‘Mary’ REVIEW: A disappointing and problematic coming-of-age
‘Mary’ REVIEW: A disappointing and problematic coming-of-age
Noa Cohen as Mary holding newborn Jesus with Ida Tako as Joseph in the background / Still taken from Netflix trailer
When D.J. Caruso’s Mary began posting teasers, I was excited to give it a chance, not necessarily as a Catholic, but as a young woman who has always admired Mary — who she was, what she has gone through, and what she now represents.
Before watching it, I went in without any apprehensions. All I knew was that it was a movie about Mary — not Jesus — and so, I was enthusiastic. I think that as often as we pray to Mary, we rarely ever really think about what she had to go through as a young woman carrying the Son of God. If I had to do that, I probably would not have the same tenacity or grace.
The case of the coming-of-age
Mary’s blurb positions itself as a “timeless coming-of-age story” where a young woman has to hide because of 1) having a child ‘out of wedlock’, and 2) a senile king killing baby boys as a desperate act to hold onto his power.
A conventional coming-of-age story necessitates a young protagonist. These narratives are often seen as ‘entwicklungsroman’ or ‘bildungsroman’ (both about a protagonist’s story of personal growth). While entwicklungsroman media merely requires some sort of development in the life of a teenager or young adult, bildungsroman media focuses more particularly on the protagonist going from childhood to adulthood, quite literally coming of age.
If we go by these categories, Mary falls under a bildungsroman narrative. This angle is interesting because it posits that Mary transitions to adulthood through being pregnant with and birthing Jesus, implying that Mary was not of age when she had her child. While the Bible talks about the persecution Mary had to face for having a child before marriage, it never mentions her age. This is an assumption based on how young Jewish women used to have children in historical Jewish societies.
In Trites’ book Disturbing the Universe: Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature, she says that adolescent characters exist in a “perpetual relationship of force”, a term borrowed from Foucault. This relationship with power is made by institutions, allowing a young person to use power to enable themselves or repress others — examples of these institutions being educational institutions, political institutions, religious institutions, social dynamics, and culture.
In Mary, the protagonist challenges a number of them, a political institution, a religious institution, and the Jewish culture. It is important to note that in their time (and even today), these institutions are deeply entangled that challenging one practically means challenging all of them. These institutions are seen to repress her while she struggles to find a way to empower herself.
Mary’s problems
Personally, I find the coming-of-age angle refreshing. That was not the problem. I think that the problem was that an angle that was supposed to be a fresh take did not actually add anything to what we already know about Mary. In this iteration, Mary literally says, “You may think you know my story. Trust me, you don’t.” However, the film then proceeds to prove to the viewer that they did know the story. Of course, there are a few scenes that are not as often depicted, such as Mary’s time living in the temple which is not canon in the Bible. But this is not enough.
Mary also shows more pain than we imagine when she discovers what she is destined to do. However, her response feels lukewarm as she quickly gets over life-changing decisions supposedly made for her by God. Her resistance would have been interesting and would have been aligned with the coming-of-age genre. Instead, the film does not dig into this, resulting in something half-baked.
Additionally, a film about Mary where she is barely anything but obedient and submissive does not do her any justice. Especially with Caruso saying that he wants Mary to be a role model to the generation today, what does it say when his Mary is like this? In this rendition, Mary seems to be a young woman where things just happen to her. She has little agency if any, and in this decade, I’m not sure that’s something we want. Maybe I was expecting a sort of subversion that the production did not really intend to make.
In relation to production, it is also important to address that there was something questionable behind the scenes. This article talks about it much better but to give a brief summary, Meredith Warren speaks of possible ‘right-wing funding’ of the film. Joel Osteen, a televangelist and Trump supporter, was an executive producer, and Adam W. Schindler was their “biblical scholar” who’s also part of America First Policy Institute which was created to support Trump’s conservative policies.
Production has also faced backlash from casting Israeli actors such as Noa Cohen (Mary) and Ida Tako (Joseph) while Bethlehem has been bombed by Israel. Many say that Jesus, if He were alive today, would be a Palestinian refugee. Although some argue that this is not accurate given that Palestine did not exist as an entity then, I would like to believe that Jesus or Mary would not align with a state such as Israel that has bombed another country to the point of no return.
Caruso claims that it is a deliberate choice to cast Israeli actors for accuracy. When Gaza is still being bombed and its people are still being killed, is ‘accuracy’ more important? And does casting Israeli actors who undeniably have ‘iPhone faces’ even make this depiction ‘accurate’?
Unfortunately, I was completely let down by Mary. Not only was it disappointing craft and form-wise, its politics is also infuriating. Whether Jesus and Mary would have been Palestinian or not, they would have fought for a free Palestine anyway.
‘Mary’ is currently streaming on Netflix.
