I only saw 10 films this month.  Blame Josh for making me rewatch The Wire.  Black Narcissus is far and away the best of what I saw.

Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger, 1947)

Fish Tank (Andrea Arnold, 2009)

A Good Day to Me (Alan Del Rio & Aaron Brown) Watch Here

Humpday (Lynn Shelton, 2009)

Where the Wild Things Are (Spike Jonze, 2009)

Year: 1947

Writer: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger (The Life & Death of Colonel Blimp)

Director: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

Cast: Deborah Kerr (The King & I, Casino Royale (1967), From Here to Eternity), Jean Simmons (Howl’s Moving Castle, Inherit the Wind, Spartacus, The Blue Lagoon, Guys and Dolls), and Sabu (Jungle Book (1942), The Thief of Bagdad)

This film is about the weakness of humanity in trying times. I don’t want to say it’s about the weakness of faith even though that’s what it may be about. I might just be wanting to see past it. The film is absolutely beautiful with a cast that does everything they can to correctly portray these characters that were once only words on a page (it’s based on a novel of the same name).

Deborah Kerr’s Sister Clodagh is forced to lead four other sisters to the Himalayans where they attempt to set up a school at a former palace. The loneliness as well as the presence of Mr. Dean, a masculine government agent, lead to the sisters breaking apart and turning on each other. Honestly, I would have to see this film a second time and read the book to properly break it down. I highly recommend seeing this film, perhaps as a companion piece with Doubt. This film represents, to me, a time in our film history that is gone, only seen faintly in recent films. Its subtlety in the way it’s acted, the way the story unfolds and the way it’s shot, not only the cinematography but also location and on-set shooting, is rarely seen. It reaches to the deepest of the human experience to the core of what happens when our faith is challenged.

Grade: B+

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Other volumes can be found here. And don’t forget to click for larger images!

Image from: Black Narcissus | Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, 1947

Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus is a film that boggles the mind, it recently celebrated its 60th birthday yet still (thanks largely to the British Film Institute) looks impeccable. Not only that, but the film – set atop a remote mountain peak in the Himalayas – was shot almost entirely at Britain’s famous Pinewood Studios. Only one or two of the landscape scenes were shot in selected locations in England and Ireland, but the shots that this film became known for – particularly the dizzying still shown above – were all created under a roof. Thanks to ITV’s recent Blu-ray release of the film, it’s easier to appreciate this aspect than ever before, and some of the attention to detail shown by messrs. Powell & Pressburger is quite astounding. Most of the much-admired Himalaya scenes were created using miniatures and glass shots, efforts that netted the film one of two Oscars at the 1948 ceremony (the other going to renowned cinematographer Jack Cardiff for his work on the film). For the scene above, however, the cliff face and surrounding country was drawn out using pastels.

Image from: The Taste of Tea | Katsuhito Ishii, 2004

Next up is a film that isn’t quite as well-known as some of the entries listed so far. Katsuhito Ishii is one of Japan’s foremost talents when it comes to animated films, and was the man behind the animated sequences in Kill Bill Vol. 2. It was however one of his quirky full-length features that really put his name on the map back in 2004, after a very successful festival run and subsequent international theatrical release for The Taste of Tea. The visual side of Ishii’s work is a thing that has always sparked interest, and this is part of the reason The Taste of Tea did so well. There are some quite wonderful sequences to be witnessed, least not the the part of the film that involves a young girl called Sachiko (played by Maya Banno) and her imagining of a huge version of herself. No matter where she goes, little Sachiko is never safe from her looming, silent giant, yet she figures a way to get rid of this enormous Doppelgänger in the end. It’s just one of the wonderful little touches that can be found throughout The Taste of Tea, all of which add up to something rather special.

Image from: Lolita | Stanley Kubrick, 1962

To say that Stanley Kubrick’s take on Vladimir Nabokov’s famed and controversial 1955 novel Lolita turned a few heads when it was first released back in 1962 would be a gross understatement. The film does well to skirt a line and never particularly address the issue that many slammed the film for to begin with, that of the age of the title character. The film sees a professor fall for a 14- year-old girl, the daughter of a woman he chooses to move in with. Lolita was played by 16-year-old Sue Lyon, a newcomer who took to the role extremely well with a measured innocence that was often betrayed by the character’s sexual maturity. There is a single moment in Lolita where we are introduced to the character for the first time, and it’s one of those very affecting moments in a Kubrick film where laughs are never far way. Another film that perfectly portrays this kind of controversial, borderline sexual relationship between man and girl is Luc Besson’s Léon, but that particular film introduces us to the girl (played by the wonderful Natalie Portman) early on, and thus misses out on the kind of effective entrance that Kubrick offers us here.

