As The Nativity Story opens, a soft melody swells to a lush arrangement of the familiar Advent hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” (sung in Latin no less); it ends with an equally sumptuous “Silent Night” following the birth of the Christ child.

      Those musical bookends neatly encapsulate director Catherine Hardwicke’s (Thirteen, The Lords of Dogtown) take on the Christmas story: not terribly original, but done with great care and beauty.

      Filmed in Italy and Morocco, The Nativity Story has striking settings that effectively evoke first-century Judea. Its scenes of Jewish life under Roman occupation emphasize both the difficulties and the joys of that life, but unlike the religious blockbusters of 40 years ago, it offers us a darker, dirtier Biblical world, in keeping with the greater historical realism embraced by film-makers today. 

      There’s little one can do with the basic story.  There’s the Annunciation, the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, the birth in a stable, the shepherds, the wise men, the flight to Egypt – all expected, all given a respectful if not quite spiritual interpretation.

      Hardwicke’s approach emphasizes two elements that often get slight attention in depictions of Christ’s birth: the paranoia and depravity of King Herod, the Roman puppet who rules Judea, and the arduous process of the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem.  In contrast, the birth itself and its immediately surrounding events get comparatively slight, though impressively staged, attention.

      All except one of those perinatal events: the slaughter of the Innocents. Herod’s pogrom against Jewish male infants in Bethlehem, arguably the cruelest act of a notoriously cruel ruler, opens the film, quickly establishing the dangerous times into which the baby Jesus will be born.  The events leading up to the birth are then told in flashback.

      My mental image of Herod was formed by the medieval mystery cycles, which depicted Herod as a caricature of pure evil, ranting around the stage. Ciaran Hinds’ Herod is colder and more calculating in his villainy, though no less insistently evil.  You can almost see his brain working as he sits with the Magi and plots how to use them to find the prophesized infant king.

      Most renditions of the nativity story offer a couple of scenes of Mary and Joseph on the road, then move to a more detailed account of the birth and the infant’s visitors, both royal and shepherdly.  Here, the ratio is reversed – the journey is detailed, the later (so familiar) events sketched in.

      And what a journey.  Mary and Joseph cross stony wastes, creep along narrow paths next to sheer drops, ford a dangerous stream, encounter deadly snakes and larcenous people.  In the process, the couple – whose marriage was arranged against Mary’s will or desire – bond and become truly aware of each other’s strengths.

      As Mary, Keisha Castle-Hughes (nominated for an Oscar for her first film, Whale Rider) seems terribly young, as indeed she would have been.  Relatively unknown Oscar Isaac (Joseph) uses his eyes to great effect, revealing his overwhelming love for her in his gaze and similarly expressing his anguish on learning she is pregnant with his expression as much as his language.

      The film also manages to insert humor into what could be a tediously serious story, primarily through the bickering of the three Magi, whose journey in pursuit of the star is neatly paralleled to the travels of the Holy Family, but also through Joseph’s wry comment, “They’re going to miss us,” as he and Mary leave Nazareth, where the townsfolk have shunned Mary because of her obvious pregnancy.

      The Nativity Story is less cinematically original than Gibson’s Passion (though easier to sit through without the latter’s torture scenes), but is likely to be as moving an experience for Christian believers, and at least interesting to nonbelievers – not quite a classic, but still a worthwhile addition to the canon of Biblical film.

        This review appeared in the Aberdeen American News on December 3,  2006.

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