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LOOKING CLOSER IS 10 YEARS OLD!!

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100 minutes. Rated PG for violence.

STARRING: Keisha Castle-Hughes (Mary); Oscar Isaac (Joseph); Hiam Abbass (Anna, Mary’s Mother); Shaun Toub (Joaquim, Mary’s Father); Alexander Siddig (the Archangel Gabriel); Nadim Sawalha (Melchior); Eriq Ebouaney (Balthasar); Stefan Kalipha (Gaspar); Said Amadis (Tero); Stanley Townsend (Zechariah); Ciaran Hinds (King Herod); and Shohreh Aghdashloo (Elizabeth).

Of all the stories ever told, you’d be hard-pressed to find one that inspires more awe, wonder, reverence, and gratitude than Chapter One of The Greatest Story Ever Told.

The Christmas Story invigorates our imaginations for so many reasons:

• It’s a story of true love—not in the sense of romance, but in the sense of devotion, compassion, and courage, as Joseph stands beside Mary through her ordeal.
   

• It’s a story of dreams coming true, as God manifests himself boldly through angels, through a star, through dreams, and through a miraculous incarnation, fulfilling prophecies and promises, bringing the world a savior.
   
• It’s a story of “the last” being “first,” as a humble young teenager accepts the greatest mission yet endeavored by a human being… to bear the Christ child (who then, in turn, accepts an even greater mission).
   
• The story involves a malevolent, manipulative, somewhat insane villain—a veritable Saddam Hussein—who has an entire society living in fear of his every move.
   
• There’s violence… devastating violence. Children are slaughtered. A whole generation of boys, butchered in front of their families because of one man’s fear.
   
• Wise mystics devoted to astrology demonstrate that attention to the stars can lead a person to an encounter with God.
   
• People in dead-end jobs who spend their days talking with sheep and stepping in dung get a visitation by the most amazing music group in the history of the world.
   

• And then there’s the deeply moving story of Zechariah, who doubted God and lost his voice for a while, and Elizabeth who followed in the footsteps of Sarah and had a baby in her golden years.

The highlights in this story go on and on. And when you get to the end, it’s almost impossible to feel anything but awestruck.

Almost.

Even A Charlie Brown Christmas qualifies as a work of sacred mystery because, at the end of a 30-minute cartoon, punctuated with commercials, Linus restores order and perspective by standing up and reciting the mere details of the scriptural text, leaving everyone thunderstuck.

So it is hard to believe that it has taken so long for a feature film about the birth of Christ to reach the big screen.

And it is equally hard to believe that this film, The Nativity Story, could turn this material into something so bland, unremarkable, and uninspiring.

It’s especially surprising because The Nativity Story was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, who made a vivid, searing mother-and-teenager drama with Holly Hunter and Evan Rachel Wood called Thirteen. This suggested that The Nativity Story could be more than just a Christmas pageant—it might be an actors’ showcase, and a lavishly detailed, intimate, energetic examination of the personalities that lived within the rather sketchy details of the Bible story.

Instead, while The Nativity Story clearly reflects a lot of attention to period detail, from the dust on the animals to the characters’ daily chores, the film moves so rapidly and erratically through these events that we’re never given a chance to settle into it. Worse, the people moving through the stories are as one-dimensional as those you’ll find in most church Christmas pageants, reading lines with little emotion, and falling far short of complexity in their performances…

… with one exception. Oscar Isaac, cast as Joseph, emerges as a fascinating, compelling talent who crafts a complicated character in the silences of the script. Mike Rich’s sparsely written screenplay offers the actors many opportunities to communicate more than words can say, but only Isaac seizes those opportunities. As a result, the character of Joseph emerges from The Nativity Story as its one living, breathing, sympathetic, three-dimensional character.

Wise, ambitious, struggling father figures tend to be the cornerstones of scripts written by Mike Rich. (He also wrote The Rookie, a marvelous and underrated character study, and Radio, which became a painfully sentimental Hollywood production). Thanks to Rich’s imagination and Isaac’s performance, we’re blessed with a detailed portrait of a virtuous man stepping up to accept enormous responsibility. We see Joseph’s pride shaken as his fiancée becomes pregnant by a mystery. We see him fearful and dismayed as the community becomes suspicious. We feel his angst as he wonders if he can teach the Son of God anything. And then we sense his fears as he travels with Mary back to his crowded hometown where nobody is willing to help them, and they end up in a stable.

If only Mary had been as interesting.

