In the ancient kingdom of Judea, a woman (FKA Twigs) and her husband (Nicolas Cage), a carpenter by trade, welcome a newborn son (Noah Jupe, later).  As rumor spreads about a common-born heir to the throne, the king issues an edict that all males under two years old are to be slaughtered.  The family escapes, and their boy, now a teenager, begins to experience strange, miraculous occurrences, lending credence to his role in the prophecy that led the king to issue his murderous order years before.  As the boy grows into his divine role, he struggles to balance that against his human nature, a struggle only exasperated by the arrival of an alluring stranger (Isla Johnston) sent to tempt him to turn his back on his divine destiny. 

Lofty Nathan writes and directs The Carpenter’s Son based on the non-canonical Infancy Gospel of Thomas.  The 94-minute film was acquired by Magnolia Pictures, which afforded the film a limited theatrical release in mid-November on a little over 500 domestic screens.  Based on a heretical text, the film was similarly not without controversy, with the Philippines even going as far as to ban the film outright for its depiction of Jesus. 

From the get-go, Nathan is establishing something of a horror tone as Mary gives birth to Jesus in a firelit cave.  Simon Beaufils’ cinematography matches this tone and will expand on these opening images as Jesus grows and receives dreams and visions of his future delivered to audiences through carefully fractured cuts from the editing team: Sophie Corra, Guillaume Fusil, and Monika Willi.  From there, the film dips into the slaughter of the innocents – an oft-overlooked, glossed over, and watered down bible story given its upsetting plotting – before settling down in a small rural town where Joseph is hired as a carpenter who, after being first hired to carve furniture will eventually be asked to carve an idol as a further challenge to his faith.  The Carpenter’s Son is inherently Jesus’ story as he comes of age not only as a boy but also as a divine figure, though it is continually framed and informed by Joseph’s crisis of faith, culminating in an explosive exchange between him and Mary about who their son’s father truly is.  Unfortunately, that explosive tendency that makes Cage such an oddball midnight-mattinee idol really undermines the film as he is woefully miscast – or, rather, led astray by his director – and his performance is far and away in an entirely different kind of film than Nathan otherwise crafts. 

This disparity is most apparent in scenes shared between Cage and Jupe.  To Jupe’s credit, the young actor manages to grasp the central themes of the film and bring them to the forefront, even against the mania that Cage brings and a script that is at once bloated and underdeveloped; at war with itself, but unfortunately not developed enough to brandish that choice on the page to further the themes.  His performance is fueled by a simmering rage informed by the confusion that surrounds him, both around his own origins and these haunting dreams that spell out a troubling future for the boy.  It is no easy feat as the actor must craft a performance that is rooted in confusion, but as the title lead, he cannot afford to be aimless lest the entire film likewise be led astray.  He does this by tapping into the very real anxieties of growing up and trying to balance his becoming his own person against the expectations of his father, both earthly and heavenly. 

The Carpenter’s Son is a film that has so much potential, but it is armed with a script just a little too literal to utilize these dueling themes and plots to magnify the struggle that Jupe’s son is facing across the course of the narrative. While Cage delivers a performance well calibrated to suit the horror and paranoia elements of Nathan’s narrative, he is acting in a register so far removed from what his costars are bringing to the screen that he teeters on something almost comic, drastically changing the texture of the film. It is a shame because the foil is right there as the father contends with how carving a false idol will affect his relationship with his God, all the while his son – God’s son – communes with Satan; while the Carpenter does carve the idol, notably, the son does not slay the devil, instead choosing compassion. The Carpenter’s Son is always scratching at interesting concepts that Nathan, still early in his career, is never able to get a strong enough hold on for long enough to really deliver its themes. Despite this, his film is still inherently interesting, and while it never goes as far as one may want, especially with Jean-Vincent Puzos’ production design giving the film an air of importance, Nathan has shown he has enough confidence on the page and in the director’s seat to even attempt to tackle these larger than life themes, that his will certainly be a career to watch.