'The Nativity Story' examined

A leading commentator on Christianity and the church, Theo Hobson, offers his view on the new American film.

Dec  6 2006

We are used to the Nativity story being depicted in two major ways: by primary school children and by old masters. Neither of these forms is likely to challenge us, to make us think again about this deeply strange tale. I recently saw a Nativity scene by Velázquez, and found it far less interesting than his other narrative paintings; indeed, I hardly stopped to look. It was just a huge Christmas card. Hardly any art has ever prodded me to look harder at the Nativity. The main exceptions that come to mind are poetic: WH Auden’s drama ‘For the Time Being’, and TS Eliot’s ‘The Journey of the Magi’. But neither of these gives full attention to the fated lovers. Can any form of art bring these figurines to life?

‘The Nativity Story’ is made for the Christian mass-market: it aims to do for the Nativity what Mel Gibson did for the crucifixion. Surprisingly, this has rarely been done: though the Nativity features in ‘Ben-Hur’ and other Bible epics, no major film has tried to tell the full story, to put Mary and Joseph centre-stage. The result is a fascinating tension between psychological realism and the constraints of the devotional genre.

The problem is that it’s all about sex. OK, so there’s no sex scene (that’s the point), but that doesn’t make it safe and harmless: it makes it, on one level, deeply disturbing. This film wants to inspire rather than disturb, but the intrinsic scandal of the story shines through nevertheless, thank God.

The key scene ought to be the Annunciation (the appearance of the Angel Gabriel to Mary, to tell her God’s plan). It is obviously traumatic for a teenager to learn that she is to become the secret sexual agent of a higher power. It is the stuff of horror films. Indeed, this myth is the germ of films such as ‘Rosemary’s Baby’, ‘The Omen’, ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘Stigmata’ – the divine (or demonic) invasion of female flesh. This film has no intention of exploring such territory of course, which makes this Annunciation scene a damp squib. This Mary is shy, nervous, confused, but no more: she is not allowed to display visceral fear, or holy ecstasy. Nevertheless, Keisha Castle-Hughes (the girl from ‘Whale Rider’) is very watchable, even within these constraints.

Joseph’s role is Shakespearean. He has been called the greatest cuckold in history. The film just about manages to get the point across. When his bride-to-be returns from visiting her cousin, the fruit of her womb is beginning to swell, and he’s plunged into Othello-land. Has she betrayed him, or has she been raped by a Roman soldier, as her father suggests? Her story about the angel is unconvincing. Jewish law entitles Joseph to accuse her of adultery, which could result in her stoning. In the most powerful scene of the film, he agrees not to accuse her. Not because he believes her story (who would?), but because he loves her. He then has a dream in which the village prepares to stone her, and he is about to join in, but the Angel Gabriel stops him and tells him what’s going on. This is theologically profound: it anticipates Jesus’s subversion of legalistic morality.

As the couple travels to Bethlehem they fall gently in love. But of course it would offend a billion potential viewers, or at least their clerical leaders, if there were any real sense that they fancied each other (we are not even granted a kiss). The climax (I hope I’m not giving too much away) is the birth of a little boy in a stable. Mary’s brief, intense labour is the surrogate sex scene, in which her face is at last the site of animal passion, and it comes as a blessed relief.

This film is trying to do the impossible: to humanise these characters without removing them from the devotional atmosphere of the crib scene. It can only provide a few glimpses of psychological realism, for its core function is the presentation of pious iconography. In a film with broad Christian appeal, Mary and Joseph have to be two-dimensional in their purity, just as there has to be a star and a stable, and a villain trying to kill them (is it accidental that Herod resembles Saddam Hussein?).

So the Christmas card comes to life, but only so far. It’s enough. If you have kids between seven and 14, and you want them to know that there’s more to Christmas than telly and wrapping paper, take them.

Theo Hobson is the author of ‘Anarchy, Church and Utopia: Rowan Williams on the Church’.

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