Image from: The Truman Show | Peter Weir, 1998

The Truman Show is one of those popular films that come along every so often that aren’t perhaps given as much respect as they deserve. The popularity is warranted, in this case, but the film is also an incredibly important one. It paved the way for a handful of successful American dramatic comedies that were thought-provoking and intellectually-stimulating as well as being entertaining. It proved to Hollywood, for a spell, that if one looked to find a balance between these two aspects then great success could be garnered. The shot I’ve chosen is part of The Truman Show’s conclusive sequence, and is as powerful as it is evocative. I also find that it’s one of those images that can be just as effective if you’re not knowledgeable of what’s behind it. There’s a touch of the theatrical about it, what with the fake backdrop and clear line of division between the real world and the faux one. Then there’s the lone figure silhouetted against the backdrop with his hand outstretched, as if testing this fake sky to make sure it’s actually there. Even without the entire plot of The Truman Show to precede it, this is undoubtedly one of the more evocative shots to be found in all of contemporary American cinema.

Image from: 5 Centimeters per Second | Makoto Shinkai, 2007

Makoto Shinkai’s 5 Centimeters per Second has the honour of being the first animated film to make one of these lists, and is a film that is often spellbinding in its beauty. Shinkai has a history of creating animated films in Japan that practically define the term attention to detail, and 5 Centimeters is just the latest in a long line of impressive efforts. As with his previous titles, 5 Centimeters is a loose romantic plot upon which Shinkai and his team can conjure their visual wizardry. Up until witnessing one of the man’s films for the first time, I thought it was only Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli that practiced the art of animation in such an attentive manner – it turns out I was terribly wrong. What makes 5 Centimeters per second even more impressive is that most of the scenes, set in suburban Japan, were created by referring to photographs of actual locations. It’s difficult enough to create scenes from scratch, but to work with existing real-life locations and breath new life into them must be a different kind of challenge altogether.

Thank you very much for reading, and expect another volume of Evocative Images in Film very soon. Meanwhile, please feel free to list images that could be used in the next volume – I’m always open to suggestions!

Some people may have heard that the great cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, passed away on April 22nd. Awarded with an honorary Oscar in 2001, he was behind the camera for such classics as ‘A Matter of  Life and Death‘, ‘The Red Shoes‘ with its splendid technicolor, and ‘Black Narcissus‘ for which he also won an Academy Award.

Cardiff came to Cork in 2001, and gave a talk at UCC, where he discussed what it was like to work with the stars, including Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn, and chatted about his book, ‘Magic Hour’. Although quite a few years ago now, perhaps someone out there remembers this visit to Cork..if you do, please share some memories!

The Gaurdian’s ‘Life Through a Lens‘ is a nice tribute to Cardiff, using 20 photos to capture his career, while his impact on cinema was also discussed over at The Film Talk.

]]> http://speilet.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/jack-cardiff-d%c3%b8d/ Thu, 23 Apr 2009 19:56:39 +0000 trondjo http://speilet.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/jack-cardiff-d%c3%b8d/ http://halmasonberg.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/brilliant-cinematographer-jack-cardiff-dies/ Wed, 22 Apr 2009 22:36:07 +0000 halmasonberg http://halmasonberg.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/brilliant-cinematographer-jack-cardiff-dies/

One of my heroes, the supremely talented and illustrious cinematographer Jack Cardiff has passed away at the age of 94. Cardiff was known for such films as THE AFRICAN QUEEN, THE RED SHOES, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA, WAR AND PEACE, THE VIKINGS, and one of my favorite films of all time and the single most beautiful ever shot, BLACK NARCISSUS. Cardiff also directed the 1968 psychedelic film GIRL ON A MOTORCYCLE. 

“Naturally, I am proud of successful films that I have enjoyed working on like ‘The Red Shoes’ and the ‘Black Narcissus’ and I have had a certain satisfaction from that. But the films that I am most proud of – the film for instance that I made under great difficulty, ‘Sons and Lovers’, I wanted to make it into a good film because the book is marvelous and I didn’t want to let the author (D.H. Lawrence) down.”

Luckily for us, much of Cardiff’s work is available on DVD. I highly recommend the Blu-ray transfer of BLACK NARCISSUS which, while not available in the U.S., is readily available from England in a stunning non-region-encoded transfer. 

