Some Catholic films, briefly noted

I’ve been going over the list of films I saw this year, preparatory to drawing up a list of favourites. I’ve noticed that I saw a healthy handful of films that were, in one respect or another, about Catholicism. Some of these will make my Top 10 list, but today I am grouping together those that will not, with a few brief comments on each.

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Bresson’s Procès de Jeanne d’Arc (1962) follows the trial of St Joan of Arc, apparently with a relatively firm grounding in the surviving records. It cannot escape comparison with Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, a contest from which it does not emerge triumphant. The problem, for me, was the flat — characteristically flat, I am tempted to say — visual and dramatic sense Bresson brought to the material. Although I did appreciate it, in the end I thought it would have worked about as well as a radio-drama, and that is surely not a compliment to a film.

I also saw Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest (1951), a film that I was primed to love, as I loved the book on which it is based, but my Bresson Blockade continued. Certainly scenes worked very well, but overall I found him cold as ice, despite a good lead performance. This is essentially a story about a man’s inner life, and to tell it through the medium of film is, arguably, to start with an insurmountable handicap. However, this is by reputation a great film; the fault is mine.

I watched The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952) because of the anniversary of Fatima this year. It’s not bad, exactly. It has some sparkle, and I did appreciate Big Hollywood’s effort to make something to honour ordinary Catholic devotion, which is not something we can count on anymore. But it played much like an ordinary homily: pious, inoffensive, and, in the end, rather forgettable. One character was strikingly irritating. The film’s epilogue, showing real footage from a ceremony at Fatima in 1951, with a million pilgrims on hand, was for me the best part.

No Greater Love (2009) is a documentary that takes us inside a community of nuns in London, mostly during the events of Holy Week. We see them doing the ordinary work of the community: washing the floors, ringing the bells, ordering food, dancing. We meet several of the sisters in interview segments; they tell us something about themselves and about the challenges and rewards of the life they have chosen. All of this is excellent. The film is, unfortunately, marred by poor lighting and sound through much of the production. I’m still glad I saw it, but I wish it had been up to the exemplary standard set by its kindred predecessor Die Große Stille, which is this film’s superior in pretty much every respect.

I hardly know what to say about Silence (2016), a film that suffers many of the same troubling ambiguities and confusions as its source material, but which nonetheless, I think, deserves to be in a conversation about important religious films. It was moving, it was vexing, it nearly cracked under the strain, and so did I; a difficult movie to watch, and probably too long for its own good.

Set in Poland in the months after WWII, as the Allies were cleaning up and the Soviets were moving in, Les Innocentes (2016) centers on a convent of cloistered nuns who suffered horribly in the waning days of the war, and on a young French nurse who befriends and assists them.  The plot, beyond that setup, is best left quiet. Thematically it is a rich stew: God, evil, suffering, family, love, and compassion. The religious life is neither romanticized nor demonized; on one hand, some of the nuns have doubts, some even commit terrible acts, but others are devout and authentic in their faith, and their distinctive way of life is shown as one having its own integrity. My main reservation is that the film’s denouement draws a rather too-sharp contrast between the vocations of Mary and Martha, and is too ready to grant advantage to the latter. That said, it tells a compelling story about how good can come from evil, and is well worth seeing.

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I expect to post my list of favourite films from 2017, including a few with Catholic themes, in a week or two.

Best of the Decade: Film

Resuming the “Best of the Decade” theme, here are my Top 10 favourite films released between 2000-2009 (or nearly so).  Although I am not much of a cinephile, putting these lists together has been so much fun that I could not resist doing one for films.

This list is in rough order of preference, from most favourite to only-slightly-less favourite.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy [Peter Jackson; 2001-3]: I know that some have complained that these films are, to a non-negligible degree, unfaithful to the spirit of Tolkien’s story, and while I can see the force of that objection I still think that this trilogy is an astounding cinematic achievement. I have seen the entire thing three times (in the extended version, no less), which is highly unusual for me.  Here is the opening of the first film:

Остров (The Island) [Pavel Lungin; 2006]: Остров (transliterated: Ostrov) is a Russian film about a saintly Orthodox monk with a history.  I have praised this film before, and I will continue to do so.  It is extraordinarily good, in many senses of the word.  If you have not seen it, I urge you to do so.  In this short clip we see Fr. Anatoly, working in his makeshift hermitage, receiving a visit from a fellow monk.  The subtitles are in Arabic, but you’ll get the idea:

Die Große Stille (Into Great Silence) [Philip Gröning; 2005]: This documentary film takes us inside the great Carthusian monastery of Grand Chartreuse to witness the lives of the men who live there.  The film is a pool of silence into which one falls, and it gives us a taste, however small, of the beauty of the monastic life.  A treasure.

