The Nativity Story
“I have told the truth. Whether you believe it is your choice, not mine.”
I kinda knew this would not only be good but also visually impressive with Catherine Hardwicke at the helm. I didn’t expect it, however, to completely cement her as one of my favourite directors. This is really quite a perfect movie, so perfect it really left me speechless. Of course, if you’re not a Christian, or haven’t been brought up with the Nativity story, the experience will be a different thing, though I’m sure the visuals are still sufficient for most and the religious aspects of the story aren’t dealt with entirely preachily. I can only speak as someone who was brought up with this, and though I’m not a church-going, god-fearing Christian or anything – I don’t identify with any specific religions, though I certainly love this one’s stories more with every year I live – this moved me exactly the way I wanted it to. To be that first shepherd, to witness something that absolutely brings you to your knees with its sheer purity and beauty, its complete lack of modern cynicism and skepticism, to just realise, we are nothing compared to This … that’s what this movie needed to be to impress me, it’s a big demand, and I can say picking my jaw off the floor, it succeeded.
The Nativity story has always for me either been rushed through school play style, shown in fragments as in carols or advent calendars, or shown as part of the grander story of Jesus’ life. Singled out, it allows for what I found to be the most powerful aspect of this production, and it’s the way we get to feel Mary’s loneliness at the start, we get glimpses of her thoughts, her fears, how frightening to be given this secret and feel unable to tell anyone. When Joseph finally believes, we get the same thing – there’s a wonderful moment when they walk past a man on the streets foretelling the birth of the Messiah and they share a look that’s just amazing. Having loved her in Whale Rider, I knew Keisha Castle-Hughes would be fine as Mary, but relative unknown Oscar Isaac is perfect as Joseph too.
The other thing this production does well at is not shying away from the bitter side of the story. As they say, God is in the details, and though it’s all mostly offscreen, we’re still “shown” things like Herod’s slaughtering of the children, the circumcision of John, a ceremonial slaughtering of a cow, even a small thing like Joseph’s manual gutting of a fish for a meal. Even the significance of the gift of myrrh is not overlooked at the end.
All I can say is, if you celebrate Christmas, you can do much worse than watching this to remember why you do it. I’m guilty as anyone for “forgetting” and I’ve had plenty of recent Christmases where out of guilt I almost consider not celebrating such are my religious views. But I love Christmas … and I love this story … and you really can’t ask for a better version of it than this. If anything it honestly made me want to believe more.