|PIC1|SG: With secular culture so prevalent, why is the school nativity play still so embedded in our culture?

MF: There's a reason why it's called the greatest story ever told. It's a really genuinely good story. Whether you believe in the ramifications of it or not I think it's a beautiful story with a really beautiful start - the idea that the most humble is the most exalted. That's not a bad idea for me.

SG: Is organised religion the bad end of that original story?

MF: You know, sometimes I think when people have a go at organised religion that's not necessarily people who have been reading Chomsky and come to this great idea by a lot of research. I've been looking into this and I think a lot of it is laziness. I think organised religion, organised anything, requires commitment and requires an engagement with something and a lot of time we don't want to commit.

Of course, if you talk about the Spanish Inquisition, that's probably the bad end of organised religion. But organised means there's more than 10 people involved, you know what I mean? There were more than 10 people involved because it was an idea people liked. I don't see how you get round it. Do you want disorganised religion?

I think everything's got to be personal, anyway. Everything has to be your own personal relationship with something.

SG: Much of the film revolves round the conflict between your character Mr Maddens - a frustrated, under-achieving, cynical primary school teacher and Mr Poppy, his child-like classroom assistant, played by Marc Wootton. Mr Poppy inspires and excites the children while your character calls them 'useless'. Perhaps an underlying theme in the film echoes what Jesus said: 'Unless you become as a little child - like Mr Poppy - you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven' - we become too burdened with life to enjoy it...

MF: Yes, I guess there's a reason, I suppose, in film language as well. Who do we like? We like innocence and wide-eyed people. We join Maddens at the start of the film where he doesn't think anything is possible. He thinks he's useless. He thinks the kids are useless, so they're not up to the job. Mr Poppy, comes in like a bomb, planted in the classroom. He thinks everything is possible. He is definitely the extra child in the room.

SG: There is another interesting parallel with the biblical narrative. Your character, reluctantly, takes these 'useless' kids and turns them into crack troops. Jesus and the disciples?

MF: I hadn't seen it like that but the reason for me that any of that stuff, the religiosity, has validity is that there are some quite good ideas and some quite good things to give to people - like the idea of redemption; the idea that we can turn something around. We don't even see those things in religious terms. They are human things, they are part of our language and our culture.

If we are watching films who do we get behind? The underdog. What the flip was Jesus if he wasn't an underdog, born in a bleedin' manger, you know what I mean? I've always loved the story because of that. Because whether you believe or not that is a more succinct lesson about how we should be looking at the world than anything else.

The trouble is we stop looking at the world like that when we take it out of that context. We don't then look at a homeless person and think what can I do for you? We think he must deserve it in some way. It's hard to take out those parallels from something specific and put them into the wider world.

Myra Angelo said a great thing. She said that when people say "I'm a Christian" I say "What, already? How have you managed that?" It's the hardest thing in the world to be. How did you manage that? Tell me the secret because if you really apply that to the world, that's a tough gig, man. That's a really tough gig.


Damaris Trust has put together free Nativity! resources for churches and schools, available www.damaris.org/nativity