Theological Musings

esterday, we went to see “The Nativity Story” here in our local theater. I had not heard a whole lot about this movie prior to going, so I wasn’t absolutely sure what we would end up seeing. (Tim Challies had reviewed the book version of the screenplay, but I hadn’t heard a lot about the actual movie.)

Overall, I was very pleased with this movie. It was a rather simple telling of the birth of Christ. From a production standpoint, I thought it was excellent. The acting was very good (Joseph was perhaps my favorite character from an acting standpoint), the locations and scenery were great — all in all, it was very well-done.

From the standpoint of the biblical story, it should come as no surprise that liberties were taken with the story. After all, the biblical narrative of the nativity doesn’t really produce a two-hour screenplay without some additional material! With regard to the character of Joseph, the Bible is almost completely silent, so obviously liberties had to be taken. However, I did not feel that anything that was added or embellished undermined the biblical account in any way. As my dear friend Gordon Cloud wrote in his review (which I did not see until after we had already watched the movie, and I had developed this review in my mind), the theological aspects of who Jesus is, the virgin birth, etc. are all preserved quite well.

There are just a couple of very, very minor complaints I would make about this movie:

1. The “wise men” are treated as comedic characters in this version. I felt like the comedic stuff was completely unnecessary in this movie. There was no significant tension that needed comedic relief. There was no “on the edge of your seat” suspension that would require the audience to have a chance to laugh. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m all for comedy. One of my pipe dreams is to actually do stand-up comedy sometime. Just ask my wife and son. I’m frequently cracking jokes at home. But the comedy with the three wise men (yes, they took the traditional approach to the wise men) seemed a bit too corny. It just didn’t really fit with the movie, in my opinion.
2. The movie started with a very beautiful treatment of the Christmas hymn “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”, which I thought was a perfect opening. However, throughout the movie, the soundtrack included quite a few Christmas songs, which I personally found distracting. To me, a soundtrack should contribute to the movie in terms of mood, accentuation of action, etc. But it should be something that is mostly subconscious to the viewer. (Another pipe dream of mine is to compose the sound track for a motion picture.) Because of the familiar melodies appearing throughout this soundtrack, it often diverted my attention to the music and away from the story itself. It felt like it pulled me out of the story and reminded me that I was watching a movie. I didn’t care for that so much.

Those two complaints, however, are very small compared to my positive overall reaction to the movie. I would confidently recommend it to anyone.

Until next time,

steve