Despite the hegemonic influence that Christianity has exerted over the world for two millennia, the portrait that the religion’s sacred text paints of its central deity is anything but straightforward. The four Gospels each present their own version of Jesus Christ, emphasizing different aspects of the central figure of the faith. Consider the Bible as something like Todd Haynes’ “I’m Not There,” his fragmented portrait of Bob Dylan. Inside the text live interpretations of him as king, as servant, as divine … and, perhaps less common, as human. It’s this latter element that attracts writer and director Lotfy Nathan in “The Carpenter’s Son.”
The filmmaker draws on his own background in the Coptic Orthodox Christian faith for this mood-heavy tone poem about a formative period in the adolescence of a young Jesus (Noah Jupe), known only as “The Boy” in the film’s world. This is anything but a sermon preaching to the converted – it’s meant to deepen an audience’s understanding of a person often rendered inaccessible or unapproachable by organized religion.
This is not a situation like Martin Scorsese’s controversy-courting “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which read between the lines of the canonized Gospel text to imagine a Jesus struggling with his fleshly impulses on the cross. “The Carpenter’s Son” draws from the Apocrypha, a series of books of disputed origin whose acceptance within mainline Christianity often varies by denomination. Nathan’s story originates from the Gospel of Thomas, which provides insight into the formative childhood years of Jesus that are not found in a standard Bible.
The film is at its best when Nathan leans into something elemental yet recognizable in a coming-of-age story for Jesus in Roman-occupied Egypt. Noah Jupe is painfully, palpably present as a boy who’s tempted by the allure of a nude woman or the promise of instant gratification. This grappling with his own abilities and limitations makes good on the promise of directors such as George Clooney and James Mangold, whose frequent casting turned Jupe into such an omnipresent child star in the late 2010s. He’s adept at balancing both the physical and psychological demands of a character coming to grips with his simultaneous mortality and divinity.
The Boy’s existential battle with Isla Johnston’s Satan (pronounced like “Suh-TAWN” here, in case the parable parallel felt too neat) plays like a riveting prologue to tales of Jesus that will be more recognizable to anyone who sat through a Sunday School class. There are echoes of Jesus’ healing ministry, his resistance to the temptation of the Devil in the desert, and his leadership of the Jewish people. Whether a viewer believes in the divine inspiration of the Gospel text or not, “The Carpenter’s Son” offers an intriguing side door through which to consider the implications of the well-known biblical lore.
Jupe excels at showing a boy becoming Jesus, not simply being him. The process of growing into his fate, which is ultimately to become a martyr for the people he seeks to lead out of bondage, is the film’s strongest selling point. When Nathan can focus “The Carpenter’s Son” into a meditation on messianic themes, it’s a compelling watch that does bring out something relatable in the figure. He matches Jupe’s stellar turn with a compelling montage that elucidates the forces competing in his body and mind.
Shame about so much else that pulls focus from this tussle of myth and man. While Jupe slots in believably to the film’s ancient setting, the same cannot be said for the actors playing his parents, Nicolas Cage and FKA Twigs. Nathan bafflingly lets The Carpenter and The Mother, respectively, cook. He does little to guide their performances or harmonize them into a single tone. This goes beyond accent work, although the complete mismatch among the leads is undoubtedly the most noticeable sign that no one here is on the same page.
At a slender 94 minutes, “The Carpenter’s Son” already feels reduced down to an episodic, essential minimum. Yet the film could even stand to do without Cage’s typical bursts of manic anger and Twigs’ ethereal but earthy milling about the frame. These interludes in the film pull focus from and dilute the impact of a stirring tussle for the soul of a boy who would become king. There’s more to recommend than not here, thanks to Nathan’s keen visual eye and Jupe’s complex interpretation of a figure often flattened into a neat function. However, the bizarreness of its peripheral components makes the film feel like the Apocrypha itself: interesting to ponder for a while but easily discarded from the main narrative. [B-]
“The Carpenter’s Son” releases in theaters on Friday, November 14.
