ALSO SHOWING

Mary Magdalene

Cert: 12A; Now showing

A brief and unscientific poll reveals that most people, me included, believe that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute.

But that, it seems, was a rumour started by Pope Gregory I around 591, something which rather eclipsed her role as apostle, an official declaration of which only came in 2016.

It is around this and the profound misogyny of much organised religion that Garth Davis’s film is based.

Written by Helen Edmundson and Philippa Goslett, it has a strong feminist bent in a deceptively ethereal feel.

It opens with Mary (Rooney Mara) helping a woman in life-threatening labour. The women in the settlement of Magdala do much of the work but to want a life other than as wife and mother, to expect any kind of autonomy, is regarded as not only shameful but a kind of madness. But when Mary meets the spiritual leader everyone has been talking about there is an instant connection and Jesus (Joaquin Phoenix) does not treat her as a lesser being.

We meet each of the characters before we know their names —Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Judas (Tahar Rahim) — so that they are presented as men rather than icons.

The story is familiar but the take thought-provoking and quietly revolutionary in its depiction of the manipulation of records. There are too many lingering shots and Phoenix does lend Jesus a vague lunacy, but his inclusive agenda must have seemed nutty at the time.