How to make a period piece about Jesus. Jewish males have absurdly black beards and are all cock-sure in their self-righteousness. All the priests are Downton Abbey arrogant. Evil characters are dissolute or ludicrously effeminate. Roman soldiers are craggy tough guys with a five-day stubble, but open to the truth.
When you have precisely zero historical information to go on, you make things up. Just as early map makers put imaginary lands in the blank places, people made up stories to fill in the long gap in Jesus' narrative. This film incorporates a couple of items from early pseudo-Gospels. The film opens with a seriously unsavory episode of Jesus being bullied. Jesus is a picture-perfect child with long wavy hair and a veddy British accent. The bully trips and falls and is killed, and Jesus is blamed, but brings him back to life again. The family decides it's time to leave their exile in Egypt and go home, and encounter a succession of vignettes to show just what a bad neighborhood Galilee was back then.
The film gets better once it develops a focus. Like the far better "Risen," the film becomes something of a procedural. Herod junior has heard rumors of a wonder-working child and dispatches centurion Severus to find him. They got a good actor (Sean Bean) to play Severus, but Herod is a whiny, superstitious wimp. Severus and his troops clomp around Galilee, finally learn that Jesus and his family are on the way to the Temple (No, not the same visit as recorded in the gospels - Jesus is eight in the movie, not twelve). Jesus talks to a blind priest and in the process cures him. Severus sees this, realizes he's up against something beyond him, and lets the family go. He returns to Herod and reports that he killed the child (i.e., lies), pointing out that it was Herod's order.
The other intertwined plot is that Jesus is just beginning to become aware that he's special, and Joseph stubbornly refuses to answer his questions. So Jesus looks first to the rabbi in Nazareth, then prods his family to take him to Jerusalem. Jesus is a typical eight year old, if you know any eight year olds who look 14, and have the theological knowledge of a rabbi and the diction and vocabulary of an English Lit professor. Did Jesus ever fall and skin his knee? Did he ever bang his thumb with a hammer, cut himself, measure something wrong or split a piece of wood in the carpenter shop? Because any sign that Jesus was ever less than omnipotent and omniscient is bound to rattle some people.
When you have precisely zero historical information to go on, you make things up. Just as early map makers put imaginary lands in the blank places, people made up stories to fill in the long gap in Jesus' narrative. This film incorporates a couple of items from early pseudo-Gospels. The film opens with a seriously unsavory episode of Jesus being bullied. Jesus is a picture-perfect child with long wavy hair and a veddy British accent. The bully trips and falls and is killed, and Jesus is blamed, but brings him back to life again. The family decides it's time to leave their exile in Egypt and go home, and encounter a succession of vignettes to show just what a bad neighborhood Galilee was back then.
The film gets better once it develops a focus. Like the far better "Risen," the film becomes something of a procedural. Herod junior has heard rumors of a wonder-working child and dispatches centurion Severus to find him. They got a good actor (Sean Bean) to play Severus, but Herod is a whiny, superstitious wimp. Severus and his troops clomp around Galilee, finally learn that Jesus and his family are on the way to the Temple (No, not the same visit as recorded in the gospels - Jesus is eight in the movie, not twelve). Jesus talks to a blind priest and in the process cures him. Severus sees this, realizes he's up against something beyond him, and lets the family go. He returns to Herod and reports that he killed the child (i.e., lies), pointing out that it was Herod's order.
The other intertwined plot is that Jesus is just beginning to become aware that he's special, and Joseph stubbornly refuses to answer his questions. So Jesus looks first to the rabbi in Nazareth, then prods his family to take him to Jerusalem. Jesus is a typical eight year old, if you know any eight year olds who look 14, and have the theological knowledge of a rabbi and the diction and vocabulary of an English Lit professor. Did Jesus ever fall and skin his knee? Did he ever bang his thumb with a hammer, cut himself, measure something wrong or split a piece of wood in the carpenter shop? Because any sign that Jesus was ever less than omnipotent and omniscient is bound to rattle some people.