The Nativity Story

In the November/December 2006 Edition of Annals Australasia, James Murray reviews The Nativity Story on p.22. He concludes:

The work's verisimilitude may, however, create a problem of perception. Audiences are so conditioned, particularly in English speaking countries, to the overdecorated, sentimentalised Victorian-Dickensian version of the story that there may be difficulty in fully appreciating the merits of this more austere classic.

Emphasis Mine

I disagree that this movie is ...the true story told simply an powerfully. For all its exactitude, the movie skirts around the central issue in Palestine at the time: the Roman occupation and imposition of a puppet government (Herod).

Given the current brutal occupations in Palestine, Iraq, Kurdistan, Kashmir, etc., the challenge of the movie makers is to truly depict life under occupation without today's occuping powers.