Chosen for their courage

TAILOR-MADE for the holiday season, “The Nativity Story,” which opens Friday, tells the story of Jesus’ birth through the eyes of parents Mary (Keisha Castle-Hughes) and Joseph (Oscar Isaac) -- their arranged marriage, her miraculous pregnancy, her visit with Elizabeth, her courageous return home to face scorn and possible divorce, their arduous journey from Nazareth to a manger in Bethlehem.

At first glance, the adaptation of the Bible story seems 180 degrees removed from director Catherine Hardwicke’s first feature, “Thirteen,” a gritty 2003 drama about a young girl growing up too fast.

But Hardwicke points out that the contemporary heroine of “Thirteen” and Mary have more in common than one would think -- the mother of Christ was said to be only 13 or 14 at the time of his birth.

“That’s exactly what really drew me to it and why I wanted to do it,” she said. “When I researched and got to the fact she was 13 years old, I said, ‘Oh my, I have to do this.’ It is so fascinating to see it through those eyes -- a poor Jewish peasant girl.”

Mike Rich, who had previously penned such films as “Finding Forester” and “The Rookie,” was inspired to write “The Nativity Story” two years ago, when both Newsweek and Time did cover stories on the subject.

“I reflected back on my childhood memories of setting up the Nativity set,” Rich said, explaining that his father had “hard-and-fast rules” about how it must be done each year as the family prepared to celebrate the holiday of Christ’s birth. And then, shortly after the magazine articles appeared, Rich’s father died.

“If there was an emotional beat in the whole story, nobody appreciated celebrating Christmas more than my dad,” he said, “so that kind of put me on the path toward writing.”

What struck Rich in the articles was that the story of the Nativity was told principally as an event. The same held true in the New Testament accounts of Matthew and Luke. “We don’t talk about the people,” he said.

That gave him a fresh approach. He hit the books to flesh out the story. “The historical research was so intriguing that it kind of elevated the spiritual aspects of the story,” he said.

“I found that Matthew writes in a very literal fashion. When he talks about Joseph’s response to Mary coming back pregnant from Elizabeth’s, all he says is that Joseph was considering divorcing her quietly. But when you do the historical research, the penalty [for being pregnant by another man] was that she could have been stoned in the street. So all of a sudden, there are dynamics of character and storytelling that haven’t been included in some other accounts.”

But if there was a shortage of reliable source material on Mary, there was even less on Joseph. “So it just got to a point where it really kind of got to an act of faith on my own part,” Rich said. “The majority of the scenes in the movie were going to have to be speculative in nature, but as long as we were incredibly faithful to the tone and spirit of Matthew and Luke .... “

That wasn’t so easy when it came to the night of Jesus’ birth. The Magi are only mentioned in Matthew. The shepherds appear only in Luke’s account. So Rich combined them.

“That’s one of the reasons in some of the early screenings of the film, New Testament purists said, ‘You know that the Magi are not supposed to be there on the night of the birth,’ ” he recounted. But he thought it was imperative.

“If I had written the script that didn’t have the Magi, then everybody would have gone, ‘Where are the Magi?’ ”

TO get herself and her cast into the spirit and mind-set of the time, Hardwicke and her actors went through a Nazareth boot camp for a month prior to production. The film was shot in Italy and Morocco.

“We milked goats, sowed the seeds, crushed olives, got water out of the well,” she said. “Oscar Isaac built the whole wall of the house that you see in the movie with old tools. He made his staff as well.”

And she learned more about animals than she ever could have expected.

“I never thought it took four months in quarantine in Canada to bring camels into the European Union,” she said. “Now I know that! I never knew that sheep were psychotic and when they see other sheep they want to become one. If there are 500 sheep, they spiral themselves tighter and tighter into a vortex until they try to become one sheep. They are bizarre animals.”

Dealing with the donkey was even more of an eye-opener. “I never thought donkeys had hemorrhoids,” she said with a sigh.

Working with people was nearly as difficult. The cast and crew came from 23 countries; many were Muslims and Jews. “We were really trying to get people from the Middle East,” she said. “We had seven languages spoken on the set that you had to translate.”

Despite the diversity, Hardwicke believes everyone had a spiritual connection to the film in one way or another. “In a way, all religions have a lot more in common than they have differences,” she said.

Hardwicke recalled the time she had 20 minutes of daylight left to shoot a scene with the donkey carrying Mary across the hot desert sand. The donkey had refused to move all day. “I told the whole crew, everybody had to pray in however they prayed to have the donkey walk.”

Evidently, someone was listening.

“We said ‘roll camera’ and the donkey walked,” Hardwicke said.

susan.king@latimes.com