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I enjoyed the new Netflix movie Mary starring Anthony Hopkins as King Herod. I have some significant reservations, that I’ll get to, but let’s start by what it gets right.
First and foremost, I love the figure of Mary it presents.
The movie’s director, D.J. Caruso — in heartfelt interviews like the great one with Aleteia — has said that he wanted people to know Mary better so that they could know Jesus more.
In particular Caruso wanted to “humanize [Mary] and maker her accessible to more people.”
I agree. You don’t understand Mary at all if you see her as a plaster statue that can move and talk. You know her better if you see her as a tough-as-nails Jewish mother — but with an improbably luminous presence. You get a sense of her from Mother Teresa, the Albanian nun who was incandescent with holiness, but unstoppably stubborn.
That’s a tall order for an actress to portray, but Noa Cohen does as good a job as can be expected — albeit only portraying youthful Mary. The movie stops at the flight into Egypt.
But sometimes the film’s “humanization” goes too far. At the Annunciation, for instance, instead of her “Fiat” submitting to God’s action, the movie gives Mary words that claim a sort of status to herself. That gets it exactly wrong.
Whenever a movie is made about Mary, Catholics have a series of questions. I like this movie’s answers.
A “Catholic FAQ” for the Netflix Mary might go like this:
Q: Is Mary depicted as sinless?
A: I think so. The Immaculate Conception is suggested by the special way she enters the lives of her parents, associated with the angel Gabriel. She is an energetic, and good-naturedly mischievous child, but she doesn’t do anything that amounts to sin. This is despite the film’s sometimes careless attitude toward sin: Both St. Joachim and St. Joseph tell lies to avoid trouble in this movie — but the worst things Mary does in the movie are the kind of things over-eager job interviewees say are their greatest weaknesses. Mary gets in trouble for “working too hard” and for “giving too much.”
Q: Does Mary get presented in the Temple, as Catholics celebrate each November 21?
A: Yes! This isn’t depicted in the Gospels, but you can infer it from Mary’s ability to make a hasty trip to the Temple area and by her familiarity with “Temple people”: Zacariah, Joachim and Anne. And fans of Catholic art will be delighted with the way Mary enters the Temple, climbing stairs, just as in famous paintings.
Q: Does she vow to be a lifelong virgin?
A: She does! This is vigorously portrayed, through her utter incomprehension and worry when she is told she will be married and, later, that she will be a mother.
Q: Does she suffer pain at childbirth?
A: Here are two schools of thought on this question: Pain at childbirth is, famously, given to Eve as her punishment for the Fall, so, Catholics ask, wouldn’t Mary be spared this? In fact, Fathers of the Church sometimes portray the Virgin Birth as miraculous and bloodless. But there is also a tradition of the sorrowing mother that would suggest that she didn’t shy away from pain but entered fully into it as her Son would. This is the take the film follows.
There are a few portrayals in the movie I like less than Mary’s.
After seeing both Mary and an angel at Fatima, the shepherd seer Lucia dos Santos said that both brought feelings of “intimate happiness, peace and joy,” but the angel also brought an awe that she described ominously as “annihilation in the divine presence.” The angel Gabriel in the movie certainly brings that feeling of unease, but without the happiness, peace and joy.
But I did appreciate the movie’s Satan, who makes unexpected appearances in which he appears friendly in a deceitful way, but chilling.
Anthony Hopkins does a great job with his larger-than-life role as Herod the Great. The ancient self-proclaimed “King of the Jews” was certainly a monster and the movie shows us this through his casual violence.
Unfortunately, the character of Joseph suffers from having the same proficiency with violence.
I loved Joseph the doting husband early in Mary — but not Joseph the action hero later in the film.
It’s great that Mary’s Joseph is young and embraces Mary’s vow of celibacy. It’s not so great that he has to ask Mary what to name the child — something Gabriel told him was his responsibility.
But one mistake movies make about the human person is the “Violence Is Awesome” mistake. In real life, violent situations are overwhelming and traumatic. But in Marvel and other movies “good guy” characters effortlessly meet force with force, finding that violence solves problems without significant consequences.
In the movie, when men taunt Joseph because his wife is pregnant, he lashes out with his fists. Later, to protect her, he commits casual acts of increasingly grisly violence.
In the Gospel story, Joseph didn’t lash out, but protected through sacrifice — in much the way his son would one day.
The final words of the movie are refreshing, though.
Mary is given the last words in the story, and says: “Love will cost you dearly. It will pierce your heart. But in the end, love will save the world.”
That’s a great message for Advent.
Aleteia invites you to consider the intersection of faith and cinema with this reflection:
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