“Mary,” the new movie on Netflix, is a pastiche of the narrative of the birth of Mary, her life and the birth of Jesus. Meant to be inspiring, the movie’s mixed messaging makes it come off like a bad thriller, with the heroine of the film moving between obedience, defiance and resignation. I couldn’t decide if I was watching a bad supernatural movie set in the desert or a bad, violent, cheaply made thriller set in ancient times. Perhaps the answer is both.
I couldn’t decide if I was watching a bad supernatural movie set in the desert or a bad, violent, cheaply made thriller set in ancient times.
“Mary” was the dream of Joel Osteen, the Houston megachurch pastor and prosperity gospel evangelist, and it’s about as saccharine as his sermons. Osteen, an executive producer of the film, worked with Aloe Entertainment’s Mary Aloe, who stated she wanted the “Mary” film to be a “survival thriller.”
If you survive watching it, then you’ll learn that Mary, played by Noa Cohen, is a “gift from God,” as we are reminded so many times. Cohen’s portrayal of Mary in this overblown, New Age retelling of her story wavers between dutiful, courageous and winsome. This Mary is not the stoic who gets pregnant by God; she is both obedient daughter and homemaker, and the most wanted woman in Galilee. Everyone, it seems, knows she is special, from Anthony Hopkins, who gives us an overwrought portrayal of Herod, to the random butterflies that follow her everywhere.
“Mary” is the most recent portrayal of New Testament stories that recasts them into action thrillers. Like “The Chosen,” a series that’s been on multiple streaming services, the main point of “Mary” is Jesus, but in this case, we’re getting the backstory about how he is born and the supernatural events that follow his mother Mary and Joseph.
And this is my major issue with the film. To account for Herod’s paranoia about a Messiah, Mary is cast as a mythical figure, holy from the very beginning. Appearances from the angel Gabriel and Lucifer add to the mystical tone of the movie, paired with the violence of the Zealots and the Romans. Viewers are asked to believe that everyone knew Mary was someone special.
And this is where the movie falls short. It strains credulity to think that everyone knew Mary was “the one,” that she was Neo more than 2,000 years before “The Matrix” was released.
As a veteran of watching the old-style Christian historical films — like “Ben Hur,” “Barabbas” and “King of Kings” — a focus on Mary would be a welcome diversion. In many of the older biblical stories in film and television, women are relegated to ancillary roles, and there ought to be films that bring them into the lead. In this case, Mary is the star of the show, and she is loaded with kindness, humility and grit, but that’s not enough to make the movie worth your time. You might want to say a Hail Mary and pray afterward for wasting almost two hours of your life.
And that’s before we even get to the controversy involving Cohen’s casting.
Director D.J. Caruso is being criticized for his choice to pick Israeli Jewish actors for the film to, in his words, ‘ensure authenticity.’
Director D.J. Caruso is being criticized for his choice to pick Israeli Jewish actors for the film to, in his words, “ensure authenticity.” Opponents of the film have argued that ignoring the Palestinian roots of Mary and Joseph is an affront to their faith, while others say casting an Israeli to play Mary during the Israel-Hamas war is offensive.
Unrelated to the casting of the actors, some Catholics who have watched the movie have called it blasphemous and historically incorrect. A YouTube page called “Theology of the Body Institute” has called the movie “dangerous” and is encouraging Catholics to take its online course on Mary. And Fr. Edward Looney goes through an entire article pulling apart what he believes to be extra-biblical sources used to enhance the basic Gospel story.
A big problem with the movie is that it’s cobbled together in a way to try to make it appeal to everyone. Is it supposed to be an ancient epic? A love story? A supernatural thriller? Whichever one of those types of movies “Mary” is trying to be, it fails. The first 30 minutes shift from scene to scene without much connection and assume the viewer knows the contours of the story being presented. The violence and gore are gratuitous and used as spectacle. Los Angeles – Netflix- Produced by Mary Aloe & an Aloe Entertainment production comes @MARY Dec 6th around the globe. I envisioned a movie of vast cultural influence & more than a movie– a movement and so it is, in under 3 weeks alone our trailer has hit over 128 Million pic.twitter.com/x42TGrtgWk An even bigger problem is that “Mary” is a type of cinematic propaganda, the reframing of a biblical story to meet the social and commercial needs of many American Christians who seek to recast Jesus, Mary and other biblical figures to suit their modern political philosophies. This portrayal of the mother of Jesus is a turbocharged, 21st-century vision of a Mary who is a cross between “mother of God,” Barbie and a tradwife. Skip the movie. Luke is better.
Anthea Butler is a professor of religious studies and Africana studies at the University of Pennsylvania. 
