Mary (2024)

Netflix's film about Mary, the mother of Jesus, is a strange blend of original ideas, those pulled from a non-canonical text, and whimsy, but in the end while being entertaining, it doesn't know its audience or who it's for, making for an awkward film full of uneven story beats. It begins the year before her death. Her parents have been long married and are barren, so her father journeys into the wilderness to fast and pray for forty days. The angel Gabriel (Dudley O'Shaughnessy) visits him and tells him he will be given a daughter, then tells her mother the same. But Gabriel also makes them promise they will devote their daughter to the service of God. Many years later, Mary is a gifted child to whom butterflies are drawn. The day comes to turn her over to the service of the Jewish nuns at the Temple, and the prophetess Anna (Susan Brown) takes a particular interest in her.

Some time later, Mary (Noa Cohen) is known throughout the Temple as a kind but strong-willed girl, who goes out of her way to show charity to the needy. One day, while washing clothes in the river, she attracts the attention of the young stonemason, Joseph (Ido Tako), who falls in love with her on the spot, as guided to her by Gabriel. Little do either of them know that their love story, and a miraculous conception, will draw the attention of the insane King Herod (Anthony Hopkins) to them, and change the course of history forever...

Mary is an odd film. It's too Catholic for Protestants, not Catholic enough for Catholics, too violent for most families, and too historically inaccurate for Biblical scholars. I both enjoyed it and didn't. But let's start off with the good. The cast is solid. Hopkins is excellent as always, a terrifying and demented king who randomly stabs people he doesn't like and playfully asks his sister if she'd mind him killing her husband for treason. Israeli actress Noa Cohen makes a good Mary. She is divine, sweet, charming, compassionate, and feisty when the time calls for it. The rest of the supporting cast are also good, and I enjoyed how they built up back stories, professions, and little intrigues with her family. They gave her father a job (he owns an olive grove) and they touch on the Zealots of the day and their resentments toward Herod and his hand-in-hand governorship alongside of Rome. It is also gritty, with a lot of emphasis placed on the oppression of the Jews (they are beaten, stoned, and stabbed). Mary comes under peril of being stoned for being pregnant outside of wedlock, for example, and, needing a climax, Roman soldiers chase Mary and Joseph toward Egypt, rather than them slipping away in the middle of the night. I enjoyed the whimsical touches, of people sensing something different about Mary and her having a natural ease with animals. But...

The pacing is very uneven. The film jumps around choppily for the first twenty minutes, and it doesn't flow cohesively. We leap around learning about her parents and her miraculous conception, then we meet King Herod and see his random acts of violence (which have nothing to do with the plot), then we're thrust more into a story we sort of know, but not really, and that's where the historical inaccuracies abound. In an effort, I guess, to establish a link between Catholic nuns and Mary, our heroine is put into a convent at the Jewish temple, which never existed. Lucifer shows up and to corrupt her as the holy "vessel," wants to have sex with her (eww). Somehow, though, Lucifer is also human enough to be stabbed through the chest and ... die? Gabriel is freaky and creepy looking, and seems more like a demon than an angel, lurking in mysterious shadows with glowing eyes and making candles flicker in and out. Plot holes also abound. (If Mary is in the convent, what's she doing four miles from Jerusalem washing clothes in a river in pretty garments, alone, so Joseph can stumble across her? Where are her companions?) Herod orders all the babies in Bethlehem killed, so the soldiers do so and then... bring back about 40 newborns to the palace so he can meet Jesus? The heavy emphasis on Mary's own divinity and immaculate conception skews the audience Catholic, yet they make basic mistakes and/or changes that Catholics won't agree with (she can't be an eternal virgin here, since Joseph is a teenager like her without kids, and she has great pains in childbirth, unlike Catholic lore that she was spared any pain whatsoever). Protestant audiences won't agree with Mary having "magical powers" or being immaculately conceived without sin, so as to be "the vessel." And casual audiences will just find it "weird."

The costuming is great and it's the first time I've seen Israel look lush and lavish, but there again, it runs into historical inaccuracies. Mary and Joseph travel around in a wheeled wagon that won't be invented for another few hundred years. They had a modest donkey rather than a horse worth a small fortune. Her family must be rich to afford all their luxuries, and most Jews didn't have horses, either. A lot of the story is dark and violent and doesn't make for enjoyable Christmas viewing. I also didn't like it that to protect Mary, Joseph had to use extreme violence. Maybe that is true, but it interrupts the Biblical narrative that Joseph chose to flee rather than fight. He winds up killing a soldier in a cruel way, by wrapping him up in a burning fishing net, which seems to be an odd beat / messaging in a story that concludes with "love will save the world." 

Sexual Content:

Much is made of Mary insisting she's a virgin despite being pregnant and others questioning this. Lucifer appears to her and suggests she needs more pleasure in her life, and he can offer it to her. He acts predatory and sexually creepy toward her several times.

Violence:

A lot. People and stabbed off-screen and on. Romans oppress Jews and kill them. A man murders his wife by knifing her in the chest. A main character is killed in a skirmish. Babies are ripped from their mothers' arms and sometimes their mothers are stabbed. At the climax, four people fight off a group of Roman soldiers and wind up killing them all; two of them are also killed. A man is wrapped in a burning net and burns to death (it's more violence than I wanted). A priest has a crown of porcupine quills shoved down on his head until it blinds him. The main characters come home to a house full of torn up furniture and slaughtered sheep. A man is beaten in the street with a length of chain.

Other:

Lucifer causes Mary to levitate. Gabriel is creepy-looking. Mary has magical powers -- butterflies are drawn to her, and she's accused of "mesmerizing" King Herod. Things are added to scripture, or not presented in scriptural detail (they omit Gabriel warning them to flee to Egypt and make the soldiers descend on Bethlehem instead). Lots of historical inaccuracies.