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| She
knows her mind: Castle-Hughes in The Nativity Story. |
Holy
Teenage Mom
By Laura Leon
The
Nativity Story
Directed
by Catherine Hardwicke
At first blush, Catherine Hard-wicke would seem an odd choice
to direct a movie about the Virgin Mary. I mean, this is the
woman who delivered a cold hard slice of reality with the
masterful Thirteen, in which pubescent girls engage
in all sorts of grown-up acts with the ease that earlier generations
of same-age females did things like hopscotch. Given more
thought, however, the choice of director makes perfect sense,
as Hardwicke showed—in both Thirteen and her Lords
of Dogtown—an impeccable ability to evoke the conflicting
emotions and sensitivities of young people. Who better, then,
to show us what Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes), a teenager living
in dangerous, unsettling times, felt and did when told that
she was to become mother to the son of God, the centerpiece
of The Nativity Story?
The wonderful thing about The Nativity Story is how
it gets us to see beyond the simple, straightforward narrative
of the Gospel, to a point where the story of the birth of
Jesus is part of a greater narrative encompassing Roman occupation,
the grim survival of agrarian Israelites, the mysticism of
the Magi, and, above all, the promise of hope and deliverance.
For instance, we forget (or never knew), that in Mary’s time,
being betrothed meant being a wife in all ways except sex,
and that for one whole year she was to remain with her family
before joining her husband in bed and home. Obviously, Mary’s
pregnancy must have caused quite a scandal, being a sin that
could have, by law and through an accusation by Joseph, have
led to her death by stoning. In this context, the character
of Joseph, known to us simply as the carpenter who led Mary
to Bethlehem, takes on greater depth; Hardwicke and screenwriter
Mike Rich take advantage of this element of drama. It would
be easy to depict Joseph as dumb or weak or merely complacent,
but the moviemakers, along with actor Oscar Isaac, dig deeper,
uncovering his humanity.
On hand to further humanize the characters that viewers learned
in Sunday school are Ciarán Hinds, as a paranoid King Herod;
Eriq Ebouaney, Nadim Sawalha and Stefan Kalipha as the Three
Wise Men; and the radiant Shohreh Aghdashloo as Elizabeth,
who became the mother of John the Baptist in a miraculous
pregnancy that slightly predated her cousin Mary’s.
While the movie doesn’t challenge the assumptions of believers,
it does provide a refreshing sense of realism to the story
of the nativity. I was initially worried when I heard that
this movie was being made, being of the mindset that too often
we need some sort of proof of things that are perhaps left
best to faith and/or imagination. Would this Nativity Story
be graphic with things like, well, the incarnation? Hardwick
avoids this major ick factor (on a number of levels), instead
parlaying the aspects of the story that rely heavily on faith
with sensitivity and understatement. Her focus is largely
on the evolution of Mary from a wistful teenager resentful
at her family for an arranged marriage, to someone full of
wonder and fear at what the angel Gabriel (Alexander Siddig)
imparts to her, to a resolute mother-to-be strong enough to
rely on her faith. Nonbelievers—those who even go to this
movie—will be dismissive of both the premise and the plot,
but viewers will be treated with a decidedly intelligent,
tasteful retelling that provides flesh and humanity to the
holy.
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Fuzzy
Liberation
Fur:
An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
Directed
by Steven Shainberg
As a photographer, Diane Arbus was drawn to the unusual and
the unsettling. Her most famous images are stark black-and-white
depictions of people somehow removed from the mainstream:
transvestites, giants, nudists. Even those subjects possessed
of a more familiar difference—identical twins, say—are captured
in such a way as to highlight their curiousness. Fans of her
work see in her photos warmth, playfulness and a nonjudgmental
acceptance; detractors, an exploitive—even crass—perversity.
Director Steven Shainberg’s “imaginary portrait” of the photographer,
Fur, will almost certainly receive equally mixed reactions.
The movie offers a thin sliver of Arbus’ chronology: just
three months in 1958. We watch Diane (Nicole Kidman) literally
chafing as assistant to her fashion-photographer husband,
Allan (Ty Burrell). As portrayed here, Diane is the embodiment
of the repressed ’50s housewife. She is meek and unfulfilled
creatively, professionally and sexually. Her family cannot
understand her awkward dissatisfaction: Her father, a wealthy
furrier, mutters, “What now?” as Diane weeps under questioning
about her professional contributions to Allan’s craft; Allan,
otherwise kind and supportive, is merely bemused when Diane
kisses him with unexpected passion; even her daughters, Diane
says, think she’s strange. At one point, Diane is driven to
her apartment’s balcony to loose her buttons and expose her
corseted self to the indifferent city. You need no narrative
genius to see where this is going:
Cue the mysterious stranger.
Though Shainberg and writer Erin Cressida Wilson worked from
Patricia Bosworth’s biography of Arbus, Fur is not
a traditional biopic—it’s an imaginary portrait, remember.
So, it’s appropriate that the mysterious stranger is more
dreamlike than dreamy. Robert Downey Jr. plays new—and wholly
fictional—neighbor Lionel Sweeney. Lionel is, if not “the,”
at least “a” dog-faced boy. The technical term is hypertrichosis,
and it’s a funny if none-too-subtle juxtaposition to Diane’s
ostensibly smooth-surfaced, dipilitated life to date (and
an ironic comment on her father’s trade and the source of
his wealth). Lionel is the mythical hairy man, the wild man,
though played with civility and more restraint than is Downey’s
habit. The love affair that Diane begins is with her own vital,
creative energy.
It’s not a particularly novel idea, the external personification
of the artistic urge, of course. Actually, it’s ancient. But
the filmmakers don’t seem to be taking themselves too, too
seriously, so for a while it’s fun. Emotive, if leading, camera
work and a clever use of set design and color give the film
a Coen-brothers feel. In fact, the filters through which Arbus’
story is told—Alice in Wonderland and a kind of low-rent
Freudian dream analysis—are Coenesque, as well.
So, in as far as Fur is the story of an artist’s initial
embrace of her muse, it’s fine. However, it would be as easy
and appropriate to take a darker view of Arbus’ psychology.
The photographer killed herself at 48 by overdosing on barbiturates
and cutting her wrists. In fairness, there are very faint
suggestions that all will not be well. But by framing Arbus’
story as one primarily of liberation, the filmmakers avoid
exactly the kind of complication and ambiguity that make their
subject’s work compelling.
—John
Rodat
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