Mary, Mother of Jesus

In a movie full of bad directing, costumes, makeup, sound, effects, and acting, I must say that Christian Bale gives one of his best performances of his career as Jesus. He made the successful transformation from child actor to respectable adult actor, making his role as Jesus of Nazareth one of his most touching and emotional roles of his brilliant acting career. It is safe to say that in an otherwise bad movie, Christian Bale is the shining star.

...if you are theirs fan.or if the religious films are yous favorite genre. because the only virtue of film is to do a larger portrait of Mary. not uninspired, not without few special notes but not real convincing. Christian Bale has the bad luck to be associated with too many great roles for be more than another actor acting Jesus. and the story is far to be different by many other adaptations.in fact, the presence of the lead actors, only the presence, represents the good point of the film. and, sure, the obvious desire to do a decent work. and if it is not easy to define it more than a memorable movie, the cause is only the impressive number of the films about The Savior.

This TV-movie is well-intentioned but mechanical. I knew from the opening that there was a problem with the production when the opening narrative was printed on the screen and read at the same time with a voice that sounded like the station-break announcer.

The film just goes through the motions and gives us every cliche of second-rate Biblical movies including Jesus as a fair-skinned Anglo-Saxon. Christian Bale does what he can with the material but is terribly mis-cast. His mother is presented as a politically-correct feminist who apparently is responsible for Jesus' teachings and parables which were, according to the plot, the bedtime stories she told Jesus when he was a child.

The sets and costumes are good, but the performances are flat and perfunctory. What we get here is a shallowness reminiscent of school plays. The Gospels are condensed into a 2 hour TV movie that has the profundity of a Readers' Digest version of the Bible.

This was a good idea, but I had problems with the execution. I felt this movie sacrificed more than it gained. Because it limited itself to what Mary experienced firsthand, it omitted huge chunks of the story of Jesus (like, for example, the Last Supper). If it had really developed Mary's character, that would have been a decent trade, but she comes a cross as a stock character whose words and actions are predictable and unremarkable.

This could have been a good movie, but they didn't take the trouble to do it right.

I found this a refreshing and thought-provoking interpretation of how Mary lived and what kind of a person she was. It was great to break the mold of the mousey, demure, glowing, silent waif. This Mary was a feisty activist without being harsh or stepping over the line.

Also, it is feasible that she taught Jesus some of the stories he later told, so thinking about her shaping role as his mother was also intriguing.

Of course, Jesus did have a mind of his own - God's mind - which Mary only shared in part, and I would have liked to have seen him stand more firmly on his own two feet and take more authority, during the picture. I also wonder about the healthiness of this very intimate, mutually-dependent mother-son relationship. It is not impossible that Mary was there at Jesus' baptism.... Lots to think about, from her perspective and the silence of the Bible on such matters. All in all, not a bad version of Christ's life, through Mary's eyes. Just wish Jesus and his disciples were stronger, as I feel the Gospels represent them.