'The Nativity Story' stands out
By Brent Bozell III
Friday, November 24, 2006

Excerpt: Those looking for the standard Hollywood fare will be disappointed. The story of Our Lord's passion is packed with drama and violence -- and similarly, though to a far lesser extent, are these elements present in the story of the birth of Christ. But whereas "The Passion" is replete with conflict -- the essential ingredient in the Tinseltown soup -- the story of the birth of Jesus has none of it.

Mary obediently accepted God's will, as did Joseph. The Magi, the shepherds, the peasants -- all who beheld the Child Jesus -- believed. Thus in the movie we see Joseph take Mary on a donkey to Bethlehem. She has a baby. Shepherds and kings arrive with awe. Without a religious background, it might seem too saccharine to excite the taste buds of your average popcorn-chomping cineplex citizen.

The makers of "The Nativity Story" have included action and (sanitized) violence in the story because they were present, too. Thus we watch the armored goons of Herod on horseback executing the terrible command to slaughter the firstborn sons in Bethlehem under the age of two in the futile attempt to foil the plans of God, while the Herod character chews the scenery with dead-eyed menace. Still, it seems a bit forced, the resignation to the reality that today's moviemaker must find some way to "entertain" today's moviegoer in this age of bombastic sound effects and computerized whiz-bangery.

But at its heart, this is a gentle, serene, beautiful story about the creation of the Holy Family -- how Mary quietly accepted that which logically could not be understand; how, facing a life as outcasts once their community in Nazareth learned Mary was pregnant before marriage, Joseph took Mary on the long, arduous trip to Bethlehem; and how, contrary to all human expectation, the King of Kings chose birth in the most humble of settings, the animal's manger. the rest