Story of Jesus’ birth lacks life

Soren Andersen, for the Northwest Guardian

“The Nativity Story” has everything you’d expect in a picture telling one of the world’s best-known stories: the Magi, the manger, the angel Gabriel, the light from the east, the shepherds descending from the hills to gaze upon the miracle, the slaughter of the innocents ordered by Herod. And of course at the story’s center, a man and a woman and, at the end, a baby.

Make that a man, a girl and a baby. In this “Story” Mary, mother of Jesus, is a young teen, played by Australian-New Zealander actress Keisha Castle-Hughes, now 16. Joseph is played by American newcomer Oscar Isaac.

Castle-Hughes, the engaging breakout star of the 2002 indie hit “Whale Rider,” seems ill at ease in the role of Mary. She looks glum throughout much of the picture, and her line deliveries are passionless.

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke (“Thirteen,” “Lords of Dogtown”) from a script by Oregon native Mike Rich, “The Nativity Story” draws upon the gospels of Matthew and Luke to dramatize events of the year leading up to the birth of Jesus.

Mary is made glum by being forced into an arranged marriage with Joseph by her parents Anna (Hiam Abbass) and Joachim (Shaun Toub). She doesn’t know him, she doesn’t love him and she feels trapped by the social conventions of her day that give her no say in the matter.

Being informed by the angel Gabriel (Alexander Siddig), a white-robed, bearded figure, that she has been chosen to give birth to the son of God is at first a source of confusion and consternation for her. Resignation follows, then acceptance and finally, when the baby is born, quiet jubilation. But Castle-Hughes’ performance is so monochromatic that all these feelings smudge together into a formless mist of muted emotion.

As Joseph, Isaac is a marginally more forceful presence. Quietly smitten with the young Mary at first, then quietly mortified when he discovers she’s pregnant with someone else’s child, he is mollified when the angel Gabriel appears to him in a dream and explains the nature of the pregnancy. The loyalty and long-suffering love he shows her during their arduous overland trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem unites them as a couple. Their slow drawing together in the face of shared hardship is nicely wrought by Hardwicke.

With the two principals giving sincere but colorless performances, the way is opened for secondary characters to steal the movie. Nadim Sawalha, Stefan Kalipha and Eriq Ebouaney as the Magi Melchior, Gaspar and Balthasar are an engaging traveling troupe, at ease with one another and pulled onward in the long journey to Bethlehem by a growing sense of wonderment. And as Herod, Ciaran Hinds is a silken evil presence, ordering the slaughter of the innocents with an attitude of calm, implacable calculation that is truly hair-raising.

For all its miraculous content – the guiding light, the angel’s appearances, the virgin birth – “The Nativity Story” paradoxically is heavily grounded in reality. The costumes and settings (it was filmed near a hill town in a part of southern Italy that seems frozen in the past and in the Moroccan desert) give the picture a real biblical feel. The rough-sewn garments, the primitive stone cottages, the narrow, dusty lanes … you can practically taste the grit in your mouth and the scorching roughness of the sun-baked rocks beneath your feet as you watch.

It’s most effective in conveying the grinding hardship of the times, of ordinary people scrabbling to eke out a living in the harsh land, a land made even more harsh by the predations of Roman tax collectors.

The ordinary and the divine co-exist seamlessly in “The Nativity Story,” which is its most impressive achievement. What it lacks is liveliness. It’s respectful, reverent and rather dull.