The Nativity Story

Tues afternoon I went to see The Nativity Story with a friend of mine. I didn't go into it expected to see another movie as great as The Passion of the Christ, but, I was hoping for a better movie than I saw. While there were a few good scenes most of the time I sat there thinking "That's all?" It fell like it was falling short, there was something missing. My friend described the movie as flat.

This is not to say it was all bad, there were some good things about the movie. It just didn't live up to its promise in some ways. Most of that was due to the script. They did their best, but for the most part he actors weren't given anything to work with. Herod being the biggest exception. 1 of the biggest weaknesses in the script was that for the most part here was a movie about what is the central tenet of a religion & there were many parts where the Jewish faith & esp that of Mary & Joseph should have been shown in more depth than it was. Mary & Joseph have always been shown as people of deep faith, very devout. But, to look at how their roles were written you would think that their faith wasn't important. It was a part of their culture, nothing more.

The biggest area in which the Jewish faith is shown is in relation to King Herod & there only the misunderstood idea at the time that the Messiah was to be a political leader to overthrow the Romans. Even those scenes in Nazareth were focused on that understanding of Messianic prophecy. The other area in which it is shown & the area where the writers got it right was the Temple scenes with Zechariah (Stanley Townsend) & Elizabeth (Shohreh Aghdashloo). There you saw a Levite who was devout & who's family was deeply honored by his serving in the Temple.

Probably the strongest & best written character was that of Herod (Ciarán Hinds). The script caught the evil, greedy, mistrusting, power hungry villian that he was. He knew he was hated & knew that he really didn't have the right to be called king. & thus he was rightly afraid of a political Messiah who had the right credentials. As much as you could feel sorry for a chip off the old block, the way he treated his son Antipas (Alessandro Giuggioli) did so. Antipas was clearly learning the lessons well that his father was teaching him. How Herod cruelly enforced Rome's law & will was also presented well.

Joseph (Oscar Isaac) was clearly shown as a strong man who loved & cared for Mary. But, even though it focused on some of the positive characteristics of Joseph, the script blew it when it came to dealing with his struggling with Mary's pregnancy. It showed him shocked, but barely touched on his deep struggle with the tension between his love for Mary & the facts of the situation. His faith was shown only in his concern that he would be lying if he claimed Jesus as his son. Even the way they dealt with his dream was disappointing. There were a couple of good scenes where the love for Mary by Joseph was shown by the sacrifices he made to feed & protect her.

Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes) was the biggest disappointment. Again, this was mostly the script's fault. They wrote her more as a 21st Century teen that as a teen of that era. Mary was way too rebelious against the arranged marriage. She knew that was how marriages came about at that time & would have been much more accepting of the fact. Her unwillingness would have been more understandable if it had been shown in the light of the Catholic tradition of her taking a vow of virginity. Her encounter with the archangel Gabriel was another poor scene. This time the fault lies somewhere between the actress & the director as the script stuck closely to the Bible. Mary's reaction was too unconvincing.

Mary's parents', Joaquim (Shaun Toub) & Anna (Hiam Abbass) were shown as loving & caring parents struggling to care for their family. The actors did well in the few scenes they had.

Another problem for me was in the way the Magi, Melchior (Nadim Sawalha), Balthasar (Eriq Ebouaney), & Gaspar (Stefan Kalipha) were presented. It was never made clear why they were so interested in why they were interested in the birth of the "King of the Jews". & they were presented more as comic relief. A couple of times they struck me more as a low key 3 Stooges rather than the 3 Wise Men. I did like they way they dealt with the Star of Bethlehem. They made it a conjunction of Jupiter, Venus & a star. Throughout both their journey & that of Joseph & Mary to Bethlehem they brought the star & planets together in a way that sublty hinted at who was about to be born. Up to the conjuction they formed a triangle that gt smaller & smaller.

The scene where Mary & Elizabeth 1st meet was 1 of the better scenes, until the part where Mary's Magnificat should have been. The writers tacked in onto the end of the movie where it didn't work as well. Later Mary was already feeling Jesus kick in the womb even though she was less than 2 months pregnant.

There were many other weaknesses with the timeline of the movie. The trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem took longer than it did in real life. At times it seemed to be drug out for dramatic purposes. It did get accross how rough the journey was at times fairly well. A couple of the scenes were right out of a Hallmark card. Here is where the upcoming conjunction worked in a neat, subtle way for me. They lower point of the triangle always pointed at Mary. Another flaw was having Mary go into labor just as they reached Bethlehem. Besides being innacurate according to the Bible story, it was just too contrived to be believable. & finding a cave that just happenned to have a hole in the roof that the light from the star could shine in with a brightness that no conjunction could create was another contrived scene. It did make another good Hallmark card.

The appearance of the angel to the shepherd was another weak point. They seemed to accept the event with no awe or surprize. & the heavens weren't filled with angels either. The Magi show up while the shepherds were still there, Still another Hallmark card scene. & they just seem to decide on their own to return to Herod.

Here is another spot where the scriptwriters blew it. They omitted the scene where Joseph & Mary took the infant to the temple for the purification rite. Having the scene where Simeon & Anna the Prophetess talk to them could have been a powerful scene showing Mary & Joseph coming to a deeper understanding of the resposibility they bore. Instead the script goes back to Herod sending the soldiers to kill the babies 2 & under within a day or 2 of Jesus' birth. They film ended with the Holy Family on the way to Egypt (yet another Hallmark moment) & a voice over of Mary saying the Magnificat.

This movie had such potential, yet it fell far short of what it could have been. It will end up being shown regularly on TV at Christmas & unlike most so-called Christmas specials, at least it will show what the holiday is really about.

My friend gave the movie a B-. On my 4 star scale I give it 2 stars. At the theater I told him it was somewhere between 2- 2-1/2 stars. As I thought about it I just couldn't add the 1/2 star. There were a couple things he liked I didn't & I liked he didn't, but overall we were both disappointed in a movie that neither of us put high expectations into. This is 1 movie it would be better to wait to see until it makes the $1.50 theaters or onto DVD.

(This movie premiered at the Vatican. Interestingly enough there were no stories of Papa Benedetto saying "This is as it was" like Pope John Paul the Great was supposed to have said fot The Passion. I can see why.)

Added: 9 Nov 2006 11:43 pm In the discussion of the film my friend & I made a comparison of what happenned on the set of The Passion of the Christ vs that of The Nativity Story. 1 of the big differences was that there was daily Mass during the filming of The Passion of the Christ but nothing during the filming of The Nativity Story. Also, Jim Caviezel is a devout Catholic. Keisha Castle-Hughes is not a practicing Christian to the best of my knowledge. This is not to say that every actor in The Passion of the Christ was a believer, they weren't. The point is there was an overall faith factor in the production of The Passion of the Christ that was missing in The Nativity Story. & it showed in how the subject was treated. That is what makes this whole movie so sad, it was an OK movie that could have been something special, something as big as The Passion of the Christ. But, because it left God mainly on the sideline it didn't become what it could.