Curiously enough, Keisha Castle-Hughes, the 16-year-old star of Nativity Story, was not among the invited guests last week at the Vatican, where her movie had its fabulous world premiere. Tongues immediately set to wagging that perhaps the Holy Father's posse might not be completely comfortable hanging with the New Zealand wunderkind, who, in addition to being the youngest person ever nominated for a Best Actress Oscar (at age 13, for Whale Rider), also happens to be an unmarried, pregnant teenager.
The real kicker: The character played by Castle-Hughes in Nativity Story is perhaps the most famous pregnant teenager in history, the Virgin Mary.
It gets weirder. At the helm of Nativity Story is Catherine Hardwicke, who made her rep with Thirteen and then followed it up with Lords of Dogtown, two godless coming-of-agers about aggressively dysfunctional boys and girls gone wild. These earlier movies revel in just the sort of non-Church-sanctioned behavior that leads to conception, none of it remotely immaculate.
It remains to be seen whether Hardwicke has somehow found the Lord in the years since her last film, but, for better or worse, Nativity Story plays things completely straight. There's nary a hint of the subversive saber-rattling that we might have expected from this director, and nothing that might rattle the cage of a single True Believer. The bizarre synchronicity of Keisha Castle-Hughes' real-life pregnancy aside, Nativity Story takes its place in the culture as a stodgy but sincere love letter to Mary, the Mother of God. Truth be told, between this film and The Da Vinci Code, 2006 might just be Mary's best year at the movies in a very long time.
To her credit, Hardwicke attempts to imbue the film with a degree of authenticity, hiring a team of historical and religious advisors to oversee the production and shooting in out-of-the-way areas of Morocco and Italy. Brief snatches of Biblical Aramaic sprinkle the English dialogue, although the cast displays a mishmash of accents that range from Zorba the Greek to Yiddish Borscht Belt to Count Chocula. Digital effects aren't overly pronounced, and the movie has that by-now-requisite bleached-out, semi-sepia look that screams out "authenticity" and "taste."
The plot here hardly needs recapping, but in some ways telling a story that everybody basically knows proves trickier than you might expect. Hardwicke and screenwriter Mike Rich are OK when they're simply laying out the narrative's big moments, but they're often uncertain how to portray the smaller, human aspects of such revered characters. (A pair of scenes where Mary's family and neighbors react to the announcement of her impending virgin birth prompted awkward, stifled laughter at the preview I attended.)
In the end, the filmmakers simply opt for turning Mary and Joseph into non-threatening and weirdly modern icons of Perfect Love, swathing them in a parental glow unsullied by physical contact, biblical forerunners of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
Nativity Story amounts to a better-than-average Davey and Goliath episode with slightly more animated characters and competent but curiously bland filmmaking chops. The soundtrack is sweetly reverential at the right moments; the infrequent attempts at levity feel out of place and clumsy; and whenever mean old soldiers rush in on horseback, you can be sure it'll be in slow motion, with mandatory close-ups of thundering hoofs and snorting nostrils. The movie is gentle almost to the point of colorlessness, and there's nothing here that you have to hide the kiddies from.
The closest Nativity Story comes to violence is a brief glimpse of childbirth or a circumcision (occurring off-screen and played for laughs), and the rest is strictly by-the-numbers, a carefully faithful reading of material that's all about faith but decidedly lacking in vision.
'Tis the season and all, so it may not come as much of a surprise that there's yet another movie opening this week that tackles faith head-on — although you might want to leave the children at home for this one.
The documentary Jesus Camp is scary stuff indeed, focusing on good intentions gone horribly wrong at a summer camp for Christian youth out in the wilds of North Dakota. Kids on Fire is the name of the camp, and the youngsters are indoctrinated into the faith (and encouraged to indoctrinate others) in an aggressively intolerant manner that can't help but bring to mind those Pakistani madrassahs incubating the future Jihadists of global Islamo-Fascism (or whatever it's called this week).
And these Christian campers clearly revel in their roles as soldiers in God's army, ranting against Harry Potter (a warlock who should be "put to death"), dismissing Global Warming while paying homage to George Bush, and shaking in convulsive fits of tearful, religious fervor at the drop of a hat. Supervising the fun and games is camp director Becky Fischer, a rotund Pentecostal minister given to typing her sermons in a font resembling dripping blood.
As you may have gathered, Jesus Camp makes its agenda clear in ways that don't always further the film's credibility. Filmmakers Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady are occasionally a little too gung-ho about emphasizing the potentially dangerous aspects of their subjects, sometimes giving us the feeling that we're simply gawking at geeks and freaks.
Shots of crosses and symbols of government are juxtaposed at every opportunity, and images of children in religious trances are often accompanied by ominous electronic music more suitable for The Omen. And when one scene shows us a devout suburban family pledging allegiance to the Christian flag, the camera cuts away to a droopy-eared pooch in the corner — and I swear you can see him roll his eyes.
The voice of reason through all of this is Christian anti-fundamentalist radio host Mike Papantonio, who punctuates the proceedings with running commentary on the unholy alliance of evangelical Christianity and backwards Bushie imperialism, and the increasingly treacherous blurring of Church and State. It all ends with the weirdest ride through a car wash since Cronenberg's Crash, as minister Becky cranks up the evangelist screaming on the radio, the excess water runs blood-red down her windshield, and the car makes its way inexorably toward a pair of exit doors marked, as if in final warning to us all, "Stop!"
This article appears in Nov 29 – Dec 5, 2006.
