Update: 12/5/06 - Dr. Mark D. Roberts reflects positively on the historical aspect of "The Nativity Story" plus Mary's extraordinary experience here. Theologian Scot McKnight says the movie lived up to his expectations and beyond. He thinks, however, that Mary could have been less pensive and a more robust character if the Magnificat had been more up front instead of at the end. - I find that an interesting thought.
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This afternoon I went with others to see the newly-released movie, The Nativity Story. I am so glad I went. It's a great movie. The movie attempts to be as authentic as possible (the little stone homes of Nazareth had never properly entered my consciousness). It also excels in
something never done before -- getting inside the characters of Mary and Joseph. I think the images of this movie will forever implant themselves in our minds whenever we think of the Christmas story.
Chuck Colson offers some commentary:
New Line Cinema’s new movie, "The Nativity Story," opening today, is the first explicitly biblical film released by a major Hollywood studio in fifty years—the last two being Ben-Hur and The Ten Commandments. Yes, there have been many faith-related films lately: for example, The Passion of the Christ, One Night with the King, the Narnia tales, and Facing the Giants. But most of those films did not come from major mainstream studios. This one does.
The Nativity Story is a faithful retelling of Luke 1 and 2. . . . As Catherina Hurlburt noted on BreakPoint’s blog, The Point, the movie took Mary, Joseph, and others out of the icons and portrayed them in the flesh, the dirt, and the tears of daily life. The Nativity Story reminds us of what director Catherine Hardwicke called “the humanity of the holiday.”
The trailer with film clips can be found here. That site also offers behind the scene vignettes and film clips.
I highly recommend reading this article by Steve Board. Board has also written another article, this one for World magazine.
As previously noted, it's truly astonishing that the City of Chicago refused to allow advertising for the movie at the public German Christkindlmarket holiday festival. The AP story on that can be found here.
I should note that the San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent review. I especially appreciate the following observations:
. . . (Catherine) Hardwicke is best known as the director of "Thirteen," about two seventh-grade girls who descend into shoplifting, drug abuse and sexual experimentation. That might sound like the wrong resume for the director of "The Nativity Story," but it's exactly right. Hardwicke is no sentimentalist. She is concerned with moral issues. And she has insight into teenagers. "The Nativity Story" is, after all, the story of a teenage girl who gets pregnant. Mary has nothing to do with it -- an angel tells her that she'll conceive through a visitation of the Holy Spirit -- but she has little hope that anyone in her community will believe her.
Hardwicke and Rich do a number of very intelligent things. First, they take whatever is in the Bible and fortify it through research. So the Jewishness of Mary's village in Nazareth is emphasized, and so is Roman oppression in the form of cruel taxation. As in the Bible, there are shepherds, but they're not the shepherds that you see on Christmas cards. These are the real shepherds of history, terribly poor people, practically outcasts, who are filthy and lead lives of utter loneliness and poverty. . .