For people of faith who just want to see Bible stories on screen, Fox’s “The Faithful: Women of the Bible” will do. It’s actually a series of three made-for-TV movies that tell different stories of the Old Testament from women’s perspectives.
The first film, “The Woman Who Bowed to No Man,” which was the only one given by critics, follows the journey of Sarah (Minnie Driver) and Hagar (Natacha Karam). In this version, Abraham (Jeffrey Donovan) is a side character, and Sarah is a force to be reckoned with.
These stories have endured for thousands of years, at least in part, because there is real meat to them. How must Sarah have felt, longing to have a child, recommending that her beloved husband sleep with another woman? And will Sara raise that child as her own? And for Hagar, who is really thankful that she escaped from Pharaoh and found herself with kind masters in Sarah and Abraham—what does she feel trying to give up the child but still being close to it? What kind of life was that?
These questions echo some of our current discussions about fertility, however, they take a different, more faith-based approach.
And that approach isn’t inherently bad, but “Faithful” doesn’t exactly cut it. Part of the problem is that the show needs more table setting. Yes, most of its audience will know these stories. But we are also consumers of modern media, and we expect shows (or made-for-TV movie series) to create the world we enter when we turn on our screens.
Too “faithful” to skip all that. So it is not entirely clear whether we are in our rational world or one of the miraculous. Obviously, that’s the problem with fixing this particular story—it has to be true again sacred. Magical facts, if you will. And other adaptations of that genre have worked recently, capturing the intent of their source material by keeping the magic awe-inspiring. again general ones.
Productions like Netflix’s “Cien Años de Soledad” and HBO’s “Like Water for Chocolate” work because they are extravagant. Looking at them, it feels like you could step into Macondo or a revolutionary Mexico. You can taste these places, smell them. And the more rich they feel, the more the curse becomes real, or the food literally conveys emotions, and that becomes real.
Unfortunately, “The Faithful” do not take that route. Its beauty is a local nativity scene, the kind where children make blankets around their heads, secured by braided ribbons (if they’re lucky).
Of course, IP is as important as the Bible and requires a high budget. Hagar’s wigs are disturbingly bad. The costumes are a little better than my Vacation Bible School games in the nineties. The result of the word of God… is the transmission of the word.
It does not match the size of the project.
And there is another problem. Sarah’s episode is called “The Woman Who Bowed to No Man,” and it opens with a scene where young Sarah refuses to bow to the man her parents wanted her to marry. He refuses and ends up with Abraham. Which is great, but so are all the screen heroines of the last 35 years.
Later, it takes real divine intervention to save Sarah from other men who would bow down to her. But since we don’t meet anyone else, and the show refuses to do any world building, their reaction to Sarah makes no sense. Why is he so attractive? Are you different from other women? How?
The show doesn’t take the time to answer that question, so Sarah feels as familiar to our 21st-century sensibilities as “Faithful” insists she is. And that disconnect creates a barrier to the show’s humanizing purpose, keeping us distant from these characters rather than allowing us to feel their struggles.
And there are some weird choices that undermine the film’s raison d’être. For example, we see Hagar giving birth and the pains that go with it, but we don’t see Sarah’s. Narratively, that’s a missed opportunity. Hagar’s pregnancy conforms to the order of nature, so there is nothing particularly interesting about her birth order. Sarah, however, is long past the point where even today’s women can breastfeed. So what is it like to take out a child at that age? And thousands of years ago at that? For reasons unknown, “Faithful” doesn’t go there, refusing to delve into some of the more vexing questions a woman’s biblical retelling can really ask.
That is, “Faithful” is not enough to attract viewers who are not hungry to see Bible stories on screen. And that’s a shame, because there’s a real idea here to do something more than make background noise for an Easter egg hunt. Unfortunately, “Faithful” seems to think it has a captive audience with its retelling of the story of Sarah and Hagar, rather than finally giving these complex women the respect they deserve.
