Mary Magdalene

Well I really wanted to love it, but I couldn't. I had been waiting for this to come out ever since it unexpectedly got shelved during the whole Weinstein fiasco. I finally saw it on Good Friday l, at the only Bay Area theater that was showing it - in San Jose - which surprised me.

I did love the premise, and I thought a movie from Mary Magdalene's point of view was a great idea. But I couldn't feel a connection to the characters. It seemed Phoenix's Jesus was at times too angry and distant. The editing seemed off too. Scenes jumped from one to another and I found myself yawning a few times. But Mara did a great job. I gave it a 7.

The story of the last weeks of Jesus Christ told out of the perspective of the first ever feminist, Mary Magdalene. It is an interpretation of the bible and the new found redemption of Mary Magdalene by the Vatican in 2016. Rooney Mara plays the title role and gives quite a solid performance. The material given to her is rather limited, but mostly due to the fact the the film feels terribly edited and cut down. Its a good performance but nothing she will win awards for. Joaquin Phoenix plays Jesus. He did have some good moments but generally feels miscast. He played Jesus too rough and too edgy. I mean edgy is good, but he often felt like a homeless vagabond preaching around with his not less weird followers. Not quite Charles Manson like but close. Chiwetel Ejifor was fine but he was rather wasted except for his scene at the end. The film is very nice to look at. Cinematography is great. The whole look and feel is accurate and it has a nice score. It did feel too modern often . the way the talk, the way they gestured and Rooney Mara's pierced ears did not help. I really would like to see Garth Davis' uncut version of it.

The 6 stars are for the actors, the quality of the images and the bravery to make a movie about such a controversial subject. I am sadden for the fact that the plot has so many holes that even being a Christian (myself) didn't help. Christ journey during his last 3 years on earth was so immeasurably profound it changes lives to this day, 2000 years after. I was expecting that bringing the role of Mary Magdalene into light would make a fabulous complement. It didn't.

I know, I know its supposed to be about Mary, and it does a little bit of that, but it is also very much about how she sees Jesus. She sees him as a man carrying around the weight of the world on his shoulders, and she understands his true message when many miss it. In this way she serves a blank slate that we the audience can become.

She understands Jesus' true meaning behind the words in a way that only those outside of the story can. She as well as Jesus' mother both know that a gristly fate awaits him - just as we do.

I spent some time looking through the reviews, - many of the most negative reviews are arguing that it gets a lot wrong. So I wanted to argue a few of their points:

One reviewer says its wrong because Jesus didn't baptize Mary. The truth is we don't know. John 3:22 says Jesus spent some time baptizing, but then John 4:2 says Jesus wasn't baptizing, it was his disciples, but both of these moments are about Jesus' time in Judea - not Galilee, where Mary was likely baptized. It seems like in larger groups of baptisms, Jesus would have had his disciples share the work, and in a personal moment like baptizing Mary, (who many have suggested was funding these excursions), its likely in my mind that Jesus would have baptized her.

The same reviewer said that this film refutes that she had 7-demons cast out of her by Jesus (Luke 8:2). This is wrong by all accounts of Luke 8 that I can see. The Bible doesn't say Jesus cast the demons out. The Bible says that traveling with him included Mary who had had 7 demons cast out. The film shows her family attempting to cast demons out of her, and then Jesus sees her and says he sees no demons. This seems to fit well within the possibility of scripture.

It bothers me when people use scripture to try to refute or prove things. If you pull just a single line, you're missing the picture. And just because someone can quickly reference scripture, does not make them right.

Several said Jesus should appear in his early thirties. Again, we don't know. He was most likely between 33-36. The only mention in the Bible says he was younger than fifty.

Some people thought nobody looked semitic, but the Levant was one of the big melting pots, and there's not a lot of research on where all the white people were in 33 AD.

I agree they shouldn't have made Peter acting all righteous and jealous as he was in the Book of Thomas. Why must we tear someone down in order to lift another up? Also the trope of Angry Black Man... no thanks. Many called this a politically correct take on Jesus - and I'd argue that for this reason above that this was far from politically correct, and only reinforces bad stereotypes about gender and color.

Still one of my favorite films, hope this is useful for someone.

Mary Magdalene, according to the Gospels, was a follower of Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to His crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. In Christian tradition she has frequently been described as a repentant prostitute, although there is no Biblical authority to support this theory or her identification with either the anonymous "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet or with the equally anonymous "woman taken in adultery". There is also no evidence to support the theory occasionally put forward (e.g. in "The Da Vinci Code") that she and Jesus were married. Another assumption which has been made is that she was wealthy, and there is some Biblical support for this in that Luke refers to her supporting Jesus's ministry "out of her resources".

In this film, however, Mary Magdalene is a poor girl from Magdala on the Sea of Galilee. The real Magdala appears to have been a sizeable and prosperous town, but here it is depicted as a small and impoverished fishing village. She becomes a follower of Jesus, but her presence in His circle is not always welcomed by His male disciples. This is not simply a question of male chauvinism; there are also theological and ideological differences between Mary and the other disciples.

In the Gospels Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus for money, but it has become almost a cliché in New Testament biblical dramas to depict Judas as a Zealot, a freedom fighter hoping to liberate Judea from the control of the Roman Empire, an interpretation adopted in both "King of Kings" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told", even though there is no Biblical support for it. According to this interpretation Judas betrayed Jesus either in a bid to force Him to launch a Holy War against the Romans or out of disappointment that Jesus would not do so. This interpretation is followed in this film, except that here it is not just Judas who is a Zealot. All the other male disciples, especially Peter, hold similar views.

Mary Magdalene, however, is different. In a development again not found in the canonical Gospels (although it may derive some support from the non-canonical Gnostic Gospels) she is the only one who fully understands Jesus, that his is a message of peace and forgiveness, not of Holy War against the godless, and who helps to bring the male disciples (except Judas) round to this way of thinking.

There is nothing really wrong with Rooney Mara's performance in the main role, but she does not really stand out. The one outstanding performance comes from Joaquin Phoenix. Some might argue that Phoenix, aged 44 but looking considerably older behind that heavy beard, was too old to play Jesus, who died when He was only 33. Yet I think that there was probably a conscious decision on the part of the film-makers to get away from a young, handsome Jesus as portrayed by Robert Powell in "Jesus of Nazareth" or Jeffrey Hunter in "King of Kings" (aka "I Was a Teenage Jesus") and that the reasoning behind this decision was to downplay the idea that Mary's attraction to Jesus was sexual or romantic rather than spiritual. Phoenix gives us a deeply human Jesus, very different from traditional Christian ideas about the Second Person of the Trinity, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. This is no charismatic orator or commanding religious leader but a humble carpenter's son turned itinerant preacher, a man whose appeal is grounded not in blazing rhetoric or miraculous powers but in his humility and his faith in God, a faith which remains unshaken despite moments of doubt. The film is very different to the traditional large-scale Biblical epic. It appears to have been made on a relatively small budget, lacking the elaborate sets and costumes and the large-scale set-piece scenes of something like "The Greatest Story...". It is austere in its visual style and the characters mostly wear plain homespun garments appropriate to their humble origins. It can at times be ponderous and slow-moving, yet there is a rugged simplicity and sincerity about it which means that it is able to bring Christianity to life in a way which more grandiose productions (and here I am thinking particularly of "The Greatest Story...") are not. 7/10