foreign language spoken in the testaments movie

'I do realize that this is not ideal if you pray to the Virgin Mary, as a lot of people do, or if you worship her,' he says.

That said, Toibin knows his Mary may not sit well with some Christians. I'm concentrating entirely on the tone and texture of this woman's voice on this particular day.' But those large questions over what's right or wrong, or over should things have happened one way or the other really don't interest me. 'I am interested only in her voice and what somebody like her might have said had the time arisen 20 years after the Crucifixion to speak for once. 'That's too large a question for me,' he says. Toibin says there are two competing narratives in his book, and he insists that he makes no judgment on which is closer to the truth. John, of course, does not tell the story of Jesus according to Mary's testament. 'Then I had to just leave the Gospels aside, leave all sources aside, and begin to imagine: What would that be like if you had known this man as a baby? If you had nurtured this child, if you were a woman who had nurtured him, to see him try to pick out, pull at the crown of thorns, and actually pushing the thorns in even farther? So I was trying to imagine it second by second, moment by moment as though it had not happened yet,' he says.Īuthor Interviews Jesus And The Hidden Contradictions Of The Gospels Toibin says he used the Gospels as a resource until the beginning of the Crucifixion, when Mary first sees the crown of thorns. Through her eyes we see anew familiar stories of the New Testament, including the wedding feast at Cana and the resurrection of Lazarus. Toibin says he based her voice in part on Medea, Electra and Antigone, the fierce heroines of Greek tragedies. 'And they sort of appalled her because the language that they were using did not seem to her to be right.' 'She calls them misfits, only children, stammerers, men who could not look women in eye,' Toibin says.

From the first moment she saw Jesus preaching to his disciples, and heard a false note in his voice, she has had nothing but contempt for his devotees. It takes place many years after the Crucifixion when Mary is living in Ephesus, watched over by two of her son's followers. The Testament of Mary explores the space between those two images. 'One pure, the way they wanted her to be, arising into heaven and the other impure, chaotic, cruel, strange, unforgettable.' 'I was absolutely struck by the difference between the two images,' says Toibin. While on a trip to Venice, Toibin happened upon two very different works of art: Titian's Assumption of the Virgin, which depicts a red-robed Mary being taken up into heaven surrounded by angels and Tintoretto's The Crucifixion. But he found inspiration for his fictional account of Mary's life in Italy, not Ireland. Toibin grew up in Catholic Ireland at a time when devotion to the Virgin Mary was widespread. His novella, The Testament of Mary, raises questions about the life of Jesus' mother and the stories that laid the groundwork for the creation of a church. Now, Irish writer Colm Toibin does just that. But few writers have taken up her story or tried to create their own version of the events of her life. For centuries, artists have depicted her on everything from backyard statues of a rosy-cheeked innocent to paintings of magnificent Madonnas hanging in museums all over the world. The Virgin Mary is one of the most familiar icons of Christianity. Your purchase helps support NPR programming.

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Foreign language spoken in the testaments movie