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<\/a><\/p>\nMary Magdalene<\/a><\/i> is finally coming to North American theatres this week, and I have one last round-up of interviews that were done for the film\u2019s release overseas last year.<\/p>\n On Monday I rounded up some interviews with director Garth Davis<\/a>, and on Tuesday I rounded up some interviews with the film\u2019s lead actors<\/a>. Today I\u2019m rounding up a few interviews with the producers, screenwriters, and others who worked on the film.<\/p>\n Co-writers Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett, who worked on the script for a few years before director Davis and the actors got involved, spoke to the Independent<\/a><\/i>:<\/p>\n \u201cThere are lots of Marys in the Bible,\u201d [Edmundson] explains, \u201cand they\u2019ve become conflated. The big blow was Pope Saint Gregory the Great in the 6th century, who wrote quite extensively that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. What grates is the way the Catholic Church in particular felt it necessary to create these polar opposite models of women: they had the Virgin Mary, and therefore by necessity they needed the opposite. It\u2019s permeated and been problematic for centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I find really interesting,\u201d says Edmundson\u2019s co-writer Philippa Goslett, \u201cis that since 1969, when the Catholic church formally separates these women out, the idea of Jesus\u2019s bloodline has been prevalent. If Mary Magdalene\u2019s not a prostitute, she must have been his lover. I hope that this film goes some way to restoring her spiritual authority, which is there within the Gospels, and has been so denigrated over the centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n The biblical Mary Magdalene only exists in five New Testament lines, which nevertheless make her a key female witness to Christ: among the disciples when he arrives in Jerusalem, watching his crucifixion then keeping watch over his tomb, the first person he meets on his resurrection, and his messenger of this marvel to the disciples.<\/p>\n \u201cEverything else is conjecture,\u201d says Edmundson, who also consulted the non-biblical Gnostic Gospel of Mary in order to write a woman who\u2019s more than just an observer. \u201cWe felt that if this Mary was strong enough to leave her home and everything she\u2019d ever known with no going back, to join this group of men who had no idea of what their fate was going to be, then we could make her strong enough to point out to Jesus that if only men can be preached to and baptised, then that\u2019s cutting out half the population. And to be a Mary who can actively baptise and minister in the same way men did. Those things felt fundamental.\u201d Goslett felt the same. \u201cTelling it from a fresh, female perspective, might our understanding of that journey \u2013 and Jesus\u2019s message \u2013 be different?\u201d<\/p>\n Lynne Ramsay, Joaquin Phoenix\u2019s director in his other current film, You Were Never Really Here, sees his tortured character there as a Lazarus figure, reborn after sinking into watery depths. In Mary Magdalene, he resurrects Lazarus, and doesn\u2019t feel much better. \u201cThere\u2019s a wonderful mischief that comes through with Joaquin,\u201d Edmundson considers. \u201cA sort of acknowledgement of how extraordinary the whole thing is. I love just after he\u2019s resurrected Lazarus, when he\u2019s trembling all over, and profoundly terrified because of what he\u2019s understood in that moment [that he must die for mankind]. Joaquin has that ability to look almost childlike in his frailty and distress. We did want him to be human. We wanted to feel that he had warmth and fragility. Partly to make room for Mary. I enjoyed imagining the human side of Christ \u2013 the fear and grief of leaving life and people who loved him, and the exhaustion of working miracles. Of everybody looking to you, and expecting.\u201d Adds Goslett: \u201cIt was really important for us that Jesus is fully human and divine, and spontaneous. There was never a sense of, \u2018Here\u2019s a sermon I prepared earlier.\u2019\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Time<\/a><\/i> magazine spoke to two of the film\u2019s advisors:<\/p>\n Mary Magdalene\u2019s special understanding of Jesus\u2019 message, and Peter\u2019s hostility towards her, as portrayed in Mary Magdalene<\/i>, will likely split opinion, according to [Professor Joan Taylor of King\u2019s College, London] and her colleague, Professor Helen Bond of The University of Edinburgh, Scotland, with whom Taylor is presenting a U.K. television series on women disciples this Easter, titled Jesus\u2019 Female Disciples: the New Evidence<\/i>.<\/p>\n \u201c[In the film] she\u2019s really close to Jesus, not because of some kind of love affair, but just because she\u2026gets<\/i> Jesus in a way that the other disciples don\u2019t,\u201d Bond says.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Producers Iain Canning and Emile Sherman spoke to Inquirer.net<\/a> in the Philippines:<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, the story of Jesus is one that has been told on numerous occasions by different film makers,\u201d says Canning. \u201cThe discovery of fragments of parchment in Egypt and Greece which were claiming to be the gospel of Mary Magdalene sparked the idea that it would be interesting to tell the story of a woman within the biblical stories.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery generation approaches their own retelling or re-imagining of stories based on the contemporary time,\u201d continues Canning. \u201cIf you\u2019re making a film you\u2019ve got to have some sort of contemporary resonance, otherwise it\u2019s not going to find an audience. We felt there was room to tell the story of Mary Magdalene \u2013 that the female perspective of this particular story of the life and death of Jesus Christ was a new way in to that story and that it would also shine a light on contemporary issues.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I previously linked to another interview with Canning in February 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n And, finally, The Telegraph<\/a><\/i> has an article on some refugees who worked on the costumes for the film. The article is currently behind a paywall, but the work the refugees did is a subject that has come up at this blog before, so you can read about it here<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n Mary Magdalene<\/i> opens in North American theatres this Friday, April 12.<\/p>\n April 13 update:<\/b> Goslett spoke to Variety<\/a><\/i> magazine:<\/p>\n How did the \u201cMary Magdalene\u201d film come about?<\/b><\/p>\n The project originated with Katherine Bridle, head of development at See-Saw, who very much wanted to tell stories about characters in history who have been marginalized or forgotten or, in Mary\u2019s case, massively misrepresented over the years. There was a very beautiful script by Helen Edmundson and from there I started work \u2013 first of all with the producers, Iain [Canning] and Katherine and Liz Watts, and then with Garth [Davis], the director, and eventually with the cast.<\/p>\n What attracted you to the project?<\/b><\/p>\n The opportunity to tell the Jesus story from a point of view we have never seen before and to follow that through, [and] if you are telling that story from a female point of view, to ask rigorously would it therefore feel different, what might be different about that story? Might Jesus\u2019 whole message seem different if it is experienced by a woman?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n April 23 update:<\/b> I have now interviewed producer Iain Canning<\/a> myself.<\/p>\n