Does Christmas feel too commercial in your town? Like us, are you sick of seeing inflatable Santas on every corner and fighting stampedes of pushy shoppers at the mall? (Don’t even get us started about all those worn-out carols!) It’s time to get back to the true reason for the season, and The Nativity Story is your ticket.
This 2006 release was shot in Italy and Morocco, and the film’s actors were required to participate in a four-week “Nazareth boot camp” to make the movie even more realistic.
Breakaway recently talked with director Catherine Hardwicke to hear the backstory. She says the movie gave her a new perspective on what must have gone through Joseph’s mind after learning of Mary’s pregnancy: “What do I do in this situation? The woman I love is pregnant. And not by me! That’s a tough thing for any guy, in any era, to come to terms with.”
Check out our conversation with Catherine, then get a copy of the DVD and plug into what Christmas is really all about.
BREAKAWAY: The Nativity Story puts real faces on real characters in the Bible. We get to see Mary and Joseph go through an unthinkable struggle. What’s your secret to capturing this onscreen?
CATHERINE HARDWICKE: Putting real faces on real people in the Bible is what makes it so interesting to me. When you’re a little kid you just think, Oh, OK—Mary finds out from the angel that she’s going to have the Son of God and everybody must have been so happy for her. Rejoice!
Yet that’s not the case.
That’s not what the soldier thought or what King Herod’s men would have thought. They weren’t welcoming the Messiah at all. And consider this: Mary’s circumstances—and Jesus coming into the world—went against the Jewish traditions of the time. So it was a big challenge to capture on film. How do you get into that?
We worked with two beautiful actors who are very emotional and vulnerable and can relate these people. But we took them through a “Nazareth boot camp.” On a mountainside in an olive grove we built a village, and then everybody had to wear old clothes, tunics and sandals. We had people from Nazareth village—the real Nazareth—come out and teach us how to milk a goat and make cheese and prepare food from that time period.
So every actor went through this boot camp?
That’s right. For example, Oscar Isaac, the young man who played Joseph, had to really make all his own tools in the same way they made them in biblical times.
Oscar built the walls of the house that you see in the movie, and he actually started doing the physical things required of people in those times. Through this process, it’s almost as if he and the rest of the cast went back 2,000 years ago in a time machine!
What else did you do to make this story authentic?
A Jewish scholar joined us on the set and taught us how people prayed. For example, some people used different gestures, and some kept their eyes open and moved their hands up in the air. They found their own personal ways to connect to God. I felt that knowing this was quite important, because this is a different mindset from the way many people pray today.
My goal was to take modern-day audiences away from the distractions of life in the 21st century: cell phones and iPods and skateboards. I want this movie to take you back into what it would have been like to live in those kinds of circumstances. Basically, you couldn’t go down to 7-Eleven to buy a snack. You spent your days working the land, maintaining olive trees and getting water from a well. It was an often difficult and very physically demanding existence.
What did this production do for you? I’m sure you don’t read Scripture the same way. How did making this film affect you?
Growing up as a teenager, I pretty much read the Gospels, and I loved the Christmas story. I thought it was beautiful.
I loved all the Christmas carols and everything about the holidays, but I didn’t think very deeply about it. I didn’t consider the struggle and the fact that people in those days didn’t believe what had happened to Mary. At first, Joseph—even Mary’s own parents—doubted Mary’s claim that she was the mother of God’s Son.
Because Joseph was a righteous man, he considered divorcing her privately. That amounts to one sentence in the Bible, but if you go deeper into that statement, you have to wonder about the internal struggles he wrestled with. What discussions did he have with her family, with his family and how did he figure it out? He had to think to himself, The woman I love is pregnant. And not by me!
That’s a tough thing for any guy, in any era, to come to terms with. And consider this: Mary was only 13! What would I do in that situation?
It’s an amazing story that I hope people will see in a different light—a true light! 
