Mary Magdalene * (2018, Rooney Mara, Joaquin Phoenix, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tahar Rahim) – Movie Review

Director Garth Davis struggles to tell screen-writers Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett’s revised, modernised version of the story of Mary Magdalene, with inert and uninvolving performances from Rooney Mara as Mary Magdalene, Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Peter, and Tahar Rahim as Judas Iscariot, all of them awkwardly cast. Phoenix, especially, feels all wrong as Jesus.

Despite its fairly remarkable reinterpretation of the story of Mary Magdalene as a feminist and key member of Christ’s disciples, always there at the key moments of the Bible story, the film largely just lies there on the screen and falls asleep. Seeking to challenge audiences, it has a difficult task on its hands, but that is its self-appointed mission, and it needs to make a much more compelling, more credible job of it.

Rooney Mara stars as Mary Magdalene (2018).

The screenplay elevates MM from sinner to saint. An end title tells us that she was condemned by some ancient Pope as a prostitute – some kind of groupie hanging around the Holy Land band of disciples – and is now hailed by a recent one as a saint, a spiritual inspiration to those prepared to heed the new story. This is a long and fascinating journey, but the film barely tackles it.

Yes, there are times when the film looks ravishing, shot by cinematographer Greig Fraser on striking locations in Puglia and Sicily, but most of the time it plays out like it’s a low-budget stage adaptation. It is often static and dialogue bound. It feels a long, gruelling two-hour haul to Jesus’s final days in Jerusalem, and, when they come, it is more or less the same, familiar Sunday School biblical story. Along with the ‘realistic’ aspects of the story, we still have miracles and resurrection, life after death, presented as though they are actually happening, and not as part of a spiritual story. It makes for a difficult film, though of course well meaning one.

It is the last film score by Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who died on 9 February 2018, at 48. He won a Golden Globe for the Stephen Hawking biopic The Theory of Everything, and his work included Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival, Prisoners and Sicario (2015).

Phoenix and Mara previously played a married couple in Her (2013). Mara, Davis and producer Harvey Weinstein previously collaborated on Lion (2016). The original release date was pulled because of the Weinstein scandal.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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