Hooray For Holy-wood

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Rich grappled with Scripture and script decisions. Should he stick with one Gospel? The Magi are only in Matthew, the shepherds only in Luke, but both Magi and shepherds appear in the film. Rich's first draft did not include The Magnificat, the verses Mary sings when her cousin Elizabeth feels a child stirring in her own womb, because it didn't match Mary's character arc. When a nun advising the film weighed in on the importance of the passage to Catholics, Hardwicke incorporated some of the verses in a voice-over later in the story.

To market the film, New Line is borrowing a page from The Passion and other faith-friendly indies and setting up "shepherds' screenings" for pastors and providing Bible-study guides, sample sermons and group-rate screenings. And then there is, of course, the unprecedented Vatican premiere. Whatever the papal equivalent of two thumbs up is (two raised miters?), Nativity clearly has it. There has been one wrinkle along the way. Keisha Castle-Hughes, the star of Whale Rider, now 16, who plays Mary, is pregnant and home in New Zealand rather than out promoting the film.

While marketers work to lure in the Christians, the person who best explains the spiritual impact of seeing Nativity may be Shohreh Aghdashloo, the Muslim actress from 24 and House of Sand and Fog. Aghdashloo, who plays Elizabeth, grew up reading her grandmother's Bible in Farsi as literature. "A good piece of art should make a revolution inside you," Aghdashloo said after seeing the film for the first time. "I felt light this morning when I left the theater, with a peace of mind. I was worried about it turning into preaching, but it didn't. It just told a story."