‘And a Little Child Shall Lead Them’: First Look at ‘The Young Messiah’

Filmmaker Cyrus Nowrasteh Talks About Bringing New Movie to the Screen

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Editor's Note: The movie review can be read here.

 

YOUNG JESUS. Adam Greaves-Neal portrays the 7-year-old Messiah in the new film based on an Anne Rice novel. Focus Features

 

The Young Messiah isn’t the only Jesus movie in theaters this spring — in fact, it isn’t even the only Jesus movie in which the film’s biggest star (in this case, The Lord of the Rings’ Sean Bean) plays a Roman soldier trying to track Jesus down — but it’s easily my favorite Jesus movie, and almost my favorite biblical movie of any kind, since The Miracle Maker 16 years ago.

It almost didn’t happen. Filmmaker Cyrus Nowrasteh and his wife and writing partner Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh (The Stoning of Soraya M) first set out to adapt Anne Rice’s novel of Jesus’ youth, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, five years ago. In 2013, the film was in deep pre-production when things fell apart and the project was shut down. “It was like a death,” Nowrasteh told me. At one point, he even wondered if God was telling him he wasn’t the right filmmaker for the project.

But the project never entirely died. “There was always life to it,” he added, “always someone stepping up and saying, ‘This is really good; I’d like to help. How can I help?’” Twenty months later, the film was under way again. Crediting key supporters, Nowrasteh said, “I do believe in angels.”

The Young Messiah opens March 11. See it — you won’t be sorry.

 

As unlikely as this seems, when The Young Messiah opens, there will be three films on American screens that depict a Roman soldier encountering the mystery of Christ — even if one of those is the film within a film in the Coens’ Hail Caesar!

I just saw Hail, Caesar! I got a kick out of that!

 

This genre of the “Good Roman movie,” in which the Christian story is told at least partly through this lens of someone who is not a believer, has been with us since the Golden Age and maybe before — and it’s one aspect of your story that doesn’t come from the source material. What were your thoughts about bringing that element into this story?

In Anne Rice’s novel, through the first-person voice of young Jesus, you sense a threat of danger and chaos from the Roman occupation, from Herod, from the rebels, from the civil war. In the movie, we have to say, “How do we show this?” How can we make it interesting, make it a journey?

Of course, we didn’t invent this idea of a Roman who could be touched by Christ. We just thought, “This is a different angle”: This is a guy who was actually at the slaughter of the innocents, who is haunted by that, and now is being asked to kill a child again. We just felt that it was natural and that it worked.

 

Did casting Sean Bean in that role have any impact on the character or the story?

Only in the sense that while we were writing it I wanted Sean Bean for the part. I consider it one of the high points of my career working with Sean Bean, for a whole slew of reasons. One of which is I was a fan, going back many years now, to when he did the Sharpe series.

The opportunity to work with him came to us in the writing of this part. He just has the gravitas and the presence and the acting chops. He was a delight to work with. Sean is very focused, very quiet, very to himself, very internal. That’s one of the reasons he’s a great actor: He’s thinking.

 

Your story, like the book, explores Christ’s human consciousness, and in particular the mystery of God Incarnate growing up — not just physically, but also in wisdom, as Luke says (2:52), and in understanding and maturity. This is really interesting and important terrain, both theologically and psychologically, but many pious viewers are going to struggle with the idea of even a young Jesus not fully understanding who he is. What would you say to them?

This whole issue of the human Jesus and the divine Jesus is a complicated one. I believe, and I’ve been told from the advisers and consultants that we talked to, that Jesus was always God. It seems, though, even though he never ceased being God, in his human form or experience, he veiled his divinity in accordance with the Father’s will, to experience what it was like.

To be [human], he voluntarily put himself in the position of needing to assimilate knowledge as a man, or a boy, would. That’s what the theologians told me and why they felt this was orthodox and we were justified in going down this path.

I am not a biblical scholar or theologian and have never claimed to be, so I have to go on the basis of what they are telling me and what I can make work for this story — which I think is a beautiful one that honors God, that honors Jesus and, therefore, is worth telling, despite the risks.

 

You and Betsy are Christians, but not Catholic, is that right?

That’s right.

 

Your story does include some elements that reflect a Catholic perspective, such as Jesus’ brethren and sisters (just one of each here, James and Salome) being depicted as Jesus’ cousins. Did you have both Catholic and Protestant advisers on the film?

Yes, we did. And it wasn’t that one had more weight than the other. We just had to decide what we believe and accept and also what works for the story. You are trying to marry two or three different agendas, for lack of a better word — a dramatic agenda, and, also, we have to navigate a little bit of a minefield with all of the different denominations. We don’t want to offend; we don’t want to contradict anything in the Bible. It’s quite a dance, making a movie like this.

We have had really consistent cross-denominational support on this movie. I have not heard any evangelicals say that it’s too Catholic of a movie. I’ve had Catholics come up to me and say, “We love it! It’s for us.” I think people are bringing their own views and interpreting it through that prism. And I think that’s a good thing. We’ve actually been surprised at the extent of the evangelical support of the movie, because we were concerned about that. But there has been very little pushback.

 

Other than the fact that Jesus is 7 years old, which is obviously a pretty dramatic departure from other Bible movies, was there anything else that you saw, looking at other Bible movies, that made you say, “I want to do something different here”?

I looked at a lot of Bible movies — some of the old corny ones; some from the silent era; some that I admired. One that I really felt was pretty darn good was Barabbas (1961). I am a huge fan of Mel Gibson and The Passion [of the Christ]. I think Mel Gibson is a brilliant filmmaker; I think The Passion is a very powerful film — I understand it’s not for everybody, but I loved it.

What I felt about The Passion, most powerfully, was that this was the most convincing re-creation of the ancient world I’d ever seen on film. I felt like I could walk right into that world. It didn’t feel like the Hollywood version of the biblical world.

I wanted people to believe the world more than anything else. I wanted them to believe, also, the people and the dialogue. I wanted to avoid that stiff biblical dialogue that one hears in a lot of these old movies. I wanted it to feel natural; I wanted it to feel eloquent — I didn’t want it to feel too slangy or contemporary, but at the same time, I wanted contemporaries to be comfortable with it.

Steven D. Greydanus is the

Register’s film critic.