My article on depictions of Mary in the movies — which cites both versions of Ben-Hur (1925, 1959), The King of Kings (1927), King of Kings (1961), The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Jesus (1979), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), The Passion of the Christ (2004), Color of the Cross and The Nativity Story, among others — is now up at CT Movies.
Making a movie about Jesus is difficult enough. Anyone who would dramatize the life of Christ must strike a fine balance between his full humanity and his full divinity, and many filmmakers have erred on one side or the other. But at least the Scriptures give us ample data to work with, and at least there is broad agreement across church boundaries that Jesus was, and is, both divine and human.
But making a movie about Mary poses even thornier challenges. The Bible says little about her life, so dramatists who focus on her life — such as the writer and director of The Nativity Story, which opens Friday — must invent whole aspects of her story from scratch. Even more daunting, for filmmakers who want to reach as broad an audience as possible, is the fact that different churches have strongly different views on Mary.
Was she as fallible as any other human being? Or was she free from the stain of sin? Did she bear any other children? Or did she remain a virgin throughout her life? Should Jesus ever be shown correcting her, possibly even offending her? Or, as the mother of Jesus, should she offer him any guidance and possibly correct him?
In 1961, Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer produced King of Kings, the first major Hollywood film about the life of Christ since the silent era. The virgin Mary was played by Siobhan McKenna, a respected Irish actress in her late 30s, and the villainous Herod the Great was described by the narrator as “an Arab of the Bedouin tribe.”
Nearly half a century later, things have flipped around. The Nativity Story, produced by New Line Cinema (the same studio that made The Lord of the Rings), casts an Irishman as King Herod; and several of the supporting actors were born in primarily Muslim territories, such as Iran and Sudan, or can trace their family roots there.
Just a few quickies this time.
1. Production Weekly reports that John Leguizamo may be starring in a thriller called The Ministers, to be shot this winter:
Penned by Reyes’ the script centers on a female NYPD detective, whose father was murdered in the line of duty 13 years ago. The only evidence left behind at the scene of the crime was a pamphlet from a mysterious religious group known only as “The Ministers.”
When she learns the group has begun to kill again after being dormant for over a decade, she is taken off the case and ordered to stay away from the investigation. Unbeknown to her she is romantically involved with a member of “The Ministers,” and her personal and professional lives are becoming murderously intertwined.
2. I recently spoke with a FoxFaith publicist who told me that, while The Color of the Cross may be released on video under that label, it will not be under that banner when it comes to theatres October 27. In the meantime, Variety reports that FoxFaith has struck a deal with Jeff Clanagan’s Codeblack Entertainment:
Under Codeblack’s deal, the company will develop and produce films for FoxFaith aimed at African-American auds. Pics will be budgeted at less than $5 million.
The first two projects under the deal are “Mama, I Want to Sing!,” based on the Off Broadway gospel musical, to be written and directed by Charles Randolph Wright; and “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” based on the stage play by the Rev. David Payton, to be written and directed by Leslie Small.
“Mama” tells the story of a preacher’s daughter who rises from the church choir to international pop stardom. Clanagan will produce the pic with Holly Davis Carter.
“A Good Man,” also being produced by Clanagan, focuses on the weakening of the African-American family, the diminishing black male population and the changing role of black women. . . .
3. Variety reports that Paul Scheuring, creator of the TV series Prison Break, is developing an English-language remake of Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Das Experiment (2001; my comments), a rather visceral film inspired by the Stanford prison experiment.
The big news story yesterday was that 20th Century Fox has started a new boutique label called FoxFaith — which, according to its website, specializes in “family and Christian films”, in that order.
The existence of this label wasn’t news to me, since Tim Willson — a Christian film and video insider who compiles the monthly Crown Chronicle — has talked about the existence of this label before, and I, prompted by his updates, had already checked out the label’s website a few weeks ago. But as far as many were concerned, the Los Angeles Times “broke the story” yesterday by announcing:
In the biggest commitment of its sort by a Hollywood studio, News Corp.’s Fox Filmed Entertainment is expected to unveil plans today to capture the gargantuan Christian audience that made “The Passion of the Christ” a global phenomenon.
The home entertainment division of Rupert Murdoch’s movie studio plans to produce as many as a dozen films a year under a banner called FoxFaith. At least six of those films will be released in theaters under an agreement with two of the nation’s largest chains, AMC Theatres and Carmike Cinemas.
