Criticism of Mary Magdalene: a woman respected by most films that are wrong

I do not say that at all, but it's true: most of Jesus' films speak almost exclusively about a group of men. Those who seek truth are focused on Jesus and his followers, an all-male pack. Women are often secondary characters reduced or, in some cases, completely dismissed. These are characters who need healing or who appear in a crowd, but they are not part of the story.

Yet the mother of Jesus, Mary, was a major figure of veneration in the early church. And the Bible clearly says that women were among those traveling with Jesus – perhaps the greatest of them, Mary Magdalene, a woman Jesus clearly loved, so much in the Gospel of John, she is named as the first person to whom he appeared after his resurrection.

The mother of Jesus, Mary, given her elevated status in the text and in some Christian traditions, has been the subject of many films, including the 1999 TV movie. Mary, mother of God (with Christian Bale as Jesus) and the 2015 film Gracious, who represents Mary contemplating her faith in her son as she approaches the end of her life.

Mary Magdalene has also made an appearance in popular culture – but she is often misinterpreted as a temptress or as a lover of Jesus. Often she is a leaf for the purity of the Virgin Mary. It is a woman who was a prostitute and who is now a saint. His story is a way of showing the power to be near Jesus.

But in Marie Madeleine, directed by Garth Davis (Lion) and written by Helen Edmundson (Therese Raquin) and Philippa Goslett (How to talk to girls at parties), the story is a bit different. It could even be more in harmony with the text and the early Christian tradition. With Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix, the film presents the same problems as many movies about the ministry of Jesus. But it's still an interesting addition to the canon because of its purpose: to tell a story primarily about Mary Magdalene, but also to elevate the role of women in the early Christian Church.

The role and identity of Mary Magdalene evolved over the course of Christian history

Mary Magdalene (probably because she comes from a fishing village called Magdala) has been a source of interest and discord for centuries. In some ancient texts, such as the Gnostic Gospels, his close relationship with Jesus is a source of tension with other disciples. In the Middle Ages, she had been confused with another Mary (there are many of Mary in the Gospels), the "sinful woman" or prostitute named in Luke who washed the feet of Jesus with a perfume and her hair. And so, for a long period of Christian history, she was viewed with much suspicion.

Eventually, the Catholic Church re-established its legitimate identity as a follower of Jesus. She is now considered a saint in many Christian traditions, and in 2016, the Vatican officially elevated her day of celebration to a festive one (a much bigger affair).

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But even if the church no longer considers her a former prostitute, this perception has persisted in popular culture, with the idea that Mary was Jesus' wife or had bad with him on several occasions.

For example, in Martin Scorsese's controversial 1988 film The last temptation of Christ (According to the 1955 novel by Nikos Kazantzakis), Satan tempts Jesus on the cross with a vision of his life, had he married Mary Magdalene. In the rock opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber Jesus Christ Superstar (You may remember the live TV replay last year), Jesus and Mary do not have a relationship, but Mary is portrayed as an ex-prostitute and the song "I do not know how 'to love', which she sings about Jesus, could be read as a confession of love and unrequited romantic desire.

None of this is here in 2019 Marie Madeleine. On the contrary, the close relationships of Mary and Jesus are portrayed almost as a symbiosis, something they both need to survive and to fulfill God's will on earth. (That Rooney Mara and Joaquin Phoenix are a couple in real life certainly complicates the situation, so it's best to put this off-screen context aside.)

Before meeting Jesus, Mary lives with her father and several sisters in Magdala, where women spend their days fishing and cleaning nets. She has a knack for the profession of midwife and fervently prays in the synagogue, but she feels she has no place.

This feeling comes to mind when she runs away from engagement before a kindly widower, for reasons she does not quite understand, and her father and other men in the village consider her possessed by demons. Discouraged, unwilling to submit to her fate, she is in a state of depression until an itinerant preacher she has heard of comes. It's Jesus, of course. He tells her that there are no demons in her and that her deep desire to know God is a good thing.

He tells her, in essence, that she is not wrong for what she feels. His feelings are valid.

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The next day, Mary sees Jesus preaching nearby and joins the crowd – and soon finds himself caught up in the tumult that breaks out as Jesus begins to heal people from their diseases. She knows she has to follow him, even if she does not know exactly why.

Then the next morning, she leaves her family and rejoins her band of disciples, and they leave the city.

Although men are worried about what people will think of them – a band of 13 men traveling with a woman – Mary is fierce, determined and dedicated to their work, flawless for their disapproval. What develops is an intimate relationship between Mary and Jesus, often exhausted by his work and worried about the dark path he sees before him.

