The Nativity Story
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Actor: Ciarán Hinds, Hiam Abbass, Keisha Castle-Hughes, Oscar Isaac, Shaun ToubBrand: NEW Line Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
Published: 2007-03-01
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-20
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: New Line Home Video
Product features:
- TESTED
DVD Reviews of The Nativity Story
DVD Review: A Shining Christmas Star
Summary: 4 Stars
In spite of two present day controversies surrounding the 2006 film,----it seems advertising for the film was verboten in Chicago's Christkindlmarket where a spokesman for the Mayor's office declared the film "insensitive to the many people of different faiths" containing a "blatant commercial message" and Keisha Castle-Hughes the sixteen year old star who portrays Mary missed the premiere of the film at the Vatican because she is expecting a baby with her 19 year old partner----"The Nativity Story," director Catharine Hardwicke still manages to juxtapose the traditional elements of a story all too familiar with any Sunday school student with the modern issues of unwed pregnancy and confused adolescence of today's youth. The end result presents a pageantry as rich as any of the tapestries donned by the cinematic three Magi yet enriched with the psychological weft and warp of the same brand of teenaged angst Hardwicke portrays in her grittier offerings, "Thirteen" and "The Lords of Dogtown."
Okay - Mary, played with a complacent and dignified reserve by Whale Rider's Keisha Castle-Hughes, certainly does not indulge in any 21st century hi-jinx involving designer hallucinogens or Melrose Place shoplifting. However, on a level just a compelling, the anxieties surrounding teenaged pregnancy albeit tempered somewhat by 2000+ years of Biblical familiarity help move the larger-than-life characters out of the plaster saint realm of the Christmas crèche and into a universally empathetic adolescent world where parents-to-be, their parents combined with other authority figures in the forum of community are forced to deal with events that shake clung-to-for-dear-life conventions. Initially, Castle-Hughes depicts Mary with an indignant belligerence. Bordering on young womanhood, she straddles a splintery fence where she is too old to run and play with the other children; yet too young to accept the fact that at fourteen years old she is engaged to a man she neither knows nor loves. With the advent of the angel Gabriel and his miraculous message, Mary breathes a deep sigh and accepts her role in the grand scheme of things with magnificent gravitas.
Without the contemporary medical substantiation of a DNA test, Joseph (Oscar Isaac) must field the shocked stares and whispered gossip of the otherwise God-fearing Nazarenes with a thwarting skeptical silence that glitters steadily from large and liquid Godiva chocolate eyes. Flooded with a deer-in-the-headlight's wonder at this unbelievable and uncomfortable turn of events, he too must dig deep into his core, sacrifice a bit of his dream and take under his wing not just another man's but another entity's child. His predicament couldn't get anymore life changing and surely one to which young unexpected expectant fathers anywhere can relate.
Even with this insight into the everyday issues faced by these two unseasoned parents, the larger story as supported by the secondary players sweeps the audience along with its Biblical accuracy. As the film's villains, King Herod and Herod Antipas (Ciaran Hinds and Alessandro Giuggioli) sneer brilliantly in smug Snidely Whiplash style as they discuss the Messiah prophesy and decide how to do away with the unknown competition of the newborn King of Kings heralded in the stars. 24's Shohreh Aghdashloo formulates an exotic amalgamation of the hot and the passionate to craft John the Baptist's mother, Elizabeth,; this actress's lovely expansiveness provides the right combination of vehemence and encouragement to compliment and soothe Castle-Hughes' adolescent uncertainty. The exploits of the three Magi as depicted by Nadim Sawalha, Eriq Ebouaney and Stefan Kalipha allow the audience a break from the seriousness of the subject matter; we giggle as the trio mixes astrology, astronomy and a dash of slapstick as they journey unknowingly on a trek across the desert and that of the expectations of the human heart. Satisfyingly predictable, all threads of this finely crafted visual textile come together in the famous stable floodlit by a conjunction of heavenly bodies so phenomenal that in one's heart of hearts, one can only hope that the depiction mirrored some semblance of the actual event.
"The Nativity" pleases then on both a psychological and illustrative level. Hardwicke, setting the story in the same village Mel Gibson used for his "Passion of the Christ," presents a less brutal sense of reality for that historic time period in her depiction of Nazareth and the larger cities the couple journeys through as they head towards Bethlehem. Jerusalem reminds one of the tiered cities in "Lord of the Rings" but works nevertheless.
Bottom Line? Despite the controversies that seem to surround any religiously themed film showcased in today's ridiculously politically correct arena (the American Constitution still stands by its free speech amendment and the right for any citizen to choose individually what they wish to see or not see) and the disturbing parallel insinuated by the press between Keisha Castle-Hughes' pregnancy and that of her character in the film, "The Nativity" remains a lovely reconstruction of the gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew and is appropriate and recommended for all ages. Note: Some parents may not want their younger children to witness the birth of St. John the Baptist.
Diana Faillace Von Behren
"reneofc"
Description of The Nativity Story
DVDThe Nativity Story is a remarkable, if frustratingly restrained, act of imagining the tale of Christ's birth as a flesh-and-blood drama actually set in Israel two millenia ago. Written by Mike Rich (Finding Forrester) and directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), the film makes very strong impressions in a scene-by-scene way. Beginning with the slaughter (bloodlessly portrayed; this is a PG movie) of Bethlehem?s innocents under orders from a paranoid King Herod (a dark and knowing Ciarán Hinds), the film then jumps back a year to the prophecy that informs Zechariah (Stanley Townsend) that his wife, Elizabeth (Shohreh Aghdashloo), will bear a child. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's cousin, the adolescent Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes), struggles with her family to make ends meet and is promised to the carpenter Joseph (Oscar Isaac). Soon comes word to Mary, via an angel, that she will carry, while still a virgin, the long-awaited Messiah who will liberate the Jews from Herod and his Roman benefactors. Thus begins a detailed account of Joseph and Mary's hard travel to Bethlehem, while three Magi spend months crossing the desert trying to rendezvous with some point below the convergence of three heavenly bodies in the night sky. Hardwicke and Rich anchor all this in period detail, though what proves most moving are relationship nuances, especially the friendship and trust that emerge between Mary and Joseph after he is told in a dream that she speaks truthfully about her miraculous pregnancy. While The Nativity Story should appeal to almost anyone as a straightforward narrative, it is far from a secular version of the familiar Biblical tale, and thus feels a bit stifled. It might have been nice if the film could have breathed a little more with imagination, but The Nativity Story makes up for it by ingeniously weaving hints of things to come, later in Christ's life, into the action. --Tom Keogh
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