Mary Magdalene

2018

Action / Biography / Drama / History

72
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 44% · 113 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 49% · 250 ratings
IMDb Rating 5.9/10 10 11422 11.4K

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Plot summary

In the first century, free-spirited Mary Magdalene flees the marriage her family has arranged for her, finding refuge and a sense of purpose in a radical new movement led by the charismatic, rabble-rousing preacher named Jesus.


Uploaded by: FREEMAN
June 29, 2018 at 10:40 AM

Director

Top cast

Shira Haas as Leah
Rooney Mara as Mary Magdalene
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
1.01 GB
1280*576
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
2 hr 0 min
Seeds 26
1.93 GB
1920*864
English 2.0
R
23.976 fps
2 hr 0 min
Seeds 24

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by spookyrat1 6 / 10

The Magdalene and the Nazarene!

Mary Magdalene is story of the woman who is known in many Christian traditions as the "apostle to the apostles". Mary is a central figure in later apocryphal Gnostic Christian writings, which portray her as Jesus's closest disciple and the only one who truly understood his teachings. In this film, Mary Magdalene's closeness to Jesus results in tension with the other disciples, particularly Peter, as the film highlights the fact that women in Judaean society were considered inferior to men.

It's a 2 millennium old story for our times and director Garth Davis casts a perfect Rooney Mara as the intelligent, independent thinking Mary, who is drawn away from a life of midwifery and arranged marriage in her small fishing village, to following and seeking inspiration from the quietly charismatic Jesus, played convincingly by Joaquin Phoenix.

The Italian locations dutifully and realistically stand in for the countryside around the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem and the film is produced with obvious reverence for its subjects.It succeeds in conveying the collective Jewish belief and yearning for the coming of a Messiah, a powerful political leader who would unite the tribes of Israel into standing up against the yolk of Roman oppression.

Unfortunately the pacing of this film, which is not overfilled with dialogue at the best of times, is frequently glacial in nature. There are countless silent pauses where various characters gaze soulfully, sometimes mournfully, into each others' eyes. Mary is an entrancing character, but her story, both biblically and as played out in this movie, is just frustratingly sparse. We want to be given more details about her life story, but it just doesn't occur and it is pretty clear that both female script writers were never intent on veering away from their various Gospel sources of reference. As such, momentum falters alarmingly, especially during the second act, where Mary is sidelined as a bit player to Jesus's wandering mission. We end up being left with a long, but ironically too lean and somewhat bland story of the woman who is becoming more recognised as the 'First of the Apostles". I think she deserved a story more inspiring and energetic than Mary Magdalene ends up being.

Reviewed by JamesHitchcock 7 / 10

Rugged Simplicity and Sincerity

Mary Magdalene, according to the Gospels, was a follower of Jesus as one of his followers and was a witness to His crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. In Christian tradition she has frequently been described as a repentant prostitute, although there is no Biblical authority to support this theory or her identification with either the anonymous "sinful woman" who anoints Jesus's feet or with the equally anonymous "woman taken in adultery". There is also no evidence to support the theory occasionally put forward (e.g. in "The Da Vinci Code") that she and Jesus were married. Another assumption which has been made is that she was wealthy, and there is some Biblical support for this in that Luke refers to her supporting Jesus's ministry "out of her resources".

In this film, however, Mary Magdalene is a poor girl from Magdala on the Sea of Galilee. The real Magdala appears to have been a sizeable and prosperous town, but here it is depicted as a small and impoverished fishing village. She becomes a follower of Jesus, but her presence in His circle is not always welcomed by His male disciples. This is not simply a question of male chauvinism; there are also theological and ideological differences between Mary and the other disciples.

In the Gospels Judas Iscariot betrays Jesus for money, but it has become almost a cliché in New Testament biblical dramas to depict Judas as a Zealot, a freedom fighter hoping to liberate Judea from the control of the Roman Empire, an interpretation adopted in both "King of Kings" and "The Greatest Story Ever Told", even though there is no Biblical support for it. According to this interpretation Judas betrayed Jesus either in a bid to force Him to launch a Holy War against the Romans or out of disappointment that Jesus would not do so. This interpretation is followed in this film, except that here it is not just Judas who is a Zealot. All the other male disciples, especially Peter, hold similar views.

Mary Magdalene, however, is different. In a development again not found in the canonical Gospels (although it may derive some support from the non-canonical Gnostic Gospels) she is the only one who fully understands Jesus, that his is a message of peace and forgiveness, not of Holy War against the godless, and who helps to bring the male disciples (except Judas) round to this way of thinking.

There is nothing really wrong with Rooney Mara's performance in the main role, but she does not really stand out. The one outstanding performance comes from Joaquin Phoenix. Some might argue that Phoenix, aged 44 but looking considerably older behind that heavy beard, was too old to play Jesus, who died when He was only 33. Yet I think that there was probably a conscious decision on the part of the film-makers to get away from a young, handsome Jesus as portrayed by Robert Powell in "Jesus of Nazareth" or Jeffrey Hunter in "King of Kings" (aka "I Was a Teenage Jesus") and that the reasoning behind this decision was to downplay the idea that Mary's attraction to Jesus was sexual or romantic rather than spiritual. Phoenix gives us a deeply human Jesus, very different from traditional Christian ideas about the Second Person of the Trinity, co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. This is no charismatic orator or commanding religious leader but a humble carpenter's son turned itinerant preacher, a man whose appeal is grounded not in blazing rhetoric or miraculous powers but in his humility and his faith in God, a faith which remains unshaken despite moments of doubt. The film is very different to the traditional large-scale Biblical epic. It appears to have been made on a relatively small budget, lacking the elaborate sets and costumes and the large-scale set-piece scenes of something like "The Greatest Story...". It is austere in its visual style and the characters mostly wear plain homespun garments appropriate to their humble origins. It can at times be ponderous and slow-moving, yet there is a rugged simplicity and sincerity about it which means that it is able to bring Christianity to life in a way which more grandiose productions (and here I am thinking particularly of "The Greatest Story...") are not. 7/10

Reviewed by latinfineart 6 / 10

A brief but sincere effort

This movie was very well done. It was a handsome production, the cinematography was very lovely, the acting was quite good and overall I would say it was a decent depiction of a tiny little chapter of the life of Christ. I wished they had spent a little more time developing his persona, his following, the conversion of the crowds and perhaps his miracles, something to give us a better feel for the evolution of this great saint. One of the issues I have with the depictions of saints is that it's very difficult for most actors to play a sense of joy, exaltation, omniscience and to convey the kind of consciousness these Prophets and great Saints experience. That aside, it was a reasonably good portrayal of a an extremely brief period of this great man's life and the ultimate finale.

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