Meanwhile, the disciples – especially Judas (Tahar Rahim) and Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) – sometimes seem more interested in how Jesus can serve their ideas on him rather than follow him. Living in Judea at a time of growing unrest against the Romans occupying their land, they dream of being released by Jesus, their Messiah. They are ready to graze the sick and die to pursue this idea.

But Jesus has a different notion of the kingdom of heaven, a more to do with love and service to each other – something that only Mary seems to understand instinctively. This does not fascinate her for the disciples. But this can help shape the future of the church.

Marie MadeleineThe taking of the gospels is subversive and silent

Marie Madeleine adopts a gentle feminist perspective on the beginnings of the Jewish sect that will eventually become Christianity. It's at best when Mary's presence challenges people to look beyond their ambitions and look after the "least of them," people who may not be as helpful to their cause but who were at the center of Jesus' mission.

And in that, taking an imaginative license, Mary's role is high. In one scene, Jesus and his disciples enter a city and the disciples are surprised to learn that he is about to preach to men, but to the women of the city. However, when Jesus arrives, he does not know what to say, and it is finally to Mary that he turns to ask for advice.

In fact, Mary gives a lot of advice to Jesus throughout the film and tells him that she will be at his side even in his death. (According to the Gospels, she was present at her crucifixion.) It is then up to her to give great news to the disciples, who are beginning to take steps to drive her out of the story.

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For some viewers, it may not be obvious how radical this might seem to some Christian audiences. The film essentially suggests that Mary helped found the Christian faith, but was marginalized by patriarchy, who wanted to turn the message of love, forgiveness and peace of Christ into something completely different – something directed by men. The film suggests that the disciples deliberately downgraded Mary's status to the beloved disciple group, equal to them, to a woman who was simply around.

Whether they have succeeded or not, it depends on the viewer's interpretation, but given the dominance of patriarchal authority throughout Christian history and some traditions up to this point. day, the implication of the film is very clear. In the end, however, the film notes the 2016 Vatican proclamation, as well as the title "Apostle of the Apostles" which has often been applied to Mary in the course of Christian history, thus affirming her equality within the group . (The film says in the end at the end that this title had been applied in 2016, but historians say that it appeared as early as the ninth century.)

The role of gender in the authority of the church is an incredibly complex subject, involving thousands of years of arguments and perspectives on what "equality" looks like. . This triggered divisions and church divisions. That the role of Mary Magdalene has been at the center of our concerns is not exaggerated.

And, of course, a film will not solve these theological arguments, many of which are deeply rooted in millennial traditions. But it's interesting to see Marie Madeleine approach them with an always essentially respectful perspective, clearly inspiring the text and tradition of the church.

Sadly, Marie Madeleine falls into some familiar ruts of the biblical movie

In fact, it could be as well respectful. While Marie Madeleine Doing a good thing when coming out of the book, telling an original story from the text, it runs out of steam by falling into the same pitfalls as a number of movies about Jesus. The narrative is reinforced by a kind of reverie and flutter, reinforced by a score composed of thick strings and choral harmonies, which gives the story an air of fantasy cousin rather than a story of starting a movement. The film moves very slowly, which is not a problem de facto, but badociated with the ethereal quality of the story, it seems unreal.

This can be exacerbated by performance at its center. They are very good, of course; Mara and Phoenix are two of the best actors working today, and Ejiofor is an invigorating presence as Peter.

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But Mara is almost always from another world (Cate Blanchett's line in Carol that she was "a strange girl, thrown out of space" (this is a broad description of her), which gives Mary a look a little different from the human, almost ghostly at times. It's hard to know what's going on in her, which is strange since the film is centered on her.

Jesus, on the other hand, is often played as a whole other world, in a way that belies the Christian idea that he was God, yes, but also completely. a man. Played by Phoenix, this humanity breaks – it cries, it smiles – but sometimes it seems to sink into an affect close to the stone, as if Jesus was a hippie cult leader giving off vague aphorisms, not a man that people found so magnetic that they had to follow him.

As a Christian and long-time observer of trends in Christian films, I hope that one day a director will manage to make a film that makes a Jesus that fits what I read in the Bible – a funny, emotional and pbadionate man, someone whose powers of attention to the world around him are much more developed than those of others. He speaks in riddles and riddles, but always with a wink. We are so attracted to him that we cry when he is executed by people who feel threatened by him, whether we believe in him or not in a world outside the cinema.

I have not seen it yet, although I sometimes see glimpses. But I appreciate the purpose of Marie Madeleineand the way he reinvents a familiar story with modern implications even when it falls flat. The Bible contains many stories that deserve to be told, and the immersive nature of a movie allows you to tell them in a new and new way. Maybe the more the filmmakers try to do it, the closer we get.

Marie Madeleine opens in theaters on April 12th.