HailMary

Hail Mary

     Hail Mary (1985) is a French film that is a modern day retelling of the annunciation and virgin birth of Jesus. Mary is a young woman who pumps gas. Joseph is a taxi cab driver. For most of the movie Jesus is a fetus. This movie was quite controversial when it came out, not so much because of the content, but rather because is had frequent scenes of Mary nude (Baugh 206). Jean-Luc Godard, a Swedish director that has a history of making controversial movies, directed the film. It delves into the struggles between Mary accepting her call to divine motherhood, and the swearing off of her sexuality. Also, Joseph comes into play with his acceptance of everything and how difficult it must have been for him (Kinnard and Davis 204). However, since the focus of this paper is the film's treatment of the Jesus figure, that is what I will go into now.
     The film deals with Jesus in a very creative way. It presents the gospel in miniature by the time Jesus is around five, and one gets the impression that this is a foreshadowing of what is to come. We first come across the infant Jesus on a farm-complete with ox and ass. One gets the impression that Jesus was born here because of a snowstorm. We then come across Mary and Jesus swimming in a pool, perhaps foreshadowing the baptism. We now fast-forward several years to a young child Jesus playing with his friends. He changes their names and tells them to follow him. He is obviously "playing" messiah here. We then move to an awkward scene at the breakfast table. Jesus and Joseph are obviously vying for Mary's affection, and Jesus is the clear winner. Mary refers to a game that she and Jesus play called "whale." In it, Jesus hides under Mary's clothes. The analogy here seems to be to the analogy the gospel makes between Jesus and the prophet Jonah and thus we have a strange foreshadowing of Jesus' prediction of his death, burial and resurrection.
     In our final contact with the boy Jesus, Mary and Joseph are in the car waiting for Jesus to join them. Jesus is obviously trying Joseph's patience. Jesus announces to them "I am he who is!" Joseph is not amused and tells Jesus to get in the car. Jesus yells "No! I must tend to my father's affairs," and then runs off. Joseph gets out of the car and starts to chase after him. Mary stops him and tells him to let Jesus go, and that he will be back on Easter or Trinity Sunday. This seems to be an odd analogy to Jesus' death and resurrection.
     The Jesus of Hail Mary (1985) can be classified as a divine brat. He seems to have knowledge of his divine state and messianic destiny, but has no idea how much suffering Mary and Joseph went through to bring him into the world. He has a strong affection for Mary, but almost despises Joseph as an evil stepfather. It is possible to interpret this as just Jesus' immaturity, but there is nothing in the film to lead one to this conclusion. This is a very odd depiction of the child Jesus, though it is not completely unknown form the tradition. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas also presents us with a "Divine Brat" picture of Jesus as well. The difference between the two lies in that Thomas' Jesus performs many miracles. It seems that the Jesus of Hail Mary (1985) has yet to discover this power. Other than this, the two pictures of the Jesus child are very similar-from his arrogance in his identity to his struggle with Joseph. With very little in the Gospels about Jesus' childhood, it is not surprising that we find this Gnostic text creeping into a telling of the childhood of Jesus.