Mary Magdalene is story of the woman who is known in many Christian traditions as the "apostle to the apostles". Mary is a central figure in later apocryphal Gnostic Christian writings, which portray her as Jesus's closest disciple and the only one who truly understood his teachings. In this film, Mary Magdalene's closeness to Jesus results in tension with the other disciples, particularly Peter, as the film highlights the fact that women in Judaean society were considered inferior to men.
It's a 2 millennium old story for our times and director Garth Davis casts a perfect Rooney Mara as the intelligent, independent thinking Mary, who is drawn away from a life of midwifery and arranged marriage in her small fishing village, to following and seeking inspiration from the quietly charismatic Jesus, played convincingly by Joaquin Phoenix.
The Italian locations dutifully and realistically stand in for the countryside around the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem and the film is produced with obvious reverence for its subjects.It succeeds in conveying the collective Jewish belief and yearning for the coming of a Messiah, a powerful political leader who would unite the tribes of Israel into standing up against the yolk of Roman oppression.
Unfortunately the pacing of this film, which is not overfilled with dialogue at the best of times, is frequently glacial in nature. There are countless silent pauses where various characters gaze soulfully, sometimes mournfully, into each others' eyes. Mary is an entrancing character, but her story, both biblically and as played out in this movie, is just frustratingly sparse. We want to be given more details about her life story, but it just doesn't occur and it is pretty clear that both female script writers were never intent on veering away from their various Gospel sources of reference. As such, momentum falters alarmingly, especially during the second act, where Mary is sidelined as a bit player to Jesus's wandering mission. We end up being left with a long, but ironically too lean and somewhat bland story of the woman who is becoming more recognised as the 'First of the Apostles". I think she deserved a story more inspiring and energetic than Mary Magdalene ends up being.
