Mary, mother of Jesus

Year of release : 1999

Run time : 1h28m

Genre : Biblical Drama / Tv

Cast : Christian Bale

The movie is an American made for Tv Biblical drama that tells the story of Mary and her relationship with Jesus.

 

The movie opens with the Romans coming to town to post about the census to be made, all men with their wives and kids, having to travel to their place of birth to register.

Mary is portrayed as not fearing the Romans and speaking up when facing them (which I felt was forced. It doesn't feel a woman at the time would do that.)

She is betrothed to Joseph, and one day, while out , she sees the angel of the Lord telling her she is with child. He also tells her about Elizabeth being pregnant, although she was too old for it.

Mary goes to see her, and sees it's true. When she comes back, Joseph sees she's pregnant, and thinks she's been with a man. At the time they were stoning women for adultery (how charming!), so Joseph tells her to move to another town where nobody knows who she is, for he won't tell on her.

After having a dream about her being persecuted, and that almost happening in real life, Joseph marries her, and they travel to Bethlehem.

Although called "Mary, mother of Jesus", the movie doesn't give us more information about Mary, we don't know the kind of life she had (the religious texts saying she remained a virgin, never consummating her marriage to Joseph ,although she lived to be 60 years old,are insane! Although apparently Joseph had 4 sons and 2 daughters from a previous marriage. In the beginning, before the texts were changed, these were her children, as the Bible mentions Jesus was the elder, first born son, with special rights, hence him giving his mother to the care of his beloved disciple on the cross.), and it's pretty much the same story we know from all the movies about Jesus, without that much information about Jesus. Her story ends after Jesus' crucifixion.

The movie wants us to believe she is the one who told the parables to Jesus, teaching him the scriptures.

 

The scenes felt forced, they didn't flow one into another, it just felt staged like in a play. Due to that, the acting also felt off. Even the narration at the beginning was off (the guy's voice was happy while talking about bleak things).

The actresses who played Mary were beautiful, and Christian Bale was the most beautiful Jesus ever, not that it matters.

The soundtrack was Ok, I guess.

The visual effects weren't good, you can tell they are CGI.

You can watch the full movie here (with Romanian subtitles) :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAOi1pfQrl4&ab_channel=ReligioaseDiverse

Rating : Could have been a contender !