|
The Nativity Story is a remarkable, if frustratingly restrained, act of imagining the tale of Christ's birth as a flesh-and-blood drama actually set in Israel two millenia ago. Written by Mike Rich (Finding Forrester) and directed by Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen), the film makes very strong impressions in a scene-by-scene way. Beginning with the slaughter (bloodlessly portrayed; this is a PG movie) of Bethlehem’s innocents under orders from a paranoid King Herod (a dark and knowing Ciarán Hinds), the film then jumps back a year to the prophecy that informs Zechariah (Stanley Townsend) that his wife, Elizabeth (Shohreh Aghdashloo), will bear a child. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's cousin, the adolescent Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes), struggles with her family to make ends meet and is promised to the carpenter Joseph (Oscar Isaac). Soon comes word to Mary, via an angel, that she will carry, while still a virgin, the long-awaited Messiah who will liberate the Jews from Herod and his Roman benefactors. Thus begins a detailed account of Joseph and Mary's hard travel to Bethlehem, while three Magi spend months crossing the desert trying to rendezvous with some point below the convergence of three heavenly bodies in the night sky. Hardwicke and Rich anchor all this in period detail, though what proves most moving are relationship nuances, especially the friendship and trust that emerge between Mary and Joseph after he is told in a dream that she speaks truthfully about her miraculous pregnancy. While The Nativity Story should appeal to almost anyone as a straightforward narrative, it is far from a secular version of the familiar Biblical tale, and thus feels a bit stifled. It might have been nice if the film could have breathed a little more with imagination, but The Nativity Story makes up for it by ingeniously weaving hints of things to come, later in Christ's life, into the action. --Tom Keogh
Actors: Keisha Castle-Hughes, Oscar Isaac, Hiam Abbass, Shaun Toub, Ciarán Hinds.
Directors: Catherine Hardwicke
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, Full Screen, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English
Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number of discs: 1
Rating PG
Studio: New Line Home Video
DVD Release Date: March 20, 2007
Run Time: 101 minutes
DVD Features:
Available Subtitles: English, Spanish
Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English (Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo)
Includes widescreen anamorphic and full-screen formats
ASIN: B000MGBM1I
Format: DVD
Release Date:
03/01/07
Label: New Line Cinema Corporation
Distributed by: Word
ISBN: 0780656709
UPC: 794043106682
Product Code: 171584
|
|