Keisha Castle-Hughes struck audiences speechless with her complex, subtle, heartbreaking performance in Whale Rider four years ago. It was exciting to consider her future. She’s young enough to play the Virgin Mary, clearly. But alas, she just fails to make much of an impression here. Castle-Hughes seems trapped in two or three facial expressions—adorable smile, anxiety, and extreme anxiety—and her line readings are flat and automatic. When Gabriel arrives and says, “Do not fear,” it seems unnecessary, as what she conveys is something quite devoid of feeling. It’s hard to imagine that this is the same Mary who, according to the scriptures, breaks forth into that glorious song called the Magnificat. That poetic praise is not included in the film—one of several astonishing omissions—and it makes one wonder if the actress just wasn’t up to the challenge.

Mary isn’t the only character with a weak pulse. The talents of Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog, TV’s “24”), a great actress playing the role of Elizabeth, are wasted here, as the editors chop almost every potentially affecting scene to into mincemeat. The story of Zechariah is fumbled as well—the restoration of his speech should be a moment of lump-in-the-throat joy, but instead it comes off as incidental as a sneeze. Another fine actor, Alexander Siddig (Kingdom of Heaven, Syriana), cast in the important role of the angelic messenger, barely registers; his momentous interaction with Mary transpires so quickly that you’ll miss it if you blink.

Why this nativity’s three wise men are called “wise” is anybody’s guess. While Rich clearly intended them to represent men of science and skepticism, they come off as bumbling oafs with not-so-funny punchlines.

As King Herod, Ciarán Hinds (Munich, Persuasion) gets only one significant scene—a tense meal with the wise men—in which he get to communicate Herod’s intelligent malevolence and manipulative tactics. The rest of the time he’s stuck strolling around on the wall looking vaguely troubled, as if wondering, “Did I leave the stove on?” Alessandro Giuggioli, who plays Herod’s son Antipas, just hangs around glowering, as if Hardwicke said, “Whatsoever you do, sneer while you do it. When you eat this plum, eat it as wickedly as you possibly can.”

When Joseph and Mary reach Bethlehem, we’re prepared for Joseph’s desperate quest to find room in an overcrowded town. But instead, we find him wandering down a quiet, almost empty street, recalling that Twilight Zone when a man runs through a mysteriously vacated city. He barely begins his search for a room when Jesus decides that it’s time for his big introduction.

And when we finally arrive at the nativity itself, it looks surprisingly, well, unsurprising. As the camera pulls back, revealing all of the key players (including the wise men, arriving three years early for the photo-op), we half-expect to see a Bethlehem photographer, preserving the image for sentimental Christmas cards for generations to come. (And isn’t there something aggravating about a stable that has no roof on it—as if the architect anticipated the aesthetic advantage of letting unusual star-beams fall like spotlights on the manger?)

For this reviewer, it was exciting to see a chapter of Christ’s story shared on the big screen without apology or dismaying distortions. And yet, this version seems so dutiful and responsible and safe that it never has a chance to exhibit anything resembling passion. Despite the attention to detail, almost every scene in The Nativity Story feels rushed. We might have had scenes, but instead we have hurried exchanges. And the transitions between scripture’s language and other exchanges are abrupt and obvious.

It also seems that Hardwicke has forgotten that the big screen can be a canvas for visual poetry, a place for art that can inspire through light and color. She seems to merely document what the actors are doing, without any interest in metaphor or beauty.

Meanwhile, Mychael Danna's score, which is made from familiar Christmas carols like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and even “Carol of the Bells,” counteracts the visual realism, a sentimental distraction. At the screening I attended, viewers behind me whispered to each other excitedly as if playing a game of “Name that Tune.” (It’s also a bit predictable. We always know when Herod’s soldiers are coming: Menacing music informs us to get scared ahead of time, and then they arrive on the same kind of horses that the Black Riders ride in The Lord of the Rings—you know, the horses that run in thunderous slow-motion, kicking up dirt as if that’s what evil horses do.)

That such a talented group of artists, with so many resources at their disposal, could tell the story in a way that fails to enchant, inspire, or impress… that’s not only a surprise, but a severe disappointment.

Still, in this case it’s the Sacred Narrative that matters most, and we should be encouraged that a production like this could be realized without scandal or significant protest. We should be thankful that Hardwicke and company have reminded moviegoers about the true meaning of Christmas. I have absolutely no doubt that The Nativity Story will reduce many people to tears, because through this story blasts a beam of glory and hope that makes all other inspiring stories seem to be, at best, echoes of its truth. I have no doubt that God will use the film to thrill hearts, lift spirits, and draw people closer to him. God speaks through grand masterpieces of art, and he speaks through simple mediocre folk songs. The Nativity Story is not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. But the story at its center is so profound that it would take a severe and deliberate sabotage to hinder its effects.

Perhaps The Nativity Story, the first big-screen feature film on this subject to play on screens across America, will inspire an up and coming filmmaker to sense the true potential of this story, and to deliver the first great film about the nativity.