The Nativity Story

The Nativity Story, directed by Catherine Hardwicke, is the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, and the story of the miraculous birth of Christ, born to the virgin to save the world. It is a story that we have heard time and time again told to us from the Chapters of Matthew and Luke, and with this film screenwriter, Mike Rich attempts brings that story to life. Hardwicke and Rich together with Production Designer, Stefano Ortolani, worked tirelessly to assure that the film was both historically and theologically authentic. They did research for each prop, each set, and each location, choosing to shoot the film in Matera, Italy, a country whose landscape has gone unchanged for centuries.

The film opens with an Old Testament prophecy that has King Herod, played by Ciarán Hinds, quite troubled. Together with his son Antipas they watch over the sacrifice of male children born in Bethlehem. The film then takes us back in time to the beginning of the story. We hear the angel Gabriel tell Zechariah that his wife Elizabeth will have a son even though she is well passed child-bearing years. It is after hearing of Elizabeth’s good news that we first meet Mary, a young girl, played by Keisha Castle-Hughes.

While the film makers have undoubtedly worked incredibly hard to make the sets as accurate and authentic as possible at times it feels that more attention should have been given to the dialogue, which at times feels a bit contrived. The Biblical account of the nativity story is brief, and thus there was much room for creative interpretation during this 101 minute film. We see several conversations where Mary and Joseph question why they were chosen and how they are going to raise the son of God. These conversations, though not in the Biblical account of the story, are easily imagined. How often Mary must have wondered, “Why her?”

Keisha Castle Hughes performance as Mary, a young girl thrust first into adulthood by having her husband, Joseph, chosen for her, and then thrust into motherhood and sainthood through Immaculate Conception, was incredibly understated. In a way it was appealing, because the story/the film is not about Mary, but rather about Christ and God sending his son to the world. However, I’m not sure if Hughes flat and understated performance was intentional or just the sign of a sixteen-year-old still learning her way around the big screen.

Joseph, played by Oscar Isaac, is the real stand out in the film. Often we focus on how big of a struggle it was for Mary to carry the Son of God, but this film reiterates the bravery of Joseph as he stood by Mary and struggled with his own questions and doubt about raising the Christ child.

While there are several obvious discrepancies between the Biblical account and The Nativity Story, it is still a film worth seeing. It will put you in the Christmas spirit, and help you to remember why we are celebrating this season.

For One More Day a Review

“Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.

What if you got it back?” [Prologue].

In Mitch Albom’s new novel, he confronts the question: What would you do if you were given one more day with the loved one you lost? As the book opens, we meet Charles “Chick” Benetto. We are told that this will be “a story about a family and, as there is a ghost involved, [some] might call it a ghost story. But every family is a ghost story. The dead sit at our tables long after they have gone” [Prologue]. It is a story about reconnecting with a loved one long ago past, discovering the secrets they never shared and finding forgiveness at the end of the day. For One More Day is the story of Charley, as his mother calls him, and his mother, Pauline “Posey” Benetto.

For One More Day is framed as an “as told to” story. It is the story of Charley recollecting the day he tried to end it all fused with reflections on his life and mementos from his past. Albom uses each of these expertly to pull the reader in and make you forget, at times, that you are not reading the memoirs of Charles Benetto but rather a well-crafted fiction novel. As the story begins, Charley, a former baseball player, is telling his story to a sportswriter. He begins, "Let me guess. You want to know why I tried to kill myself" [3]. His story begins to unfold at midnight, after learning that he was not invited to his only daughter’s wedding, he drives back to his hometown on a mission. His plan is simple. He is going to end his own life, but when he fails at even that, he merely adds suicide to his growing list of life’s failures. Broken, bruised, and drunk he makes his way to the house that he grew up in only to be welcomed home by his mother, who had passed away eight years before.

Throughout the novel, there are many glimpses into Charley’s life as a child living with a divorcee mother, a young adult torn between an education and a love of playing ball, and as a man struggling to keep his own family together despite reality not living up to the expectations of his dreams. As a young boy, Charley was told, “You can be a mama’s boy or you can be a daddy’s boy, but you can’t be both” [21]. Charley has spent most of his life struggling to choose whose side he is on, only to learn not that he made the wrong choice, but that there was no need to make a choice at all.

Throughout the novel are the heartbreaking lists that Charley has made of the “Times My Mother Stood Up for Me” and the “Times I Did Not Stand Up for My Mother.” These lists will engage you, and have you thinking of all the many times that we as children have been ashamed of a mother who would in turn give us the world. While Albom’s novel is a quick read, it is one that will stick with you past its 197 pages, a book that forces you to think about your own life and your own family. Are there moments that you wish you could relive? Is there a day you would like a chance to do over again? For One More Day will have its readers cherishing the moments they have with those they love and understanding that you can never really lose someone you love.

What would you do with one more day? Whom would you spend it with – the grandfather you always wished you would have known or the grandmother you miss more than breathe? Would you do something you always wish you would have done or something you simply miss doing together – What would you do? If you were granted one more day, what would you do with it?