Delayed Reaction: Mary Magdalene

Premise: The Gospels from Mary Magdalene’s perspective.

 

They called my bluff. I tend to mention that religious movies don't put together real casts with real filmmakers to make real movies. Instead, it's stuff like The Shack, which is dreadfully dull and everyone is there to collect a paycheck. And whenever I watch a Shack, I say that I'd appreciate a Christian movie that put in a real effort to get dirty. Well, Mary Magdalene is a real movie. I think it's even pretty kind about the Jesus story through Mary Magdalene’s eyes. It's a more grounded look at the Jesus story that wasn't that blasphemous. Like, it's not a movie that's trying to tear down the Gospels. It's a pretty earnest movie.

 

Even though the movie seemingly does everything I ask for a Christian movie to do, I still didn't like this. I'm sure some of this is my lifelong atheism* despite going through 12 years of Catholic schooling talking, but the Jesus story is dull as hell. As pure literature, it's not that interesting. It doesn't help that I've heard the story so many times.

 

*I'm not a lapsed Catholic. I don't count my very early years. As soon as I had any critical thinking faculties, I put a word to how I felt about religion, which turned out to be 'atheist'.

 

Mary Magdalene makes a fatal mistake. The Jesus story needs to be more Luke than Mark. Play up the miracles. Make Jesus a spectacle. Taking a ground level view of Rooney Mara watching a bearded Joaquin Phoenix give a few speeches is boring to watch. Impressive cast though. Mara. Phoenix. Chiwetel Ejiofor. It's low on actual Middle-Easterners, but that's far from the main problem.

 

The weird thing is, I was really looking forward to this movie. That cast with an Oscar nominated director and nice production values sounded like a treat. I didn't realize how much it was just the Jesus story as seen by Mary Magdalene. I figured at worst it would be more of an Ophelia perspective.

 

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend