The Nativity Story

A movie about the birth of Jesus with careful research, resembled the ancient view of lands in Judea. The story is well known to Christians so the viewing was something like debug any errors or defects from the passage of the Bible.

The main focus was Mary, that is fair enough as Jesus was still in the womb but not particularly made to satisfied the Catholics. Most of the plots followed the original text in the Bible. Surely there were scenes that weren't shown as the Bible contains 2 to 3 chapters to describe things happened at that time from the 4 evangelical books in the new testaments. These missing parts were filled up smoothly in the movie.

The selling point was how the film described the inner-self of these characters. Especially Mary the virgin who got pregnant without marriage could be a death sentence sin at that time. The struggles between the family, Joesph and the villagers in Galilee were a logical responses. That suggested why Jesus later was not welcomed back to the village during his preaching life.

The filming was take part in the same site as the other movies: The Passion of the Christ and the Gladiator. These similar era would bring people visual images so that they understand more about the background of the Bible. For instance, how worse for being taxed by the Rome government and how desperate a messiah was expected. The pace of the film was a bit slow as in the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Surely, you won't expect any "Hollywood elements" in this movie such as chasing, explosions or combats. This is more like a documentary of life, biography or drama as a pilgrimage.

I don't think The movie would create a big hit as The Passion of the Christ since there was no debatable issues in the presentation. It's just peaceful as silent night somehow. But that was a well researched film for those who had faith to have a better understanding of the passage and also an introduction for non-Christian about how Jesus was born.

A good tool for introductory Christianity.