There was a time when the film industry produced religious epics featuring A-List directors like DeMille, Wyler and Stevens and starred A-List actors from either side of the Atlantic. They were films noted for their length, with theology that made one wonder if a Sister of Providence with a ruler in her hand was not looking over the script writer’s shoulder.
Those films have gone the same way of the typewriter. Nowadays, films with a religious theme are usually either “small” pictures made outside the studio system, or use faith as an anvil for an anti-religious hammer.
After speaking with DJ Caruso, director of the new film “Mary” out on Netflix this week, I sense there may be a new category of overtly religious/spiritual film to categorize.
Caruso is a “mainstream” director, having guided actors like Al Pacino, Billy Bob Thornton and Shia LaBeouf. He has directed action movies, romances and a thriller or two. He is also a man of faith. When the project “Mary” came his way, he saw it as a beautiful, prophetic opportunity to put his talent where his heart was.
The film is a kind of coming-of-age movie that depicts Mary and Joseph as the people they probably were: young and in love, both with each other and with God.
The turmoil involving a young maiden carrying a child through supernatural means while a homicidal ruler seeks their destruction sounds like action movie material. It is and it isn’t. The story is too big and too profound to be held by Hollywood shorthand.
Most independently financed films rely on “B” and “C” list actors. “Mary” stars Sir Anthony Hopkins as King Herod, who doesn’t portray Herod as a cookie cut-out super villain: Rather, like all evil men throughout history, Herod is complicated, was resented by the Jewish population for the twin failings of not even being Jewish and for being installed as their “king” by their Roman overlords.
Caruso sees him as a man of contradictions: a builder (his commitment to the second temple continued for decades until its completion) and a destroyer, as the biblical accounts report all too well. According to Caruso, his pursuit of the Holy Family takes on many different nuances.
DJ Caruso and his wife were close friends with the late Bishop David O’Connell, who always took great interest in Caruso’s work, particularly when he learned that Caruso was working on a film about Mary and Joseph.
"Make sure to give Joseph a voice — he doesn’t have one in the Gospels,” Caruso says O’Connell told him. “He was courageous and brave, standing against the mob to protect Mary. He was a hero."
Hence, the film shows the young couple embark on a journey wrought with danger, fear, and doubt, much like what the real Mary and Joseph had to have experienced. The sum of these parts is what goes into creating developed, multi-dimensional characters just as the actual Mary and Joseph most certainly had to be.
Knowing something about the often messy and mostly frustrating process of trying to finance a film independently, it’s clear the very existence of Caruso’s “Mary” is the result of a series of unlikely events. The director was attached to the film before there was money to make the film. The financing needed to create a great looking film with powerful actors doesn’t always arrive for these projects, but in this case, it did.
Then came a challenge that is usually the death knell for independently financed films — regardless of their subject matter. A film needs to be seen and it can only be seen with the cooperation of a large studio with an “art house” division or a streaming service. A seasoned pro like Caruso understood that obstacle well.
“You bet on yourself when you don’t have a studio, or any kind of distribution behind you. I just set out to make the best film that I could. It was an offering to God and I just put my head down and went to work. If I did that, I felt that the rest would take care of itself.”
I’m not sure how many times the Netflix corporation has been part of a miraculous event. But looking for faith-based content their researchers told them young people were seeking, the streaming service “picked” up the film.
Netflix films also do not usually have a connection with a successor to the apostles. This one does. On New Years Day 2023, Caruso and his wife were with their dear family friend, Bishop David O’Connell standing on the roof of a liquor store preparing to watch the Pasadena Rose Parade. Bishop O’Connell wanted an update on Caruso’s Mary movie and was sure that, in Caruso’s capable hands, it could be a film that would inspire and touch the hearts of young people.
“Everyone needs Mary in their lives and hearts, and this film should portray her as the friend we all need to guide us closer to Christ,” Caruso remembers O’Connell telling him.
The film is made by humans, which makes it automatically flawed. But if it accomplishes the task of reaching more young people and putting them in “contact” with the Blessed Mother and her most chaste spouse, then it is easy to visualize Bishop O’Connell with a smile on his face.
