Two quick notes about Netflix's Mary
Director D.J. Caruso dropped a couple hints about the movie's plot, and how it might be different from Mary- and Nativity-themed films of the past.
This is a couple weeks old now, but I just noticed this interview that D.J. Caruso, the director of the upcoming Mary movie at Netflix, did with Entertainment Weekly back when the first images from the film were released.
In the interview, Caruso makes two statements about the film that pique my interest—two statements that hint at plot elements I hadn’t heard about before.
First, he says this, when explaining why he wanted to tell Mary’s story:
Additionally, few people know the story of Mary's birth — her parents' quest to have a child and the miraculous outcome that resulted.
If few people know the story of Mary’s birth, that’s probably because it doesn’t appear in the New Testament at all. However, there are ancient traditions about her birth that go back at least as far as the 2nd-century Infancy Gospel of James, and it sounds like this film might be based, at least in part, on those traditions.
Interestingly, I can’t think offhand of any film that has dramatized Mary’s birth from a Christian perspective, but I did review an Iranian film a couple years ago that told the story of her birth from a Muslim perspective.1
So, this may be a first as far as mainstream English-language movies go.
Second, Caruso had this to say about the movie’s story:
Even if you're not religious, the film offers strong elements with action and striking visuals, all set in a dangerous geopolitical landscape. Mary (our hero) is on a quest to deliver a sacred gift (Jesus) to the temple while Herod and the Romans try to stop her. It is exciting and emotional.
Caruso makes it sound like the Mary of his film will be taking Jesus to the Temple while she is evading Herod’s soldiers. And that’s… odd.
At a minimum, it’s odd because the Temple is in Jerusalem and Herod’s palace is in Jerusalem, so why would Mary take Jesus closer to the danger? Especially when Matthew 2:13-18 says God told Joseph to take Mary and Jesus directly to Egypt.
It’s also odd because there’s nothing in the Bible about Mary “delivering” Jesus to the Temple. Luke 2:22-38 does say that the holy family went to the Temple “for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses,” but that was for Mary’s purification. We remember the visit now because Simeon and Anna spoke to the holy family while they were there, but the reason they went there was so that Mary could do what the Law required of all Jewish women after they had given birth.
Still: However odd Caruso’s quote sounds to me, it does raise an interesting possibility, namely that Mary might be one of the very few films to depict the holy family’s visit to the Temple in some form.
Most films skip the visit, because it’s basically impossible to fit the visit into the narrative if you want the Magi to appear at the stable on the night of Jesus’ birth just like the shepherds do.
In Matthew’s gospel, the Magi meet Herod in Jerusalem after Jesus is born, and they ask where they can find the newborn messiah. And it is sometime after this that Herod sends his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the infants there, and God tells the holy family to flee to Egypt before the soldiers can find them.
But most traditional Christmas crèches show the shepherds and the Magi paying homage to Jesus simultaneously on the night of his birth—and most filmmakers, like the people who made 2006’s The Nativity Story and last year’s Journey to Bethlehem, have wanted their films to reflect that imagery.
To do that, they have to revise the story so that the Magi now arrive in Jerusalem and meet Herod before Jesus is born. And, with Herod alerted to the existence of the messiah before the messiah has even been born, there is no time to wait for Mary to perform the rites that were required of her 40 days after Jesus’ birth (as per Leviticus 12:2-4). The threat posed by Herod is too imminent for that.
So, the visit to the Temple is simply omitted from those films.
In fact, the only major film I can think of that has delayed the arrival of the Magi long enough to allow for the visit to the Temple is 1977’s Jesus of Nazareth—and even there, the film revises things somewhat (e.g. Simeon meets the holy family when Jesus is brought to the Temple/synagogue to be circumcised eight days after his birth, and not when Mary performs her purification rites 40 days after Jesus’ birth).
At any rate, the general pattern until now has been to omit the visit to the Temple altogether, or maybe to depict the visit to the Temple before Herod sends his soldiers to kill the baby Jesus. But it sounds like this film might show the visit to the Temple taking place after Herod’s soldiers start looking for the holy family…?
We’ll find out soon enough, I guess. Mary comes to Netflix December 6.
I also wrote about that film’s depiction of Mary’s entrance into the Temple, which is another tradition that goes back to the 2nd century but does not appear in the gospels.