The New Jesus movie has already created scenes after an actor refused to rub mud from a woman’s eyes.
When Joaquin Phoenix took on the role of Jesus in the new film “Mary Magdalene,” he did many of the expected things: Grew long hair, adopted an intense and otherworldly stare, even meditated on a mountaintop.
But there was one thing he would not do. Rubbing mud off eyes.
Near the beginning of “Mary Magdalene,” which opened Friday in the United States, the script called for Jesus to heal a blind woman by rubbing mud in her eyes, an echo of John’s Gospel. (It’s a blind man in the Bible, a blind woman in the film.)
“I knew about that scene from the Bible, but I guess I had never really considered it,” Phoenix told CNN in a recent interview.
The Bible doesn’t fully explain why Jesus used mud or clay to heal the blind, though some experts say it was a common practice among first-century healers.
In “Mary Magdalene,” Phoenix decided to go with his gut, licking a mudless thumb and gently rubbing the woman’s eyes.
“It freed me up, in some ways, to discover what is truthful in the moment,” he said. “That moment is not so much about a real miracle.
The filmmakers’ aim was to “rescue” the title character, telling Jesus’ story from a feminine (and feminist) point of view.
Embodied by a lithe and luminous Rooney Mara, Mary Magdalene is portrayed as a spiritual seeker and kindred soul to Jesus.
Their bond perplexes and irks the other apostles, particularly Peter, who seeks to marginalize Mary.