Theater 6 at Cherry Creek Shopping Center was filling fast.
A poster hanging outside the entrance promoted the next “Hannibal” movie. But this audience was here for a sneak preview of a different sort of Hollywood offering: a period piece set 2,000 years ago about a young couple and an unexpected pregnancy of historic proportions.
For 101 minutes, a group that included a mother of eight from Littleton, nuns in habit and the communications staff for the Denver Roman Catholic Archdiocese watched a story central to their beliefs unfold on screen in “The Nativity Story.”
The biblical epic from New Line Cinemas, which opens today, is the latest movie to not only touch on spiritual themes but follow a religious storyline.
With a marketing plan that includes word-of-mouth screenings like the one this week at Cherry Creek, sermon outlines for pastors and a world premiere at the Vatican, producers hope to draw Christian moviegoers to the multiplex this Christmas season like three wise men pulled to a shining star over Bethlehem.
Call it niche marketing, only with a massive niche – more than three in four Americans identify themselves as Christian.
“I went to Blockbuster a week ago and it was like, ‘Ugh,”‘ said Jon Simmons, 45, of Highlands Ranch after the Catholic screening. “Families very much desire to bring their children to good, well-done movies.”
The groundwork for “Nativity” was laid well before the box-office success of Mel Gibson’s 2004 “The Passion of the Christ,” said Robert Johnston, professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theology Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., and author of “Reel Spirituality.”
Several well-received movies from the late 1990s – “American Beauty,” “Magnolia,” “The Green Mile” – involved spiritual reflection, he said.
“With the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, ‘The Passion’ and ‘Narnia,’ however, Hollywood realized that even franchise movies could have a spiritual theme and do well,” Johnston said.
Unlike other Biblical epics about larger-than-life figures such as “Ben Hur,” “Nativity” dwells on the humanity of Mary and Joseph. That holds an appeal today, said Jonathan Bock of Grace Hill Media, which is marketing the film to the evangelical community and did the same for “The Passion.”
“In doing a Biblical epic now, drawing on the human side of what people go through and suffer through in the name of their faith is what ultimately will resonate with an audience,” Bock said. “People want reality.”
One minefield the filmmakers navigated was weaving in material not in the Bible. Going by the Gospel accounts would make for a trailer-length movie.
So the film imagines conversations between King Herod and his son, and Joseph’s reaction to his wife’s pregnancy. One-third of the movie follows the couple’s journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, which the Gospel of Luke sums up in one sentence.
The resulting storyline is credible and shouldn’t offend, said Bob Waliszewski of Focus on the Family, who directs the evangelical group’s Plugged In department, which reviews CDs, films and TV shows.
“Like I do with any film with the Bible written over it, I went in a skeptic,” he said. “Those who are not evangelical and just curious are going to find a good, compelling story and evangelicals are going to say, ‘It didn’t go against what I believe.”‘
Catholics who lingered after the Cherry Creek screening agreed – for the most part.
Madeleine Paolucci, 44, a Littleton mother of eight, had problems with the Mary character, particularly in a betrothal scene in which the teenager is clearly unhappy about her pairing with a man she scarcely knew.
“That was not as honest as what we hold true,” Paolucci said. “She was so in tune with God that everything was a ‘yes.’ There was never any hesitancy. There was joy. On that count, I think Mary was watered down to fit a more Protestant faith.”
Overall, however, she and others praised the film for portraying Joseph as a good role model and for showing that ordinary people can become saintlike.
“It’s not spectacular, it’s not a lot of fake things like so many movies,” said Sylvia Gould, who works in Hispanic religious education at Queen of Peace parish in Aurora. “These were normal people with extraordinary gifts. They just answered the call.”
What many moviegoers may not know is that 16-year-old Keisha Castle-Hughes, the Academy Award-nominated actress portraying Mary, is pregnant herself. The father is her 19- year-old boyfriend.
Will that harm the film’s standing with conservative believers? After all, a Lakewood evangelical pastor led a boycott of last year’s “The End of the Spear” because a lead actor was gay.
Jeanette DeMelo, communications director for the Denver archdiocese, doesn’t think so.
“Most of the time in art, artists want us to take their product and their creation for what it is, as opposed to who it comes from,” she said. “I would approach the film in that way.”
Staff writer Eric Gorski can be reached at 303-954-1698 or egorski@denverpost.com
