I know, I know its supposed to be about Mary, and it does a little bit of that, but it is also very much about how she sees Jesus. She sees him as a man carrying around the weight of the world on his shoulders, and she understands his true message when many miss it. In this way she serves a blank slate that we the audience can become.
She understands Jesus' true meaning behind the words in a way that only those outside of the story can. She as well as Jesus' mother both know that a gristly fate awaits him - just as we do.
I spent some time looking through the reviews, - many of the most negative reviews are arguing that it gets a lot wrong. So I wanted to argue a few of their points:
One reviewer says its wrong because Jesus didn't baptize Mary. The truth is we don't know. John 3:22 says Jesus spent some time baptizing, but then John 4:2 says Jesus wasn't baptizing, it was his disciples, but both of these moments are about Jesus' time in Judea - not Galilee, where Mary was likely baptized. It seems like in larger groups of baptisms, Jesus would have had his disciples share the work, and in a personal moment like baptizing Mary, (who many have suggested was funding these excursions), its likely in my mind that Jesus would have baptized her.
The same reviewer said that this film refutes that she had 7-demons cast out of her by Jesus (Luke 8:2). This is wrong by all accounts of Luke 8 that I can see. The Bible doesn't say Jesus cast the demons out. The Bible says that traveling with him included Mary who had had 7 demons cast out. The film shows her family attempting to cast demons out of her, and then Jesus sees her and says he sees no demons. This seems to fit well within the possibility of scripture.
It bothers me when people use scripture to try to refute or prove things. If you pull just a single line, you're missing the picture. And just because someone can quickly reference scripture, does not make them right.
Several said Jesus should appear in his early thirties. Again, we don't know. He was most likely between 33-36. The only mention in the Bible says he was younger than fifty.
Some people thought nobody looked semitic, but the Levant was one of the big melting pots, and there's not a lot of research on where all the white people were in 33 AD.
I agree they shouldn't have made Peter acting all righteous and jealous as he was in the Book of Thomas. Why must we tear someone down in order to lift another up? Also the trope of Angry Black Man... no thanks. Many called this a politically correct take on Jesus - and I'd argue that for this reason above that this was far from politically correct, and only reinforces bad stereotypes about gender and color.
Still one of my favorite films, hope this is useful for someone.
