First, immediately and for the record, this is one of the best films I have ever seen.
It works on every level: the screen play, though slow and leisurely in its pacing, is perfect for the story. It lets us into the life of the monastery, and gives a marvelous feel for what it is like to live in a religious community. The acting is simply perfect, especially that of Lambert Wilson who plays the abbot, and Michael Lonsdale who plays an elderly monk who is the monastery's doctor, whom runs their clinic which takes care of the people of the area, whom are too poor to get access to other medical care.
The story is one that is pretty well known in it's bare bones in Catholic circles.
If you were paying attention back in 1996, you know what is going to happen to these men. Which makes everything very poignant. The fact that this film is not primarily about the violence (though that violence does erupt very graphically once or twice in the film) but more about how the community reacts and evolves in reaction to the looming threat, is wonderful.
(This is that context if you are interested. )
This larger looming political context is at first only gently inferred. The fact that Algeria is embroiled in a civil war only becomes a part of the story when the Army shows up and demands that the monastery accept military guards. The abbot peremptorily refuses, and throws them out. This causes a debate amongst the brothers, since most of them were upset he didn't confer with them first. He tells them that he made the decision and it's non- negotiable because the monastery and Church cannot be seen as taking sides in the war, which is what allowing soldiers onto the grounds would do..
There's a beautiful scene where Michael's (the old doctor) character is talking with a young Algerian woman who comes often to see the monks, and often works with them in their gardens. She is struggling with some relationship that the movie does not explain. It's that sort of film, in which people come casually into the story a few times, and yet somehow they still become real, but without any exposition, merely on the strength of the tone and performances.
She asks Father if he had ever fallen in love. Father looks at her seriously with kind smiling eyes, and says "Of course. Many times. Then the greatest love took me, and I have been in love ever since."
That was only one of the many times this movie had me tearing up. In spite of all my struggles, and all my failures and problems, at the end of the day I'm in love like that, too.
To me, the fact that I can say I share that with such men.. To be associated with such love, with such heroism. It gives a vivid demonstration of why I unashamedly venerate them.
I will find an icon of them to add to my shrine.
Here's another picture of what they looked like in real life:
It occurred to me while watching this film that the logic of imputed merit in the theology of indulgences is now very clear to me.
This is the treasury of the Church. The merits of her saints. By grace, even a poor fool like me shares in their and her greatness.. I too share in their immense merit, though possessing little or none of my own. Their love and faith, and the graces they receive come also to me. The overwelling fecundity of the economy of grace, the consuming mystery of love.. Their sacrifices, their love, their prayers, their imitation of Christ and participation in his crucifixion.. It's not merely their story that inspires, it is the sacramental nature of their sacrifice that confirms and strengthens the Church. Including me.
No greater love a man than this, to lay down his life for his friends.
Thank you so much, my fathers. Pray for us.
Christ to them, they to me, the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son to us all.
It seems merely too great a gladness for me somehow to bear.
Know that this movie is no sentimental hagiography, though. It is not in the least bit saccharine or stereotypic. The life of the monastery and their interaction with the surrounding community is richly and gently depicted. You get a sense of the men and their personalities. Their fears, weaknesses, their struggles.
You see how communal life is, how they are challenged by their vows (I believe Trappist Cistercians take the normal three: chastity, poverty and obedience, as well as the Benedictine promise of stability to the community, meaning they are in normal circumstances to remain in the community they make vows in) .. Of how sometimes there are tensions and dissension.
You see them interacting with the local people - both Christian and Muslim - and even attending a Muslim marriage and discussing religion very kindly and openly with them.
I was thinking how their lives - their vow of stability, their emphatic humanity, how they all kept returning to the nature of their vocation to live their lives there, then, with those people, in that place and time. That is the logic of the Incarnation. Christ is not some gnostic new age archetype, but always uniquely experienced, personally, specific to each individual's time and place.
This is sacramental and carnal scandal of Catholicism: He came and dwelt amongst us. He loved them, there. He died and rose, and they saw him and touched him. Not figuratively, but actually.
That's what they do in the film. This is our place. God has called us here, to love one another not in some abstract idealist fashion, but in the fear and temptations of this very moment.
Like in Galilee and in Jerusalem. There. Then. Now in every tabernacle throughout the world, at every single of the hundreds of thousands of masses offered everyday, hundreds of masses in very instant, throughout the world. The sacrifice of Christ made perpetual, eternally now, but yet uniquely present to each one of us given the extreme grace and privilege of receiving him in an intimate and singular encounter of the Eucharist.
