Well I decided to go see the Movie "The Nativity" seeing as it is the season and any attempt to focus on Christ cannot be a bad thing.
Finding a session was the first challenge, I eventually managed to find one close enough to home, at a 4:15 pm session, more a time for the blue rinse set but it was not like there was a choice. I am not sure what the lack of sessions and the time says. Is the movie good, bad or indifferent?
I guess first off, it is not a draw card, the story of Christ's birth does not draw a crowd. The interesting thing is that their was about 100 or so people there watching that is more than I have seen in a cinema for a long time. Second that it is not a great film? The movie though well done was not compelling. This may be due to the viewers being familiar with the topic or that we know the ending. The biggest thing for me is what is the point of the movie! It does not draw people in to find Christ. I would be confident to gamble that very few (if any) non Christians would have seen it. Now this is not to say there is no point to it but the point of this film is not in some holy quest to tell the story better or more accurately so as to draw more people to Him.
I have heard it said that "you must see it" about this film. This is a big statement. The movie is a depiction of someone's view of the nativity, it is not holy. It is funny this movie has been spoken about in the same vein as the "Passion of Christ" by Mel Gibson. They are movies, that is all that they are. The story that they tell in their way, is the true power and the big screen is not the answer to the future of the church. The future of the church lay in the story!
Back to the movie... The film stayed true to the biblical narratives with some embellishment for the sake of making it a little longer than the ads at the start of the screening. Herod is portrayed well as the disturbed ruler. Mary is well portrayed as young and naive, Joseph as older and virtuous.
The wise men take the show as they adopt a humorous tone to the journey to find the Christ.
The story struggled to portray the Holy though. As Maggi Dawn puts it "The problems with it are similar to the problems film-makers have in portraying the adult Jesus as a human being - what does it mean for the Holy Family to be "holy"? - and how thoroughly human can they be while still being portrayed as "holy" and special? To some extent the writers tried to get round this by keeping the dialogue extremely sparse. Mary, in particular, doesn't say very much. The trouble with being meaningful, is that it too often fails to communicate meaning. There is an awful lot of staring "meaningfully" into the middle distance in this movie, and ordinary human reactions are overlaid with what is evidently supposed to be extra layers of spiritual significance, but sometimes makes the scenes seem rather hammy, especially the scenes where Elizabeth and Mary share their secret knowledge about their expected babies."
Add to this the shafts of light that appear and with lazar accuracy pin point the exact location of the birth, the movie takes on a Christmas card feel.
So see the movie is you like and can find a showing, wait for the DVD or even wait for the DVD to be on sale. It will not change your life if you see it or don't see it. However I would highly recommend reading the book.
Hi Andrew According to the media film commentators nearly every film that comes out "must be seen". I haven't seen it but have read the book.
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