The Nativity Story

Nearly three years after Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ graced the screen in all its bloody, controversial glory, director Catherine Hardwicke has crafted a suitable prequel just in time for the holidays. If Passion was an uncompromisingly brutal expression of personal faith, Nativity plays more like a well-mannered dictation. Yes, the tale of Christ’s birth is far more pleasant than the one about His death, and Hardwicke wisely avoids Gibson’s ‘fire and brimstone’ approach to biblical filmmaking, by making the story more widely accessible, while emphasizing its more heartfelt and universal traits. The Nativity Story is a fairly impressive achievement to be sure, and while it will undoubtedly elate the choir it’s preaching to, the film fails to achieve the greatness it obviously was aiming for.

Keisha Castle-Hughes embodies the adolescent Mary, who’s not at all pleased with her arranged marriage to the much older Joseph, played by Oscar Isaac. Her virgin pregnancy proves a difficult story for her folks to swallow, but once The Angel Gabriel sets the record straight with Joseph, he joins Mary on a journey to Bethlehem slightly more perilous than the Bible describes. Other figures included on this cinematic canvas are King Herod, broodingly searching for the prophetic king he intends to destroy, three mildly wisecracking wise men, and John the Baptist’s mother Elizabeth – House of Sand and Fog’s Shohreh Aghdashloo – who shares a joyful moment with Mary straight out of the Good Book, as their unborn babies seemingly kick communicatively from inside the womb. Like Passion, this film barely attempts to explain the plot, making its theological significance borderline meaningless to anyone unfamiliar with Christianity.

What is perhaps most disappointing about Nativity is the fact that its director and star have previously made two of the most riveting coming-of-age films about young women ever made. Hardwick’s directorial debut was the startlingly raw Thirteen, charting a girl’s descent into self-destruction and emotional instability with documentary-style detail, while Hughes’s spellbinding film debut fueled the elegant drama Whale Rider, about a Maori girl destined to become the first female leader of a patriarchal New Zealand tribe. The collaboration of these two gifted women to tell the immortal story of a strong female could have potentially made The Nativity Story a masterpiece. Instead, Hardwicke takes a sterile, plodding approach to the material, and despite Hughes’s exceptionally understated nuances, her performance mostly comes off as stiflingly wooden.

Yet the film has numerous strengths, not least of all Elliot Davis’s exquisite de-saturated cinematography and the Italian locations – also used for Passion – which breathe authentic life into every frame. Hardwicke does allow small moments of levity and humanity to leak through, most notably in her inclusion of Mary’s initial disdain for the husband forced upon her. Although Nativity never panders to the intended family audience, and includes scenes involving murdered babies, slaughtered cows, crucifixion, and even circumcision, the only nauseating image on display is Joseph’s mud-caked feet. While Hughes spends most of the movie simply looking distressed, Isaac’s sensitive and genuinely empathetic portrayal makes Joseph emerge as the heart of the film.

Lovely re-enactment at best, pageantry of zombie-like reverence at worst, The Nativity Story will exhilarate no one, and offend even less. It lacks the awe-struck joy of The Prince of Egypt, the humanity of The Last Temptation of Christ, and the gut-wrenching passion of Gibson’s film. But it also is the first live-action biblical film in a while that attempts to reach a wider audience, and Hardwicke should be commended for taking on a project of such epic scale, and succeeding in making a film that offers a warmer, more humanist view of Christianity in an age rampant with violent extremism. It will satisfy its target audience immensely, and may work as a diverting portrait of the biblical story for others. Yet toward the end, when Gabriel appeared to the shepherd and made his immortal proclamation beginning with, “for behold, I bring you tidings of great joy…” I began yearning for Linus’s rendition of the line from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” While this Gabriel delivered the words, Linus delivered their meaning.

Rating: **1/2 (out of *****)