Z/Web

I wanted to love this: it’s a good cast, a great director, and the production values are high. But ultimately it lacks emotion. There’s a spark missing. Mary hardly smiles throughout the whole movie, seemingly always carrying a heavy burden, which I found exhausting, and the story, of course, offers few surprises. Some of the structure of the film felt awkward as well. For instance, the movie started off with a “dramatic” scene of King Harrod’s soldiers killing babies (except that the baby-killing was not actually shown, and cut so abrubtly it was hard to tell if the babies were being slaughtered or merely kidnapped), and then the film backtracked to a year earlier. Why? The drama of the baby killing should have been horrific; instead it was bewildering and out-of-sequence. There were some nice touches and scenes, but many of the dramatic high points of the story — such as the angel’s visits to Mary and Joseph — felt underdone and ordinary. It was as though the producers didn’t want to actually show anything supernatural (yet there was no problem emphasizing the Eastern mystics’ philosophies). All-in-all this is a well-done film. It’s certainly not bad, but unfortunately it’s not great either, especially considering the story it’s trying to tell. Still worth seeing, though don’t expect the emotion of The Passion of the Christ.