Magnolia [Paul Thomas Anderson; 1999]:  Magnolia was released in the last week of 1999, so I feel justified in including it on this list.  I hesitate to actually recommend this film to anyone, saturated as it is with extremely vulgar and profane language, and every kind of vice.  But the truth is that, if you can stomach it, it is an amazing film, a truly cinematic film, with profound themes running through it.  All the wickedness has a point, for one cannot make a film that takes grace seriously without also taking sin seriously.  The first time I saw Magnolia I did not understand it (and in fact quite disliked it), but it opens up on repeat viewings.

Adaptation [Spike Jonze; 2002]: Charlie Kaufmann is certainly one of the best screenwriters working today.  Many critics have been putting his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on their “Best of Decade” lists, but I think that Adaptation is even better.  It is a wild, thrilling, puzzling film about, of all things, orchids — or, better, about the difficulty of writing a film about orchids, or maybe it is about the difficulty of writing a film about the difficulty of writing a film about orchids.  Anyway, whatever it is about, it is hilarious.  Like Magnolia, though not to the same degree, this is a truly cinematic film, one which I could not imagine being told in another medium.  Nicholas Cage, playing twin brothers, is superb.  Say what you want about those National Treasure films; Cage is one of our best actors.  Here is the film’s trailer:

O Brother, Where Art Thou? [Coen Brothers; 2000]: Not only is this the best musical comedy of the decade, I would even say that it is the best Coen Brothers film of the decade.  The idea to set Homer’s Odyssey in the American south was an inspired one, and the movie sparkles with hilarious and wholesome cornball humour.  The music is good too.

The Departed [Martin Scorcese; 2006]: Despite his reputation as The Great American Director, I have been mostly underwhelmed by the Scorcese films that I have seen.  But I loved The Departed.  I have now seen it several times, and the story stands up well on repeat viewings.  (Indeed, I had to watch it again just to make sure I understood the many complexities of the plot.)  It is the most intelligent thriller that I saw this decade.  The clip below shows my favourite scene from the film, in which the two main characters have a phone conversation — sort of.  Wrenched out of context I can see that this clip doesn’t make much sense; in context, one’s mind is racing at the many implications of what is happening.  That he can invest such a simple scene with so much meaning is, I suppose, part of what they mean when they say Scorcese is a great filmmaker.

Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In) [Tomas Alfredson; 2008]: I do not often watch horror films, but good reviews across the board convinced me to watch this Swedish vampire movie.  It is bleak, cold, and dark, just like the Swedish winter in which it is set.  The story, about a friendship between two children, is told quietly and unsensationally, but it builds an eerie tension and is genuinely disquieting.  Like the best horror movies, Let the Right One In understands that fear is a psychological state, and it can be cultivated without anything scary jumping into the frame.  Here is a trailer for the movie:

Once [John Carney; 2007]: This is my favourite romantic film of the decade, and my second favourite film about artistic creation.  (For my favourite in the latter category, see the next entry.)  Once is an Irish production about a pair of street musicians who, through their music, are trying to break through the surface of life to touch something real, something golden, and to their surprise they find one another, and friendship.  For me, the film is notable for the way it evokes Sehnsucht, that indefinable longing for something good.  The ending is sweetly melancholy.  Here is a montage of scenes; the music is one of the songs featured in the film.

I’m Not There [Todd Haynes; 2007]: A strange but intriguing meditation on the life and music of Bob Dylan, I’m Not There is meat and drink for Dylanites.  Director Todd Haynes is obviously deeply interested in what makes Dylan tick, and his movie is an imaginative exploration of various aspects of Dylan’s creativity.  Six different actors (including, most unexpectedly, Cate Blanchett) play Dylan, sometimes fairly realistically, sometimes almost allegorically.  I recommend it to fans, of course, but also to those who don’t really understand what all the fuss is about Dylan.  You will at least come away knowing that the fuss is about something.

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Runners-up: Memento [2000]; The Others [2001]; Kill Bill [2003-4]; The Incredibles [2004]; Walk the Line [2005]; Letters from Iwo Jima [2006]; Zodiac [2007]; The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford [2007].

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I’d love to hear what your favourite films of the decade were.

Die Grosse Stille (Into Great Silence)