The Nativity Story — featurette no. 2

Another behind-the-scenes featurette is now up at the website for The Nativity Story. This one focuses on director Catherine Hardwicke, who talks about studying the Bible when she was a girl, about the need to make the movie as “real” or “authentic” as possible, and about the “epic intimacy” that her film will have.

As with the first featurette, there are no major revelations here, though you can see more of the actors in their costumes — including Alexander Siddig as the angel Gabriel — and there is an interesting glimpse of crosses in the background of one shot.

I like this last detail, because it gives us reason to hope that this film will not simply give us the sickly-sweet version of the Christmas story, which tends to be about little more than humble donkeys and generous innkeepers and oohing and aahing over a newborn baby, but instead it may put the birth of Christ within the larger context of his life and death — that is, within the larger context of his reason for being born in the first place.