"Celebrating" Christmas at Easter

An interview with Catherine Hardwicke, director of “The Nativity Story”

By Tonya Stoneman – Editor, In Touch magazine

This week, "The Nativity Story" is available on DVD. If you missed the film in theatres, you have another chance to see it—and you should. It took in $37.5 million at U.S. box offices¹ and was nominated by Movie Guide as one of the best family movies of 2006. It's one of those films every Christian should have in his home library. I'm going to show it to my kids this Easter.

Although "The Nativity Story" deals with the birth of Christ, it's appropriate enough this time of year. My children aren't anywhere near old enough to see "The Passion of the Christ" so, for now, we'll view this part of the story as a precursor for discussion about Jesus' death and resurrection.

"The Nativity Story" chronicles the arduous journey of Mary and Joseph and the miraculous birth of Jesus. The filmmakers went to extraordinary lengths to ensure the authenticity of both the script and the visual presentation of "The Nativity Story." Director Catherine Hardwicke, a former production designer, was adamant that every detail from the locations to the sets to the props look and feel authentic. As a result, those involved in the production spent countless hours researching the era of Christ and the land in which He lived. The finished product is a compelling, true-to-life reenactment of a story that changed the world.

A few months ago In Touch spoke with Mike Rich, the film's screenwriter (link to that interview), and recently spoke with Catherine Hardwicke, the movie's director.

Tonya Stoneman: You’ve worked in Hollywood for a long time on a number of different projects. What first made you interested in “The Nativity Story”?

Catherine Hardwicke: When I got the script last year on “The Nativity Story,” I did a little research and found out that most scholars believe Mary was 13 years old at the time—that just blew my mind. I thought, What if a girl I knew was given this news that she was going to bear the Son of God? How would she handle it? How would she take that leap of faith? So, I decided it would be a fascinating story to tell.

TS: As the director, you must have had an image in your mind of how the story would be told. How closely did you work with Mike Rich, the screenwriter, to achieve what you were after?

CH: He wrote the first draft, and that’s what I read. From there, I dove into as much research as possible. I went immediately on a plane to the Holy Land and visited Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem, and tried to find some connection to 2000 years ago, which is a bit difficult as those cities are quite modern. But there is Nazareth Village where people have made a living—a kind of archeological, anthropological recreation of Nazareth, and that was very inspiring to me.

So, everything I learned by meeting with experts, visiting Nazareth, reading more about it and meeting with astronomers, I would e-mail back to Mike in Portland and say, “This would be a great thing to incorporate, and let’s add this other layer of detail and enrich the story in this way.”

TS: Can you speak for a moment about Nazareth Village and what about it enabled you to work on this film?

CH: The great thing about Nazareth Village is that people seem to have really tried to understand how people lived 2000 years ago—how they collected rainwater, grew their crops—how they pressed wine. They found remnants of this incredible winepress that had pottery chards dating back to 5 or 10 A.D. They told me, standing there in that winepress, that you can find a passage in the Bible that describes almost that very place. That’s where I felt the first time, in the Holy Land, some connection to where Jesus really was and to His time. You stand by these amazing olive trees, and you see the olive press there as they’re working on it. It’s very inspiring, and they try to be really authentic too.

TS: This particular story has been told so many times before. I’m surprised you were able to get a Hollywood studio interested in backing it.

CH: Well, the studio people came to me. So, they were already excited about the project. And then, they were looking for a director. So, I didn’t have to do that part of the “heavy lifting.”

 TS: Do you have a favorite scene in the film?

CH: A lot of scenes come to mind. One of them is when Mary washes Joseph’s feet by the river and she realizes that he is a good man and part of God’s plan—that he would take care of her and the child. I thought that was a beautiful. I love that scene.

 TS: When I think of the Nativity, plastic manger scenes with Mary and Joseph and a baby come to mind. Every year I get Christmas cards with these cheerful scenes that make me think, Wow! It looks like they’re having a really great time. But that picture of the Nativity is completely different from the actual Biblical account. How did you approach this disparity while making the film?

CH: One thing we did was try to make it as real as we could. We really built the grotto on a hillside near other grottos that have been inhabited for the last 8000 years. This part around Matera, Italy is a place where people have lived for years in caves and on hillsides. So, we built ours right near there. By filming at night, on a real location with real animals there—that made it feel more authentic, I think.

 TS: What strikes me about the Christmas story, and how you convey it, is how human it is. Yet, after hearing it so many times, it’s easy to put it on the shelf with all the other holiday trinkets. How did you manage to stay away from predictable story lines and make it more original?

CH: In the Bible, Joseph doesn’t even speak and we just have very minimal, sketchy details about him. And, you don’t go inside the heart of these two people who had this incredible journey. What we tried to do was really make it an intimate portrait of real people. And by casting the two actors, I think that Keisha [Castle-Hughes] and Oscar [Isaac] did a beautiful job of trying to understand them as humans and find their humanity—their vulnerability and their fears—and express that through their eyes and gestures on screen.

TS: What process did you use for filling in all of the blanks? I mean, this is based on two little passages of the Bible. How did you fill in all those blanks?

CH: You could almost take the Gospels as an outline. But there’s a great passage that says, because Joseph was a righteous man, he contemplated divorcing Mary privately. Now if you just take that one sentence and think, What was going on inside his heart, his mind, his soul—his soul-searching? I’m sure he spoke to friends or family, or Mary’s family, and tried to figure out what to do. And if you fill in those blanks, what process did he go through to get to that sentence in the Gospel? That’s what I think Mike Rich, the screenwriter, and myself tried to work on and imagine.

TS: People seem to have very strong feelings about religious cinema these days. How do you hope people respond to “The Nativity Story”?

CH: I hope they realize that—just like all the beautiful paintings of the Nativity on Christmas cards, and the sculptures and masterpieces in the Vatican—that each artist interprets it in their own way and tries to connect emotionally with the story. That’s what I did, and the screenwriter and the set designers and the actors did. We tried to research—read about it, think about it, contemplate it and feel it—and bring it to life in the best possible way we could. So, I hope people respond to that.

It’s a very hand-made film. We were really involved in every detail in the process of trying to make it real—even the clothes being worn and the color of the clothes are the same color as the sheep in Nazareth. We tried to make it an organic whole.

TS: How has Hollywood responded to your film?

CH: I’ve had a lot of people surprised that I did it and asking me, “What made you curious about it—what made you interested in this subject?” I’m excited that it’s coming out on DVD now, because a lot of people are just too busy in the month of December with Christmas and other activities, and all the other movies that came out.

TS: Can you tell me just a little bit about your own faith journey—specifically how your faith is expressed through art?

CH: I grew up in a Presbyterian church in South Texas. One thing that was fascinating to me about Christianity and the lessons that we learned in Sunday school and in sermons, was to try to find ways to reach out to others and make a difference in other people’s lives. I think that, as I evolved, I found that I was interested or had a knack for working in the film business, and that’s a medium where you can reach millions of people. I think it’s a chance to spread inspiration and messages of faith, and to try to show this story to a new generation in a new way.