The first theatrical release, called “Love’s Abiding Joy,” is scheduled to hit the big screen Oct. 6. The movie, which cost about $2 million to make, is based on the fourth installment of Christian novelist Janette Oke’s popular series, “Love Comes Softly.”
Jeffrey Wells and the New York Times then corrected or clarified this story by noting that Fox will not be producing these films, but rather, it is acquiring them for video distribution; and the ones that get theatrical distribution will be handled by an independent company, The Bigger Picture, though there will be some overlap with FoxFaith’s video promotion; e.g., Love’s Abiding Joy comes out on DVD in January, and is already available for pre-orders.
The second FoxFaith film to get theatrical distribution will apparently be One Night with the King, Matthew Crouch’s much-delayed adaptation of the Book of Esther; it comes out in theatres October 13. And it looks like the third film to hit theatres — though it’s not listed at the Fox Faith Movies website — will be The Color of the Cross, which apparently speculates that the historical Jesus might have been black; it comes out October 27.
A few things about this announcement give me pause.
First, as some people have observed, there is a “cult of the family” in evangelical circles that is borderline idolatrous — as David Bruce once noted, some churches now even call themselves “family worship centres” — and the fact that “family” comes before “Christian” in FoxFaith’s self-description is very telling.
Second, this pandering to the evangelical consumer will almost certainly include a kind of “dumbing down” to the lowest common denominator; films which try to express any kind of bold, personal, artistic, or even political vision will be shunted aside. Consider this portion of the Los Angeles Times story:
The experience [of producing and distribting Hangman’s Curse] taught Jeff Yordy, vice president of marketing for FoxFaith, a valuable lesson about the Christian audience when an avalanche of letters flooded his office from Christians protesting a Bible study companion to the film.
“We got 10,000 letters from ministers telling me I was not interpreting the scripture correctly,” recalled Yordy, a Christian. “You have to take a broader perspective so everybody can interpret based on their own faith.”
And then consider this portion of the New York Times story:
Jeff Yordy, Fox Home Entertainment’s vice president for marketing, said the studio was looking to acquire similar films, while avoiding any that might have political overtones — for instance, films with an anti-abortion message.
“That’s the mission: quality, story-driven entertainment that meshes with the values of our target audience,” he said. “But it’s entertainment first. We’re not in the business of proselytizing.”
Now, to be fair, I would have no interest in propaganda either. And a film like The Color of the Cross could certainly turn out to be somewhat controversial, even divisive — so it looks like FoxFaith is willing to take a few risks here or there. But just how far are they willing to let the envelope be pushed? Will, say, The Passion of the Christ be the only R-rated film in their roster?
Third, the growth of these boutique labels just adds fuel to the fire of a concern that I expressed over three years ago in my review of the video releases of Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie (2002), Left Behind II: Tribulation Force (2002) and Joshua (2002):
THIS MAY sound like heresy, but for years, I have said that I am glad we do not have a Christian movie industry on anything like the same scale that we have a Christian music industry.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of music that can usually be found only at Christian book stores. But there once was a time when magazines like Campus Life reviewed mainstream music as well as the relatively small number of albums put out by Christian artists. That was what Christian critics had to do if they wanted to engage the culture on some level.
However, in more recent years, as the Christian music scene has grown into the institution that it is today, it has become all too easy for we Christians to focus on our own little niche market and to ignore the larger musical world as a whole.
So far, movies are a different story. They cost a lot of money to make, and there just aren’t that many Christian films out there. So one of the joys of being a Christian film critic is that you have no choice but to constantly interact with the world outside the Christian ghetto. . . .
At the time, that article of mine stirred up some controversy here, but I have to say I still stand by what I wrote.
They’ve been making films about the Son of God for over a century. Here’s one man’s list of those that ascend to the top of the cinematic pack.
Of the making of movies about Jesus, there is no end. In the first three months of this year alone: Son of Man, which casts a black man as Christ and sets his life in modern South Africa, got positive reviews at Sundance; the makers of Color of the Cross, which also casts a black man as Christ, established a website with trailers for their work-in-progress; and New Line Cinema announced that Oscar nominees Keisha Castle-Hughes (Whale Rider) and Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog) will star as the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth in a new movie about the Nativity, to be released in time for Christmas.
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