Mary Magdalene Movie

The film goes from being centered on Mary Magdalene to her following Jesus on through his crucifixion.

Mary seems to come from a very poor household. Her father plans to marry her off to some guy but instead she ends up becoming a follower of Jesus.

Jesus is played as a very peaceful sort of individual but he can lose his temper as he did in the temple with the moneychangers. It also becomes apparent that the use of his healing abilities does tend to wear him out.

Then we have Peter. Peter is a hothead and he and Judas in the main (the rest of the apostles are pretty much ignored in the movie) think that Jesus has come to Earth in order to lead a Jewish revolt against the Romans, totally missing Jesus' message about peace, love, helping others, etc. The movie even gives a reason why Judas betrayed Jesus.

The only part of the movie that really stood out for me was when Mary comes back after having seen Jesus alive after his crucifixion and tells the disciples about it. Peter is very angry with her, refusing to believe what she is saying. This matches the material in the Gospel of Mary very closely.

There are problems with the film, though. In the Bible it talks about Mary and other women providing for Jesus and his followers out of their own means which basically translates that at least some of the women were rich. This probably included Mary Magdalene. In the movie, though, she is shown as being very poor.

The movie is kind of rushed. The people making the film tried to throw in a lot of events and it seemed almost no time was taken between them.

Now I personally really don't like the real Peter but the actor in the film brought some life to the character. The actor playing Judas also did a fairly good job. The character of Jesus just somehow doesn't come across as the real Jesus. The Jesus character in the film basically could have been almost anyone; there just wasn't any thing really 'special' the way this Jesus was played.

Mary Magdalene is a pretty weak character in the film, too. She either has a straight face or an enigmatic smile and that's it except for when she confronts the disciples as I noted above. Again, this character could have been any woman.

So, all-in-all, the film was interesting but basically fairly disappointing.