A new Netflix movie about Mary promises a new perspective on the Mother of God.
“It really is dealing with Mary as a young woman and everything she went through,” D.J. Caruso, the director of “Mary,” told Our Sunday Visitor. “It’s a celebration of, I think, the most amazing woman to ever walk this earth.”
Netflix subscribers can begin streaming the movie, billed as a biblical coming-of-age epic, on Dec. 6. The nearly two-hour film, rated TV-14, follows the Blessed Virgin Mary from her own birth to the birth of her son, Jesus Christ. Along the way, it draws from momentous events in Scripture, from the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel announces to Mary that she will conceive and bear a Baby Jesus, to the Nativity, when he is born.
The movie stars Israeli actors Noa Cohen and Ido Tako as Mary and Joseph and features award-winning Anthony Hopkins as King Herod.
Catholics, such as Caruso, and other Christians, such as executive producer televangelist Joel Osteen, were involved with “Mary.” Caruso spoke with Our Sunday Visitor hours after receiving confirmation that Pope Francis wants to meet him after he happened to hear about the movie.
For his part, Caruso said that he saw a need for a new kind of movie about Mary.
“I think that she’s always been part of other stories that have been pretty amazing,” he said. “But cinematically, no one had ever really taken it from her point of view and her perspective as a young woman and what she was going through.”
He hoped that the movie would impact those around him. As he worked on it, he prayed that it would help his teenage daughter and her friends get to know Mary in a more intimate way.
“I really wanted them to take a look at the holy mother and to see what she was like prior to becoming that iconic holy mother that we all kind of revere,” he said. “I felt like … it could be something that could be incredibly special and make Mary their friend … or someone they can reach out to because they can really relate to her on a real human level.”
A Catholic influence on the film
When Caruso was considering this latest project, he revealed that the late Bishop David G. O’Connell, an auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, whom he called a dear friend, encouraged him.
“When I told him I was exploring this, he was like, ‘You have to make this movie, you have to make this movie. I want everyone to know the Holy Mother, I want them to get closer to her,'” Caruso remembered.
The two of them, he said, had many discussions about the film and Caruso even had him read the script. The finished movie is dedicated in memory of the bishop.
Caruso’s own Catholic faith, he said, played a role in his approach to “Mary.”
“Being a Catholic, it shapes a lot of what you do and the decisions you make,” he said. “I have made films in so many different genres, but I’ve always tried to interject the little spiritual aspects of the character — or discovering I love characters, prior to this, that sort of maybe be going through some darkness, but they find the light.”
Caruso realized why he was making “Mary,” he said, during the Annunciation scene. When he saw Noa, as Mary, respond “let it be me” after the angel Gabriel announces a Baby Jesus, tears started streaming down his face.
“This is so profound,” he remembered thinking, “because … accepting this challenge and sort of accepting God and turning it over to him is something that we’re all trying to do everyday.”
Drawing from Scripture
In addition to working closely with the bishop, Caruso said that the filmmakers also consulted with biblical scholars.
“At the end of the day, I decided if I’m making this offering and I’m making it to him, the Lord, then that’s going to take care of itself,” he said of finding the right balance between creating a movie about Mary that Christians, Catholics and other audiences can all enjoy together.
He called the movie fairly faithful to Scripture, adding that “there’s also a way where we sort of can creatively interpret the in betweens [of what we know happened].”
As an example, he pointed to King Herod sending out his soldiers to find the Holy Family and kill Baby Jesus.
“It says that in the scriptures,” Caruso said, “but now, how can I interpret that and bring it to a heightened place where you can understand and feel that you’re with Mary when this is really happening?”
A takeaway for viewers
If viewers take away one message after watching this film, Caruso hopes that it is the message of Mary’s fiat, or “yes” to God.
“What Mary did in sort of accepting that and putting God in her heart and saying okay, I’m all in, I think that’s a really important message,” he said. “Also knowing when you say that you’re all in, it doesn’t necessarily mean the road’s going to be easy.”
It’s a message, he said, that “if you can put that love and put God in your heart — and carry that with you — you can endure.”
