'Nativity Story' brings Jesus' birth to big screen

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'Nativity Story' brings Jesus' birth to big screen

The News-Leader (Springfield, Missouri), November 28, 2006

Was the box office for Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," that 2004 showbiz shocker, a fluke? Or did it reveal a massive, neglected audience for reverential fare?

We'll learn more from the receipts for "The Nativity Story," New Line Cinema's holiday gift -- opening Friday -- that brings Christmas-card scenes of Jesus' birth to life on screen.

Christians will presumably flock to "Nativity," although the same Time Warner unit bears responsibility for those "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" movies.

Director Catherine Hardwicke ("Thirteen," "Lords of Dogtown") says she sought "epic intimacy" to evoke "another time and beautiful landscape." Strikingly austere vistas in Morocco and Italy represent the first-century Holy Land.

The 10-nation cast boasts Oscar nominees Shohreh Aghdashloo ("House of Sand and Fog") as Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist; and the magnetic Keisha Castle-Hughes ("Whale Rider") in the primary role of her cousin Mary.

"The Nativity Story" premiered Sunday before an audience of thousands in the Vatican's Pope Paul VI auditorium. Pope Benedict XVI did not attend.

A number of cardinals attended, along with local dignitaries, says Rolf Mittweg, chief of worldwide distribution and marketing for New Line Cinema. Mittweg says the film was greeted with applause -- and with camera flashes from the audience when the Christ child appeared onscreen.

Despite the warm reception, it has an obstacle to overcome: The actress playing Mary, a young, unwed pregnant woman 2,000 years ago, is herself pregnant and unwed. Castle-Hughes announced in October she was pregnant at age 16.

No religious leader has made a statement about it, but online chatter about the movie has focused on her pregnancy.

News reports suggested Pope Benedict skipped the movie because of her pregnancy, but church officials say he was simply busy. Castle-Hughes, who is shooting another film in Australia, was not there, either.

Jesus' ministry and crucifixion have provided ample movie material, while his birth is largely ignored. Perhaps that's because this, possibly the most famous story ever told, lacks suspense.

The movie's historical consultant, the Rev. William Fulco of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, endorses mild "higher criticism" of the Bible in a publicity handout that will rile fundamentalists.

The accounts in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke "are not completely compatible," Fulco says. Since "very little was known of the events," he said, "the stories were developed using what is called midrash, a sometimes creative reconstruction of events ... elaborated from clues" in prior writings.

Screenwriter Mike Rich is devoutly Christian. Since he turned the minimal Scriptures into 94 minutes, how does "Nativity" compare with the Bible? Rich follows a largely literal replication of Matthew and Luke. Unlike some of Gibson's "Passion" embroidery, the elaborations emerge naturally from the biblical and cultural background.

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