Abel Ferrara is not Mel Gibson. Ferrara was raised in the Bronx and worked his way up to features through small budget films with titles like The Driller Killer and Ms. 45. After The King of New York in 1990, however, critics and viewers alike began to take serious notice of this anarchic and conflicted filmmaker.

Mary picks up where the The Passion of the Christ left off. Jesus has been resurrected and walks into a cave to be among his followers. There, he finds Mary Magdalene and comforts her. A tearful Mary cowers in his presence until Jesus shouts “Cut!“Â?.

Jesus of Nazareth is revealed to be Tony Childress of New York City (Matthew Modine), a film director, sometimes actor, and profound egoist, filming his own version of the Christ story titled “This Is my Blood“Â?. Mary is Marie Palesi (Juliette Binoche), and unlike her director, she is completely caught up in her role, so much so that she abandons the film set and follows her visions to Jerusalem.

Back in New York, Childress makes a Faustian bargain with Christian talk show host Ted Younger (Forest Whitaker) to promote his film, even as the director begins to doubt the sincerity of his own vision. Childress is clearly a thinly-veiled Ferrara: severly focused and outlandishly rude, yet his character achieves a kind of redemption as we witness his humble and thoughtful portrayal of Jesus.

Unlike Gibson’s stark portrayal of historical figures who march resolutely to their destiny, all of Ferrara’s characters are torn and struggle to resolve their relationship to and with the Almighty. Like the people who inhabit the story, the movie itself is multi-layered; in addition to the film-within-a-film that is being constructed and deconstructed before our eyes, much of the main story is also told through newsreel footage and talk show chatter. What is left may reveal more questions than it answers, but in that way the story is much like faith itself.