistic, "well, I haven't done anything wrong and I don't care," response. Joseph, on the other hand, is building a house, talking about family. Sometimes I question how complete is Mary's understanding of the consequences of what is happening, but Joseph is very aware. How his faith develops is therefore better drama.
Joseph's faith journey, starting with the day Mary reveals her pregnancy, through the day of the dream, and then through all the challenges and reversals Joseph experiences afterwards, 2/3-1/2 of the movie, was a pure plot winner to me. I think that was because Joseph was living and expressing what so many "regular people" -- which is what Joseph was in that he was not a priest, specially trained, marked since birth or whatever outward sign one might expect -- so often wonder. In one scene on the way to Bethlehem when they were running low on food and Mary was pretending (?) to be asleep, Joseph fed what should have been his share to the donkey, and then prayed, "Lord, am I doing your will?" The moment is very profound. When I taught Catholic Sunday school, I always tried to get students to think about how "Mary and Joseph would have upset so many cultural norms and therefore were making so many sacrifices and risks." Young people worry about "doing the right thing," and this illustrates how significant was Mary's choice and why we should not now take it for granted. The film shows these risks, if imperfectly.
The real risk, however, is not knowing what God wants, not being able to find Him and not doing His will. I think many experience it and its frustration. I experience it every day. The film shows this very effectively. Any number of times I ask the same question, and I think enough other people do that for that storyline alone, the film will resonate.
2. The consistency with The Theology of the Body. In the plot about Joseph's faith journey, which becomes the film, the scene of Mary washing Joseph's feet (I was tickled at the many moments where I thought, "guess I know how the Father got that notion into Jesus' mind" and sensed the profundity of the parental role -- the Feast of the Holy Family will take on much more significance to me this year than in the past) was an incredible turning point for me, taking into account the reading I have been doing about The Theology of the Body. I saw Joseph leading Mary to Bethlehem as a crude analogy to the priestly, sacrificial way that the man gives of himself in spousal relationship, even in this hard journey, making her problem his own. But she was also receptive to his gift, just as she had been receptive to God's. While he was "laying down his life for her," she was carrying his God's life within her. Their gifts arose from their mutually complementary masculine and feminine roles.
I am sure the filmmakers intended none of this, but sometimes when you are getting foundational points correct, details you do not even notice fall into place. God works in strange ways, and the consistency with JPII's writings at the superficial level I have gotten so far really strikes me.
3. New Feminism notions consistent with The Theology of the Body arguably inform the entire film. One secular critic said he was impressed that the film seemed to applaud and glorify motherhood and womanhood, both in the perspective from which the story is told and the filmmaking (the director if female; the actresses seem particularly well chosen, etc.). Surprise! Surprise! It is a story of a child being born -- really two children, and other critics who complain that the story does not challenge viewers have a limited point here, because you get what you expect. I do think the film presents "the genius of women," very effectively, however, which is not necessary to the story, and the "woman's story," could well have been told very differently had a second-wave feminist with a related agenda been in charge or the Herod-v-God theme taken on a more significant role. Instead, we see panoramas of women working together, joking together, women teaching and nurturing children. We see women working very hard, not always on exclusively women's work. Mary responds to Joseph later in the film with a "woman-as-woman"'s gift of self both by carrying Jesus and helping Joseph help her. The analogy fits so well with The Theology of the Body. And this has New Feminist overtones -- she uses her feminine genius in her gift, but she does so freely, shown by her fiat. All around her we see this community of strong women doing more than supporting their men in our "outmoded" pre-feminist world; they are supporting each other, too, making the contributions JPII, for example, calls on women to make and that I suspect most women actually did make throughout history.
My instinct is to bristle at the notion that all Biblical films have to be (or even should be) "The Passion of the Christ," but I do wish The Nativity Story had been more like "Howard's End." Those thoughts led me to some others. Does every Biblical film need to be an epic? Should they be? Do you do justice to the subject when you make The Nativity Story, and you aren't more careful about some of the things I mention above? Is it really responsible to make "a nice little Xmas story," that is this seductively simple but bury important theological and historical imperfections/uncertainties and do so almost unaware of the Pandora's boxes of other issues you may be opening? We ask some of these questions of films about historical subjects; I have a lot of problems with Mel's Braveheart for these reasons. Folks, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but they hadn't yet discovered the rights of man in William Wallace's Scotland, and Robert the Bruce was too young to be seen as a potential king at that time, let alone to undermine Wallace. So why should I give The Nativity Story a free pass? I don't know.
I know this: the current Pope would quite properly disapprove of anything came out that might undermine the faith of the "little people," a subject for later (including my tad bit of irritation with him for constantly using that nomenclature), and to some degree, I have come to a modified agreement with him. Interestingly, the Vatican is pleased with this film. The Church should not keep knowledge and wisdom from us, though warnings about how we may choose not to exercise our free will are welcome in a world of finite temporal resources as far as I am concerned. There are huge costs to "Mary Magdelene was Jesus' girlfriend" and even Mel's art Biblical epic where I respect it as art but while I would never stop it, I don't think it "helps" in other ways. We are very quick to assert our right to express anything we want anytime, anywhere, but being permitted to do something does not make that thing responsible to do. There are times when indulging intellectualism at the risk of souls is a dangerous game.
Let's not complain too shrilly about The Nativity Story.