I wish I could say that Mary, mother of God, riding a horse through a wall of fire was the worst thing about Netflix’s Mary. As an unrepentant fan of some truly unrealistic films, I can forgive a lot of entertaining embellishment in a movie. But, watching the film, the cinematic choices felt more like promotion for a conservative Christian nationalist agenda.
As a biblical scholar who has published widely on the representation of the New Testament on film, and on Christian antisemitism, I was looking forward to watching Mary. I felt hopeful that it would avoid many of the pitfalls of previous films.
In its favour, the film draws on some underrepresented sources for Mary’s birth, childhood and early life. Director D.J. Caruso has said that along with the canonical gospels and the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, he relied on a text called the Proto-Gospel of James for much of Mary’s backstory.
