The Gospel of Mary and Ferrara’s Mary
November 19th, 2006 by 
Tony
Why should Jesus be the subject of all the movies? Director Abel Ferrara has done for Mary what Denys Arcand did for Jesus in Jesus of Montreal in his film-within-a-film about Mary Magdalene. The Toronto Film Festival synopsis describes the film as:
"A sharply observed rejoinder to those who cynically exploit faith in God for money, power and fame, Mary finds Abel Ferrara on familiar and fruitful turf. Although unspoken and oblique in the film, the controversy around Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has clearly irked the infamous director and the impressive cast surrounding him on this project. The result is a spare, angry work of cinema that forces us into difficult thinking about the thorny role of Christianity in mass media. It is easily Ferrara's best film since Bad Lieutenant, amplifying its complex conception of faith in exciting new ways."
Trailers for the film are available here and here.
What is interesting for our purposes is the film’s apparent use of the Gospel of Mary. According to Matt Page of the Bible Films Blog, the film’s protagonist Marie Palese (played by Juliette Binoche) is “an actress who is inspired by her role playing Mary Magdalene in a Jesus movie and so heads to Jerusalem in search of spiritual enlightenment.” Not much of this film-within-a-film is shown but Page offers this tantalizing comment:
"At best, only five scenes from the movie are included – and two of these may simply be in Marie Palese's, mind. Of the other three, two are taken solely from the non-canonical, Gospel of Mary. Thus, the only scene from the film that definitely is taken from the gospels is that of Jesus washing the disciples' feet. And the sound accompanying this clip is not even from Childress's fictional movie, but from an academic explaining how this act demonstrated Jesus's message of love."
Can anyone tell us more about the film? What scenes are taken from the Gospel of Mary?
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November 28th, 2006 at 12:00 pm
Hi Tony,
I’m going to post some scene analysis on this in the next week or two. As far as which bits are included goes, the first excerpt is that which starts “How shall we go to the Gentiles and preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man”. This chunk goes through, as far as “it sees neither through the soul, nor the spirit but the mind which is between the two which sees the vision”. It’s all paraphrased (or rather translated slightly different from the translation I had in front of me), but it is clear which bits are being quoted.
The next line is from this quote “Why do you speak falsely, when you belong to me?’ The soul answered and said, ‘I saw you, but you did not see me or recognize me; I served you as a garment and you did not recognize me.” but I can’t remember exactly where it start and ends.
Then the last part starts “When Mary had said this, she was silent, since the Savior had spoken thus far with her.” and runs through to “But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you to reject her?”
Hope that helps. The only way I know how to get this at the moment is to import it from Amazon France. The audio track is in English.