Hail Mary is a movie from 1985 by Jean-Luc Godard, one of the French New Wave directors.  The quote on the front of the DVD case is from the Pope, "Hail Mary deeply wounds the religious sentiments of believers."

The movie tells three concurrent stories.  The main one is of Mary and her virgin birth.  Godard puts Mary in contemporary society while staying faithful to the Biblical story.  Throughout the film, sound and images are used to create an environment where Godard conveys to us the struggle between body and soul and the path to accepting life's changes.

Godard often seems like a mad scientist who uses images and sounds, instead of beakers of different colored bubbling liquids, to formulate his fantastic creations.  What I love about Godard, is that his movies engage me.  They make me pay attention. They make me think. They touch me in a way that is beyond sound or images, even though those are the only tools he has to create a film.

There ia a making-of featurette on the DVD that shows Godard filming scenes that didn't get put in the movie ... it's as if he trimmed away everything he felt that was unnecessary and left us with the essence of the story.  In the featurette, which he directed, he says (this isn't verbatim), "People say that I am a film maker because the end product is a film.  But being a film maker is more than just making a film."  In Godard's case, I agree.

The DVD also includes a great short film, The Book of Mary, by Godard's collaborator, Anne-Marie Miéville.  In this film,  you follow the story of a girl whose parents are breaking up.

[photo taken 9-3-2005 in Philadelphia]