The birth of Mary, as depicted in a Muslim film
The birth of Mary, as depicted in a Muslim film
Are daughters a blessing? And what do you do when a prophecy's fulfillment is different from what you expected? An Iranian movie about the Virgin Mary addresses these questions.
Today is the day when many churches commemorate the birth of the Virgin Mary.
There are no stories about the birth of Mary in the New Testament, but there are some apocryphal traditions about it that have been very influential in Christian liturgy and iconography, particularly in the Orthodox and Catholic churches.
I thought it might be good to take a look at some films that have told the story of Mary’s birth, but there’s just one problem: I can’t think of any—or at any rate, I can’t think of any films that tell the story from a Christian perspective.
It’s quite easy to find films that devote at least a few minutes to Mary’s childhood, but the only film I can think of that covers her birth at all is Saint Mary, from Iranian director Shahriar Bahrani—and like other Iranian films about biblical figures, it takes its cue not from the Bible but from the Koran and other Muslim traditions.
That being said, many of those traditions are deeply influenced by the apocryphal traditions mentioned above. So if you’re familiar with the Christian traditions about Mary—like her being the miracle child of an old barren couple, or her growing up in the Temple—then you may recognize some aspects of this Muslim film.
Like some other Iranian films, Saint Mary is available as both a two-hour feature and a longer miniseries. I first saw the feature film several years ago—I actually learned about it from Shohreh Aghdashloo while interviewing her on the press junket for The Nativity Story!—but it wasn’t until yesterday that I checked out the miniseries.
I don’t believe I have ever written a proper review of the film, and I don’t have time to do anything like that now. But I do want to make a few quick points about how the birth of Mary, specifically, is handled in the film and the miniseries:
Mary’s birth and infancy take up only a dozen minutes or so at the beginning of the movie. But they take up the first episode and a half of the miniseries, which has eleven episodes altogether. (Most of the episodes are around 45 to 50 minutes, so the miniseries as a whole is about eight hours long.) My comments below are based on the first two episodes of the miniseries, and will probably touch on a lot of details that aren’t included in the two-hour movie.
Mary’s birth fulfills a prophecy—but not the way anyone expects. Her father Imran, a holy man who died a few months before the movie begins, predicted that his wife would have a child who healed people and raised the dead, and everyone assumed that this child would be a boy. So when Hannah gives birth to a girl, everyone regards it as an embarrassment to the family. They all expected Hannah to give birth to the Christ, and now that she hasn’t, many of them take it as proof that Imran was a false prophet. The religious and secular authorities are particularly ecstatic: a priest or rabbi thanks God for ruining Imran’s reputation so comprehensively, while King Herod—who seemed to be scared of the prophecy and what it portended—is greatly amused to see the people’s hopes deflated. But even some of the women speak scornfully about the shame that having daughters rather than sons can bring to a family.
Against all this, the prophet Zechariah defends Imran’s reputation and says the scoffers may be failing one of God’s occasional tests of his people. “The foundation of faith lies in patience,” he says, adding, “God sometimes tests believers with unexpected changes to their plans.” As examples, he cites Moses staying on Mount Sinai longer than expected (which led the impatient Israelites to start worshiping a golden calf) and Solomon building the Temple that everyone expected David to build. So if Hannah didn’t give birth to the Messiah like everyone expected, Zechariah is convinced that that’s because Hannah gave birth to the Messiah’s mother. “The boy we await will be a great man,” Zechariah tells Hannah. “However, he has to be born to a great and pious mother, a woman even more virtuous than you, Hannah. He will be born to a mother whose flesh, skin and very blood is infused with faith.”
More broadly, Zechariah comes to the defense of Hannah and her daughter not just because Mary is a special girl but because, well, girls are special. “Girls are a true godsend,” he says. “People do not realize how lucky and blessed they would be to have a girl child.” The other Jewish religious leaders treat their wives as property, telling them to bear sons and be silent and obedient, but Zechariah says the spirits of girls and boys are of equal value—which prompts one of the other religious leaders to say that women were made to help men, and you wouldn’t say free people are equal to slaves, now, would you?
Incidentally, in case you’re wondering, this Zechariah is the same man who will one day become the father of John the Baptist. I don’t know how much of this comes from Muslim tradition and how much is unique to this film, but within the film itself, Zechariah’s wife Elizabeth is Hannah’s sister—which makes Zechariah and Elizabeth the uncle and aunt of Mary.
Zechariah is also a notably humble figure, who refuses to live off of the offerings that people give to the Temple but instead supports himself by working as a carpenter. (And in case you’re wondering… yes, by Episode 3 he is working with a boy named Joseph, who is identified here as one of Mary’s cousins.)
Before her child was born, Hannah promised to let her child be raised in the Temple. This is problematic, as her child turned out to be a girl, and girls aren’t allowed in the Temple. But Zechariah receives a revelation that God has accepted Hannah’s offering and will protect both Mary and her offspring from Satan. I assume this is related to a Muslim tradition that says Mary and Jesus are the only humans who were not “touched” by Satan at their birth.
Hannah tries to give Mary to the Temple when Mary is still an infant, but Zechariah intervenes and tells Hannah she must look after Mary until the child is old enough to serve in the Temple. In the Christian tradition, Mary’s parents brought her to the Temple when she was three years old. (Her father wanted to bring her when she was two, but her mother said let’s wait an extra year.)
Muslim tradition says Zechariah was Mary’s guardian while she lived in the Temple. One of the more bitter female characters in this movie puts a dark spin on that tradition by telling Hannah Zechariah is scheming to take Mary away from her, i.e. he is making it possible for Mary to live close to him in the Temple because he wants to make Mary the child that he and Elizabeth never had. Hannah dismisses this and asks the woman, “Have you no shame?”
The director of this film, Shahriar Bahrani, went on to direct Kingdom of Solomon, which I wrote about a couple weeks ago, and this film shares several themes with that film. Notably, both films are very critical of the Jewish religious leaders, who are accused in both films of distorting the Torah and keeping interest rates high to keep the people under their thumb. Solomon and Zechariah are also both very good with children—a characteristic that stands out more in Zechariah’s case because he has to fight against so much hostility that has been aimed at his niece. Zechariah defends his carpentry by saying the prophets have always worked, and he specifically cites David and Solomon as examples of this—and sure enough, in Kingdom of Solomon, we see Solomon himself working in the fields with the common man at harvest time.
For the timeline obsessives: the Mary of this movie is born in 16 BC. I have not watched the feature film in years, and I have not watched the miniseries past the first three episodes, so I do not know how old Mary will be when she gives birth to Jesus. Most historians would argue that Jesus was born no later than 4 BC, because that is when Herod the Great died—but if the Jesus of this movie is born then, the Mary of this movie would be only 12. Maybe the Jesus of this movie will be born at the turn of the era, in AD 1, when Mary is 16?
And that about covers it, I think.
The tradition about Mary growing up in the Temple has been depicted in a number of films (mostly from Italy). So I hope to say more about Saint Mary, and how it handles that aspect of her life, when I look at films about her entrance into the Temple.
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You can watch an English-dubbed version of the first episode of the miniseries here:
Here is episode two:
And here is an English-dubbed version of the feature film: