In February, we learned that Rooney Mara was in talks for what seemed like a straight-up Mary Magdalene bio-pic. There were some concerns, especially since Rooney’s casting (which has been confirmed since then) came on the heels of her controversial turn as Tiger Lily, a traditionally Native American character, in the critical and box office flop Pan. Many people believe – and I tend to believe it as well – that Mary Magdalene was a Jewish woman living in what was then Palestine. So, casting a white American seems… unfortunate. I also said at the time that Rooney seems like a difficult actress to cast for most roles, and it just seems confusing and weird that the director was and is so gung-ho about Rooney as Mary Magdalene. But wait! Things about to get worse and more confusing. Because now Joaquin Phoenix is “being eyed” to star as Jesus Christ in the same film. My… goodness.
In what may be one of the bolder casting exercises in some time, Joaquin Phoenix is being eyed to play Jesus Christ in Garth Davis’ Mary Magdalene opposite Rooney Mara. A deal is still some way off being done, with scheduling believed to be one concern, but if this goes down it would be a clear statement of intent from the filmmakers about the kind of film they’re trying to make.
Phoenix is the very definition of a mercurial talent, transforming from role to role, whether the stoner private detective in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice, the lovelorn writer forming an emotional connection with his phone’s operating system in Spike Jonze’s Her or even as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line. Playing Jesus could offer a defining moment for the versatile and unpredictable Phoenix. He doesn’t necessarily invoke – physically at least – some previous seminal portrayals such as Jim Caviezel in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, but Phoenix does certainly possess the acting chops and intensity to bring the character to life.
Buzz has been growing about Mary Magdalene ever since Deadline broke the news that The King’s Speech producers See-Saw Films were putting the project together, with Universal on-board for international and the Weinstein Co. taking domestic. Rooney Mara joined the mix shortly after in the title role. Were a deal struck with Phoenix, this would raise the curiosity about the project even more with the assembling talent indicating an edgy, decidedly indie take on the greatest story ever told. It is set to be an authentic and humanistic portrait of one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood spiritual figures in history.
Hollywood could get away with casting the story of Jesus and Mary Magdalene this way… in the 1940s. But in the 2000s? Not really. I mean, I love Joaquin Phoenix, in that I think he’s easily one of the most talented actors of his generation. I love his quirkiness, his beauty, his raw talent. But Joaquin as Jesus? I just… no. Let’s just say NO. And putting Joaquin and Rooney Mara together would be really, really funny in its potential to have an absolutely terrible promotional tour. Rooney would be aloof-ing all over the place, rolling her eyes and being so insufferably haughty. And Joaquin would go on talk shows and mumble about Jesus something or this or that. It will be awful.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Fame/Flynet.
That just makes my stomach clench. Please, no.
“It is set to be an authentic and humanistic portrait of one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood spiritual figures in histoTory”
But of course with light skin and blue eyes! Yes, it’s true no one really knows what he looked like but it’s interesting that the vast majority of Hollywood films and Western art CHOSES to depict him as a light Caucasian man with blue eyes and light Brown or blonde hair. And rarely as brown skin with dark hair and dark eyes.
To me that smells like he don’t know what this man truly looked like so we will make him look like the type of man that we think sells films. Standard looking white male. Very authentic! LMAO.
Bar Refaeli has light skin and blue eyes.
ilena: modern Jews look little like their ancient ancestors. Modern Jews have spread out through out world and intermarried, predominantly with Caucasians. Bar is a Jew of European descent – meaning she is mostly Caucasian and likely have little Hebrew left in her. There are still Jews of predominantly Semitic/Arab descent around, they’re called Mizrahi Jews (my husband is partially one). They’re relatively dark skinned and tend to be a Hebrew and Arab descent. Jesus would have been far more similar to these Jews than the modern Euro-descended types.
@Sam, wow, you learn st new every day, I just realized my grandpa was a Semite. Can confirm: darkish skin, brown eyes.
+1
Yet none of you complain about how they’ll also be speaking English. Subtitlephobia much?
Joachim’s mother is an ethnic Jew. I don’t know if she did/ does practice but she’s ethnically Jewish. Which, despite his Catholic father, makes Joachim a Jew. Whether that’s relevant or not to his potential performance I don’t know. But not all Jews confirm to the stereotype. Paul Newman was Jewish and was famed for his blue eyes, and had blond hair.
That’s the point, though. A white Jew is not appropriate to play Jesus due to the fact that Jesus was not a white Jew. In his time, the Jews had not yet scattered through mass immigration. They were still a regional Semitic group in the Middle East. And they were dark skinned people. A modern Arab would be closer in appearance to Jesus than a modern European-based Jewish person. I don’t get why that’s such a hard concept. People are now sensitive to whitewashing and getting more opportunities for PoC. And since Jesus himself was of color, if they’re going for a realistic portrait (and they say they are), they should get actors who can be convincing.
Actors of fully Jewish background: Logan Lerman, Natalie Portman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Mila Kunis, Bar Refaeli, James Wolk, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Julian Morris, Adam Brody, Esti Ginzburg, Kat Dennings, Gabriel Macht, Erin Heatherton, Odeya Rush, Anton Yelchin, Paul Rudd, Scott Mechlowicz, Lisa Kudrow, Lizzy Caplan, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Gal Gadot, Debra Messing, Robert Kazinsky, Melanie Laurent, Shiri Appleby, Justin Bartha, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Margarita Levieva, Elizabeth Berkley, Halston Sage, Seth Gabel, Corey Stoll, Mia Kirshner, Alden Ehrenreich, Debra Winger, Eric Balfour, Emory Cohen, Jason Isaacs, Jon Bernthal, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy.
Andrew Garfield and Aaron Taylor-Johnson are Jewish, too (though I don’t know if both of their parents are).
Actors with Jewish mothers and non-Jewish fathers: Jake Gyllenhaal, Dave Franco, James Franco, Scarlett Johansson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Daniel Radcliffe, Alison Brie, Eva Green, Joaquin Phoenix, River Phoenix, Emmy Rossum, Ryan Potter, Rashida Jones, Jennifer Connelly, Sofia Black D’Elia, Nora Arnezeder, Goldie Hawn, Ginnifer Goodwin, Amanda Peet, Eric Dane, Jeremy Jordan, Joel Kinnaman, Ben Barnes, Patricia Arquette, Kyra Sedgwick, Dave Annable, and Harrison Ford (whose maternal grandparents were both Jewish, despite those Hanukkah Song lyrics).
Actors with Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers, who themselves were either raised as Jews and/or identify as Jews: Ezra Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow, Alexa Davalos, Nat Wolff, Nicola Peltz, James Maslow, Josh Bowman, Winona Ryder, Michael Douglas, Ben Foster, Jamie Lee Curtis, Nikki Reed, Zac Efron, Jonathan Keltz, Paul Newman.
Oh, and Ansel Elgort’s father is Jewish, though I don’t know how Ansel was raised. Robert Downey, Jr. and Sean Penn were also born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers. Armie Hammer and Chris Pine are part Jewish.
Actors with one Jewish-born parent and one parent who converted to Judaism: Dianna Agron, Sara Paxton (whose father converted, not her mother), Alicia Silverstone, Jamie-Lynn Sigler.
Oh my god the promotional tour! Forget the movie, I just want the promotional tour! The pretentiousness! The aloofness! The scowling! The same severe hair style and white dress over and over and over! What fun!
I’m starting a fund now for the therapy the PR team is going to need. Give generously. 😉
would they even show up for the promotional tour at all?
This will be a trainwreck XD
Hmm, I wonder if this will evoke claims of whitewashing as well, since the Jesus of history was, undoubtedly, a Middle Eastern man of dark complexion. I get that Hollywood has never, ever cast Jesus accurately, ever. But that’s not really an excuse, is it?
Were you there 2000 years ago? We have no idea what Jesus looked like. Sure it’s unlikely he had blond hair and blue eyes but it’s not completely impossible either. I don’t particularly care about Joaquin Phoenix but I don’t see why they’d need to cast someone who looks “Middle Eastern” whatever that means. Some people in the Middle East have a fair complexion.
@Myrto People with more knowledge than you, who are experts on their fields made a forensic despcription of what jesus really looked like. you can Google that. and that man sure don’t look like a white man.
Um, we actually have a pretty good idea of what Jesus would have looked like. Jesus was a Semite – it’s a racial and ethnic group that included Hebrews and Arabs. The ancient Jews were far more closely related to the modern Arabs of today than anything else. We consider Jews today largely white because of their mass immigration to Europe, where they intermixed with Caucasians and lightened over time. There’s substantial evidence that humanity’s lightening is quite recent and that 2000 years ago, most humans were far darker than we are now. White people are a pretty recent thing, evolutionarily speaking. So yeah, we can be pretty sure that Joaquin Phoenix isn’t exactly close to what Jesus looked like.
So some people (who?) made a forensic description of what Jesus really looked like (based on what? which evidence?). Great. Like I said, we have no idea what Jesus looked like. You seem to think I only want a white dude to play Jesus. I don’t care but as a historian, I find people showing up and claiming Jesus was “not a white man” (do our racial terms really apply to a reality that’s 2000 years old?) ridiculous.
Yeah, our racial terms do apply, because that’s what is actually going on now. Like I said, there are actual experts who know a great deal about what was going on in Palestine/Israel 2000 years ago. A Palestinian Jew at that time would not have resembled modern Caucasians in any appreciable way, given that they had not yet had any meaningful contact with them outside of invaders (and intermarrying was prohibited on religious grounds, so they didn’t mix). An ancient Palestinian Jew (which is what Jesus was) would be comparable, appearance-wise, to the Arabs of today far more than any white person. So the most appropriate person to play Jesus today would be an Arab man. Joaquin Phoenix is white, and that makes him inappropriate for the role, particularly given that they are claiming to be pursuing an “authentic” portrait.
@Myrto the white dude Jesus image that the westerners use on their churches that has light-brown wavy hair, fair skin with straight narrow nose… that is what’s ridiculous. not people pointing out how wrong the image is. lolll. you are performing a mental gymnastic to push the fact, the experts know more than you. your little “(based on what? which evidence?)” is cute.
@Mytro It’s been established that Jesus would have lived in a region of the world where the inhabitants weren’t white. That alone should tell you he would have been a person of color.
So…John Cusack played a Jewish art dealer ( very well) in the film Max. Perhaps those with firm ideas on these issues could enlighten me whether that’s ok because he has dark hair and dark eyes, or not ok because he’s of Irish descent. Ever since I found out to my surprise on this site that every Mexican is apparently a POC, I have found it hard to keep up.
PRETTY, Arabs and Jews do have straight noses. I’d have to say their noses seem more likely to be narrow/ straight than white people’s do. Maybe it’s just something I’m sensitive to because I have a wide-ish or round nose (and am white)
Thank you Sam!
I’m half Ashkenazi Jewish and the other parent is a convert so many people assumed our coloring was from the non Jewish side since we don’t fit the stereotype. But it’s the opposite. We are descendents from Europe, specifically Germany, Russia and a few other Eastern European countries. We don’t look like “traditional” Israelis.
If you travel to Israel you will see the differences in the descendants from the Middle East and Jews from Europe. The surnames are different too and the cuisine. Some customs and idioms.
It is not without merit that Jesus would have looked more Sephardi which encompasses Mizarhi and Maghrebi Jews as well. It’s a doctoral thesis to go any deeper but that is the main reason people are doubtful that Jesus would have looked Northern European.
Do people realise that we don’t know what Jesus’ dad looked like? Him being God an all….
Then I guess we can presume he took after his mama?
Well there has been quite a lot of presumption already on this thread, so that’s just one more.
LOL Perfect!
Wouldn’t a Jewish man living in Palestine be white? I mean, not lily white, but still white? Who should they cast? A darker white man? I think there would be a huge controversy if they cast a Muslim man as Jesus.
This is all so confusing. When I was in school we classified everyone in the Middle East under white.
There shouldn’t be a problem with casting a Muslim as Jesus (if religion is the only issue here). It’s called acting.
Oh, I totally agree with that. I personally woldn’t mind. But the crowd that this movie is aimed at would have a problem with it, I think. I think they would have a problem with anyone Middle Eastern, reagardless of religion.
Exactly your faith has very little to with acting as opposed to your talent and being cast in a film. Muslims should only play Muslim characters? I thought the purpose if acting is to deleve into different characters and portray them best of your ability and be part of story. Like a visual story teller.
Again Sarah, I agree. But this is aimed at the evengelical Christian crowd, no? They mind everything.
Not every film made about Jesus is directed at the Christian crowd. Remember the Last Temptation of Christ? They freaking hated that movie because it portrayed Jesus as having human desires. You presume that any movie dealing with Biblical themes would be designed to court the Christian crowd, and you’d be mistaken.
My apologies Locke Lamora my comment posted before I saw your comment. I agree!
No. Semites, which are the ethnic group that the Jewish people originate from, is an umbrella term for a racial group that included Arabs, Hebrews and various other groups. They were not white in any appreciable sense. Jesus would have been far more closely related to the modern Arabs you see today than any Caucasian living.
And your second point makes no sense. Joaquin Phoenix is openly an atheist. Is that offensive if he plays Jesus? Another atheist already played him years ago (Max von Sydow). Is that permissible but a Muslim would not be? Most Muslims have great regard for Jesus because he’s regarded as a prophet and appears in the Koran. I tend to believe a Muslim could play Jesus well, potentially. And even if your point were valid, you do now there are substantial populations of Arab Christians and Jews to select from, right?
As I said, we classiefied Arabs as white also.
And I wouldn’t mind. I know that Muslims have Jesus in high regard, along with other important Christian figures. If I’m not mistaken, Mary is the only woman adressed by name in the Kuran.
But I think the crowd they think will watch this movie will mind. And I doubt the studios would risk that .
@Locke Lamora / Who cares about who classifies who though…? A middle-eastern person would not get treated as a White person in any Western countries. That’s all that matters. That’s why Christians would turn a blind eye to the fact that the real jesus probably looked more like the scary brown man that they got brainwashed by their media to be afraid of.
I will inform my Arab husband that next time they grab him at the airport, he should pull the “the Census says I’m white, unhand me, whitey” card. That should totally work.
Races differ depending on the country you’re from. Race is a social construct anyway. I’m just saying, no need to get snappy.
Locke, I agree with you that, whether or not the Evangelical crowd likes this film, they would definitely balk at a Muslim actor portraying Jesus. Everyone arguing with you is arguing to get their word minimums in today. However, race is NOT a social construct. It is socially interpreted and many institutions and organizations develop philosophies and behaviors according to their perceptions on race, but race is biological in this sense. It’s hugely limiting, of course, as there were really only four “official” races when the term was coined. The hierarchical ranking of said races is certainly social. But the biological lineage associated with race is not dependent upon social construction.
Is it really? Because, I took a class in college called Introductuion to Anthropology and our professor said that race is a social construct, and that in every research if “race” is used it has to say “individuals who identify as black” or “or individuals who identify as white” rather than black or white individuals.
It’s interesting either way.
Forgive this question, but in what year did you take that class? Your professor was referring to ethnicity, which is most definitely “by association.”
Last year. And she was definitely talking about race, not ethnicity.
Race is not a construct in the sense that certain groups tend to share common physical features based on common locality and common heritage. It is incorrect to argue that race is solely a construct, given that discernible physical variances do exist amongst races. The issue is that these differences are small and do not impact the human ability to mate with other humans. There is no such thing anymore as a “pure” race in that no race is totally isolated from the others and intermixing has always been a part of the human experience. However, it is totally false to argue that no biological differences exist. For example, race can often surmised (not with 100% accuracy but pretty close) from certain bones in the body, such as the jawbone (Asian peoples’ jaws actually tend to be distinct from those of white or black people, weirdly enough. It’s not 100% accurate, obviously, but it’s a useful guide, especially when taken with other factors. Now, these things are small and are the result of a combo of things, including evolution, mate selection, etc. But the point is that racial differences are a thing. However, the important point is that they are small enough and insignificant enough to where nobody should be getting treated differently on account of them.
Yes, then I am afraid your professor was mistaken. Now, “black” is a race associated with particular biological characteristics, while “African American” is an ethnicity associated with particular social characteristics. One can be black in the US but not identify as African American. And, inversely, one can also be NOT black yet still identify with and participate in the culture of African Americans, thus ethnically identifying with that particular group. For example, a Chinese girl adopted upon infancy by a white American and subsequently raised in the Midwest is, racially, Asian. Ethnically, however, it is more likely that she identifies with whatever culture groups her family immersed her in throughout life (i.e. German Lutheran if she lived in Minnesota).
@Sam, I believe we are on the same page.
@LockeLamora @BabyJane @Sam I also took anthropological biology and was taught the same as @LockeLamora: Race is a construct. While certain groups have certain traits, there is no scientific way to determine when one group ends and another begins. There’s tremendous overlap between groups in terms of skin color, hair texture, hair color, eye color, etc. This is why scientists say it’s a construct. For it to be rooted in biology, scientists have to have a concrete way of identifying when one so-called racial group ends and another begins. They can’t do that now and couldn’t in the past. One of the books we used in class highlighted how groups such as Egyptians and the aboriginal peoples of Australia particularly defy categorization, but this overlap even applies to groups such as sub-Saharan Africans, which most people think are easy to group.
That is absolutely true that time, evolution, environmental factors, and most of all human mating and reproduction have “blurred the lines” between races. However, there is simply a biological component to race that does not exist within ethnicity, whereas ethnicity is 100% dependent upon cultural conditions while race is not. (Certainly the cultural treatment of persons of a particular race can be measured, however). This is a very clear distinction made time and time again in the social sciences, including anthropology. It seems as though race and ethnicity, while closely correlated throughout time and space, have been conflated by your educators.
WTW: but that’s not entirely true. There is absolutely a genetic basis for race, albeit a small one. Scientists absolutely can tell racial heritage. There’s a famous case about a serial killer in Louisiana where the FBI used an innovative DNA targeting test to determine that the killer was black (the major theory at the time had maintained he was white). What they did was to target something called halpogroups that can indicate both where, geographically speaking, one’s ancestors originated and when they lived there. I linked to an article about it below. But you were taught incorrectly if you were taught that race has no biological basis. If there were the case, haplogroup testing would not be possible.
http://genetics.thetech.org/ask/ask32
@Locke In 2016 a Jewish man living in Palestine would be white. A Hebrew man living in palestine during Jesus’s time would not be white.
Both casting options would be kind of whitewashing. Jesus was definitely very much olive skinned, as was Mary Magdalene.
Hollywood already had Caviezel and Dafoe playing the role. I can’t see Phoenix as a worse option really.
This will flop. For many reasons. Those who are religious Christians will already have a fully-formed idea and relationship with their idea of their deitiy, and will not appreciate the Hollywood take. Those who aren’t religious and could care less will not be in the least motivated to go see a movie about Jesus. Those who have a beef with Christianity will make a stink, and those who study theology and know about actual history (not just the mythology of it) will take issue with the claims of “authenticity” . And as for this “authentic and humanistic” portrait…well….everyone is white. That’s all I need to say about that.
That’s what makes me laugh (as somebody with a degree in theology). I’m not sure how you can make an “authentic” portrait of Mary Magdalene, given that almost nothing exists of her in the historical record. There are theologians who believe she’s a hybrid of multiple female church leaders or early disciples. There are those who believe she existed in some other role, etc. So I have no clue how they could possibly be “authentic” with this.
I think they are using the word “authenticity” instead of “humanized”, which in either way is dumb. They have no way to know how she was, therefore they are going to invent her a personality…
It would also flop because Phoenix doesn’t believe in God. I read an interview he gave and he was very forthright about it. For those who do believe, they won’t watch him play Jesus under any circumstance.
Digging into a dinosaur file in my brain…isn’t Mary Magdalene the one who was moaning in the kitchen while Jesus taught the disciples? If so, Mara is perfect aside from the minor detail of her ethnicity, of course. Mooney Mara.
No Mary Magdalene was a reformed prostitute who became a follower of Jesus and was one of the first witnesses to the Resurrection.
There are theories that she was actually ‘shamed’ by the Catholic church and was in fact Jesus’ wife (according to the Gnostic gospels). The marriage of Cana (where Jesus turned water into wine) was allegedly his own wedding.
She was not a prostitute. That story was promulgated by Pope Gregory in the middle ages to act as a guard against women gaining too much power in the Church. Read the Bible sometime – at no point is she named as a prostitute. The woman found in adultery is never named. Some theologians believe Mary Magdalene was in reality a powerful early church leader and missionary and other people have other theories. But we need to dispense with the prostitution claims, because they’re based in misogyny, nothing more.
I agree with you. I was merely placing he in the accepted context of the church.
They could be planning a film based on Gnostic writings but in the canon of the Christian faith she is commonly described as a reformed prostitute.
@Greenie, you’re thinking of the famous Bible story about the sisters Mary and Martha.
J Phoenix is an absolutely phenomenal actor. I still can’t get over how truly amazing he was in The Master.
I think, beside the extremely problematic white-washing, this movie will also struggle because sour-face Mara is not at all on the same level as Phoenix. He will act circles around her. It will be especially blatant how bad she is when she’s next to him.
