This past Sunday the Catholic church I visited had its images covered in deep purple as is traditional at this time leading up to Easter, its altar monopolised by men.
Coming in from the bustle of London on St Patrick’s weekend and finding shelter from the aggressive final snow storm of the Beast from the East, I was drawn into a controlled clerical space, then soothed by plain chant and incense and a measured silence with which I was encouraged to meditate on the mystery of Christ.
Later in the day , after sharing a very secular tea and biscuits with the women in our family- one daughter plus one daughter and her partner-, I ventured forth again with my wife to go and see the film entitled Mary Magdalene, conscious that while it been given a rough ride by the critics, it might shed an alternative light on our search for God in our midst. Let me report right away that we came away huge encouraged.
The film does not reduce Mary Magdalene to a bit part in a major epic- see Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth- nor caricature her as a mercenary temptress turned sweetheart as per The Last Temptation of Christ-but as a central character of the Gospel story, full of contemporary relevance, a courageous woman resisting the patriarchal order of her immediate family , institutionalised religion and tribe, and being drawn to the good news of Jesus.
Like Pasolini ‘s memorable The Gospel According to St Matthew, Mary Magdalene’s director Garth Davis has chosen austere Italian landscapes and enduring medieval towns and villages to replicate the austerity of First-century Judea, a stark stage on which the main protagonist suffers the abuse and discrimination of males before , finding in a more soulful and gentle Jesus than that imagined by Pasolini, a kindred spirit.
Nowhere in this film is it suggested that Mary Magdalene is a prostitute. Instead she is portrayed as an unmarried young Jewish woman with a somewhat mystical air about her but conscious of her rights as a child of a loving God.
Her character is defined by the opening other worldly scene in which she dreams of her body being drawn down into the sea of Galilee, followed by her real-life ability to carry her sister through a painful labour simply with her soothing words and look.
The separation between herself and her immediate surroundings become acute when, refusing to accept the arranged orthodox marriage to a male as decreed by tradition, Mary Magdalene is nearly drowned by her father as he tries to exorcise the demons he and other males allege struggle within her. The brutal scene contrasts with her subsequent gentle baptism by Jesus, as she is invited by him into his growing community of followers.It is a coming to a true home.
Soon Mary Magdalene played with an admirable restraint than never feels distant by the naturally beautiful US actress Rooney Mara, is baptising other women, as they in turn join Jesus as a liberator from their social and spiritual repression, venerating him not just as a miracle worker but as a Messiah, the long expected King of the Jews, who also talks to them of the need for mercy.
When alone together, usually in an open space looking out across a mountains landscape, Mary Magdalene and Jesus , played engagingly with two feet on the ground but with an inner warmth radiating from his eyes, by Joaquin Phoenix, connect with each other’s feelings towards each other, with the world that surrounds them, and a sense of God’s presence.
They bring out the best of each other. Jesus teaches his followers the meaning of reconciliation through the Lord’s Prayer, while Mary Magdalene, finding herself alone with Peter, visits a village that has been pillaged by the Roman army.
All that is left are the dead and the dying from wounds and starvation. While Peter, fearful of being discovered and arrested by the authorities, is in a hurry to move on,Mary Magdalene insists on fetching water and comforting as may victims as she can, in a scene of huge humanity.
In another scene, Mary Magdalene washes Jesus’s feet, with water not with perfumed oil, the scene depicted not as an act of repentance by a sinner, but as a demonstration of love and respect and solidarity, the transformative water foretold by John the Baptist.
In a generally balanced review The Catholic weekly The Tablet’s film critic Anthony Quinn lamented that the film in its final stages moves too quickly through the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, thus seemingly denying Christian film buffs yet another full blown filmed version story of the Passion.
I too was disappointed by the truncated Last Supper. Mary Magdalene is briefly present, but we are not shown the nature of her participation in the sharing of the body and body of Christ . Thus the scene does not in itself challenge the doctrinal reason for denying the ordination of women- that Jesus instituted the sacrament of ordination at the Last Supper, only for 12 male apostles. While we see rather less than this number at table, Mary Magdalene’s own crucial contribution to the event remains deliberately blurred.
And yet taken as a whole the film leaves one with no doubt that women as personified by Mary Magdalene deserve equal status as men in the Church, demands that are growing in the current papacy.
Pope Francis has taken an important step towards this very recognition. In July 2016,the Vatican decreed the liturgical celebration honoring St. Mary Magdalene should be elevated from a memorial to a feast, to emphasize the importance of this woman “who so loved Christ and was so greatly loved by Christ” on an equal level with the apostles.
Noting how Mary Magdalene was the first eyewitness to the Risen Christ and the first to announce his resurrection to the apostles, Francis hailed her as “the Apostle to the Apostles” – a phrase first coined by St. Thomas Aquinas but subsequently ignored for much too long by a male dominated church .
The film has Peter , the man, according to accepted tradition, chosen by Christ as founding rock of the Church, defensively warning that her increasing presence and importance among the apostles risks weakening it. Judas, meanwhile is similarly controversially portrayed as a sympathetic if inpatient activist for the coming of the new kingdom, who ends up betraying Jesus , believing that in so doing he is delivering a new God.
Yet Many Magdalene’s empathy with the Jesus that is with all tree of them, is emphasized by a striking image of the Crucifixion , juxtaposed dramatically with her own emotional break down, and that of his mother Mary sobbing as she holds her son’s broken and bloodied body in her arms.
Beyond this, the enduring message is in the closing scene when Mary Magdalene sits next to the Risen Christ, her face resonating love and joy , in his presence, the first witness to his resurrection and the heart of the Christian faith.
Don’t be put off by the mainly male critics, or the unfortunate irony that the film’s distribution in the US is in limbo given that its main distributor was meant to be a company owned by Harvey Weinstein and now facing bankruptcy. If you believe in a living theology, this film is worth seeing.
Leaving the cinema on Sunday night, we were caught in another snow storm. Through it and the fading largely male drunken cheer of the St Patrick’s celebration emanating from a nearby pub ,there seemed to echo the words pronounced days earlier by the former Irish president Mary McAleese at a Why Women Matter conference in Rome:
‘ Down the 2000 year highway of Christian history came the ethereal divine beauty of the nativity, the cruel sacrifice of the crucifixion, the hallelujah of the resurrection and the rallying cry of the great commandment to love one another,” she said.
“But down that same highway came man-made toxins such as misogyny and homophobia to say nothing of anti-Semitism with their legacy of damaged and wasted lives and deeply embedded institutional dysfunction.”
Today, she added “we challenge Pope Francis to develop a credible strategy for the inclusion of women as equals throughout the church’s root and branch infrastructure, including its decision-making.”
Reflecting on her words, I thanked God for a beautifully conceived movie that gives a necessary and long overdue voice and central role to a true woman of Jesus, a mirror held up to the Church in the world, a light amidst the purple, as we head towards Easter, in contemplation and action.