This is what it means to be a Christian. What it means to be a human being. Each of us are a unique theophany, an iconic encounter with the divine image.
That they so consciously embraced that vocation, and did not run away even though they were afraid and tempted..
It was Mary, Mary and John on Calvary.
I also really, really appreciated how the mass and liturgy of the hours was presented by the film in an authentic fashion. Most of the time Hollywood botches things sloppily. The fact that the details seemed all correct made the story flow.
Unlike Into Great Silence,
(Another film about another French monastery, a documentary of Cartusians in the Alps, also beautifully shot and maybe educational for non-Catholics, or people who have never been to a monastery.. )
This film actually moved me to prayer.
Into Great Silence had no narrative. It was just the film maker shooting in the monastery while the monks went about their work and prayer. I said in my last review below that the only other film I remember falling asleep in was The Matrix and that Ice Ice Baby flick, but I just realized that I fell asleep in Into Great Silence , too. Carthusian monks don't talk much. They take a promise of silence, and they generally only open their mouths to chant and eat porridge. It wasn't exactly a moving cinematic experience.. I mean, I fall asleep at adoration or early morning prayer all the time. Dim the lights at liturgy and start chanting and I'm out in 15 minutes.. And that's when I'm there in the presence of God myself, and praying too. Sitting watching other people pray for two hours is just nonsensical. It's like watching people eat or sleep. Not amusing.
This film is very different. There was prayer and mass throughout, but in snippets. Not only that, most of it is in French. Most of which I know myself from living and praying with Eucharistein for a year. I caught myself praying along sotto voce with them in the film. It was sublime. There was also Latin and Arabic in the film, which also was fun.
I kept on thinking of things I haven't thought of for a while.. missing people.. Of how those men remind me of amazing friends I've been privileged to know. And love.
Gloire à Dieu, au plus haut des cieux,
Et paix sur la terre aux hommes qu'il aime.
Nous te louons, nous te bénissons, nous t'adorons, nous te glorifions, nous te rendons grâce, pour ton immense gloire,
Seigneur Dieu, Roi du ciel,
Dieu le Père tout-puissant.
Now to wrap this up, the only negative criticism I'll make is that the larger historical context of those monks being in Algeria was not really explored. There were a few references to French colonialism, and it was clear that the Algerian Army and officials they interacted with wanted them gone.. The reason for that hostility isn't really explored.
I kept thinking of all the conversations I've had with Arab Muslims and Christians in which the colonial, medieval (Crusade and Islamic expansion/jihad) as well as ancient history is very very explicitly in people's minds.
One of the reasons I've come to despise Americans - and I need publicly to confess this anger, because I still boil with this after ten years - is how damn clueless and callously ignorant 99% of us are.
History - even the bulk of our own relatively recent past - is largely meaningless to us.
Take for example the odd fact that Saint Augustine is from Hippo.. Just for example, a random indispensable fact that some Americans might have as a trivia response.. But I know from talking to Arabs and Frenchmen that those monks definitely had St. Augustine very much in the forefront of their minds while living in Algeria, believe me.
Such details never seem to occur to Americans - not even our politicians - as being relevant. I mean, the likes of Huckabee and maybe even Romney probably can talk good game about Joshua, the Canaanites, and the Book of Daniel's supposed lurid relevance to Israel and Iraq and crap like that, but the intervening 2600 years is lost on them.
And I hate them for it. This is one of the main sins I am struggling with. My fury over their pusillanimous warmongering bigoted stupidity burns and distorts me, even now.
I seriously need to get away from it all somehow. Maybe I should go to Algeria, too.
I'll close by noting that the Wikipedia article I link to above states that the final tragedy in the film, though it was claimed to have been committed by Islamic rebels, may in fact been actually committed by Algerian intelligence and military forces..
There's no hint of that in the film, but the story is so full of normal, sane and humane Muslims that it is still very clear that this film is not making any propaganda points about Islam.
Which is to me - someone who has lived a few years among the Believers in Turkey and Egypt, and traveled throughout the Middle East, was very comforting. I'm sick of propaganda by fools who know nothing about Islam or Muslims splashing their lurid fantastical fears in the media.
This film, on the contrary, ends with a beautiful voice over meditation that is apparently from the abbot's actual letters or journal, about how whatever happens no one is to blame Islam or Muslims for their fate. That they had come in peace to live there, and had been welcomed by the people with love.
And that is about all there is to say. Pray for us, Father.
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