I wonder what woman would have been better… Can’t think of anyone offhand but I’m only halfway through my coffee and my toddler already needs a bath this morning so my brain is broken.
I don’t get this criticism: she’s an incredible actor! Carol, Side Effects, Dragon Tattoo and Ain’t Them Bodies Saints feature fantastic performances from her, all wildly different.
Call her aloof or whatever, but I find slamming her acting just bizarre.
I found her awful in Side Effects. Just awful. Is it really that unusual for someone to not like her acting? Lol “bizarre” seems a bit extreme.
I don’t know, maybe I’m in a small minority. I don’t read the threads on her much because I’m so not interested in her as an actress. Does everyone like her acting?
Patricia I’ve only seen her in dragon tattoo but I like her acting
Dumbest idea ever
Re Joaquin Phoenix casting: I don’t have as much a problem with his ethnicity since his mother has a Russian/Hungarian Jewish background. Hollywood could do better, but eh. It is what it always is.
My biggest gripe is with his age. He’s 41, and he wears every evidence of his hard life on his face. Jesus was supposed to be around 32 when he died. Can’t Hollywood be more age appropriate with their male casting? They seem to go over and above when it comes to female casting… share the love a bit, please?
My husband has Hungarian/Italian background, looks very Mediterranean and is often questioned about his ethnicity in diverse Los Angeles, but he’s still too white-looking to play Jesus. One of my favorite authors, Sherman Alexie, joked after 9/11 about how Jesus looked a lot more like Osama bin Laden than George W. Bush. This probably made people uncomfortable, but it’s true.
She has very high cheekbones! Wow!
I’d rather see that guy who played Jesus in the Lady Gaga Judas video.
HahahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahavhahahHh IN 2016?!? Hollywood still wants this work of us cancelling their white washing party?!?? LET EM HAVE IT THEN! #NoCountryforthissh!t2016 #DourMaryMagdalene #SadBeardoJesus #TheMethodestResurrectionOfAllTime
Refusing to wade in on the skin color casting. Can Rooney Mara move her face enough to act?? And the promo tour would be freaking hilarious!!!
PS: In the Joaquin picture with the cig and sunglasses, he reminds me of Salman Rushdie.
haha! I literally clicked on the story and his dirty mug with the cig and sunglasses popped up and I let out a “AHHH!” …My office mate is concerned.
They were already in Her together as a couple, but not sure if Mara did much promotion for that…
I love Joaquin but find Rooney insufferable. That being said, if this movie happens the promotional tour would be amazing
I always find Mara to be a cold actress and screen presence. This works in some projects (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) but I’m not sure how well it’ll fly here.
As for Jesus… At least it ain’t a Hemsworth brother. But when Phoenix passes on it I fully expect to see one of them turn up and look pretty and constipated and sunburned in this.
Alternatively, Hollywood, scour your casting lists for Middle Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean heritage actors. Egyptian! Lebanese! Greek! Turkish! Jordanian! Syrian! Mizrahi! And others, too! There’s a whole medley available for viewing before anointing us with one of the Hollywood Chrises. And it would avoid this whole whitewashing thing, too.
Jesus wept.
Misspelled my own e-mail address above.
The needy Eve without the Stefon gravatar is me.
P.S.: Kaiser, thank you for deleting them.
“It is set to be an authentic and humanistic portrait of one of the most enigmatic and misunderstood spiritual figures in history”
This is what I don’t get. Mary Magdalene is sacred figure in Christianism. These saints are supposed to be holy and respected as such, they are not supposed to be portray as a merely humans (from a Christian point of view of course).
They keep doing wrong the representation of holy characters for an entire religion for the sake of easy money, which I find a bit disrespectful. They made Noah a schizophrenic mess, and the movie with Christian Bale was also terrible.
Also the only Mary Magdalene to my eyes will always be Monica Belucci
When I traveled in Japan, I saw portrayals of Jesus and Mary as Japanese.
The best person to play any character not just Jesus is a great actor. And if you ever studied acting you would know that a great actor will make you believe in any story. So be it a white man, black, a woman or a little person, whoever played Jesus, if it were a great actor they would make you believe you are seeing Jesus.
The rest is racist BS from all parts.
I’ve never seen Rooney in anything, but her very essence in these pictures bores me to tears. She seems very…dry. As for Phoenix, he can play anything, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.