Here’s to you, Mr. Cardiff. 

I hate to be a Debbie Downer at this late hour in the day, but the BBC is reporting that filmmaker Jack Cardiff has passed away at 94.  He had a wonderfully long and varied career as both and a director and a cinematographer.  I think he’s a Technicolor genius, and his cinematography work with Michael Powell and Emerich Pressburger on the exceptional melodramas Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes may be some of the greatest ever.  I cannot recommend these films enough; his work in these movies is one of the great cases for film as a true art.  It’s a testament to his talent that, even on YouTube, his ability to capture color is simply stunning.  Let’s celebrate the life of a true artist with (what I believe to be) the crowning achievement of his work:

I recall sitting in a film class and encountering this scene for the first time.  I see plenty of movies, and many of them excite me in some way or another, but this scene was something special.  I crackled with an electric shock, like I was a human battery, as I sat through these moments, and the sensation never leaves me.

If it were not for the way that Mr. Cardiff captured the redness of Sister Rose’s lipstick of eerily calm pinks of the Himalayan sunrise in the sublime manner that he did, I wonder if this scene would have the same hypnotic control over me.  Powell and Pressburger indubitably played a large and important part in crafting the perfect finale of Black Narcissus (they’re the directors, and geniuses in their own right, after all), but the colors–so necessary to the feel and mood and affect of the film–are Cardiff’s doing.  He’s a man of supreme talent, and he shall be missed.

I must be getting old because I find myself referring back far too often to my youth and how things “used to be.” Granted, I came of age during Hollywood’s second Golden Era: the 70’s. Actually, to be more accurate, I started living and breathing cinema in the late 60’s and was exposed to first releases of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and BONNIE AND CLYDE among so many others. And for a good decade or more, films were a sight to behold. Daring and edgy while dipping ambiguously into alternate realities and tackling subjects and characters with an inner desire to strip away the outer layers and look closely at what lies beneath, all the while pushing the boundaries of the medium in a way unseen to date. 

So in my old-age, I have to shake my head slightly when I hear directors like Zack Snyder hailed as “groundbreaking” and “visionary.” Now I have nothing against Zack Snyder personally, but I have yet to witness any real visionary storytelling in his films. I haven’t found any of them downright “bad”, but they have sadly left me feeling rather empty. DAWN OF THE DEAD stripped away the social commentary that made the original so damn effective. And 300 looked really cool, but was ultimately lacking in character or depth. At least for my tastes. WATCHMEN isn’t a horrible film by any stretch and there are some interesting themes and moments, but at the end of the day, I was bored through a good portion of the film and almost walked out in the first half hour. I found myself slightly more involved as the film continued, but only slightly. And as for the visuals, as with 300, the images were ultimately empty, though at times striking. These films left me with very little to hold on to after the end credits rolled. I never felt challenged or stimulated or moved. These films never got past my first layer of skin, no less into my gut. 

The world of special effects these days has dulled something in film for me. When used sparingly, it can be a wonderful tool. However, when a film is allowed to ride on its effects budget alone, the results are often artistically disastrous, regardless of box office intake. 

The STAR WARS prequels were vapid. Yes, even REVENGE OF THE SITH which, despite the claims of those desperate to find something of value there, was a lesson in non-storytelling. It was a wonderful display of effects devoid of performance or script. 

The other side of the coin could be, say, the recent Swedish vampire flick LET THE RIGHT ONE IN which used its effects sparingly with the result being that each effect was a part of the story and therefore had far more impact than if the film were an effects extravaganza, as the American version would have been (or will probably be). 

And then there are films like STRAW DOGS which I had the pleasure of watching again recently. You know, when all is said and done, STRAW DOGS is a film that could only get made today as an indie. If that. Very few locations, a handful of great actors, a challenging script and theme, and a director with something to say and the talent to say it. It is the powerful and incredible editing in STRAW DOGS that is its greatest “effect.” So you won’t see ANYTHING like STRAW DOGS worming its way through the Hollywood system today. No, not without having its guts removed piece by piece until any trace of humanity, artistry and/or meaning had been thoroughly stripped from it. Sorry to be such a sad sack, but it’s the truth. And, sadly, even the indie world is filled with filmmakers yearning to walk away from the creative goldmine that is indie filmmaking, to pass into the ranks of Hollywood star directors. Just like so many visionary foreign filmmakers who come to Hollywood and never make another film of vision or substance. I take my hat off to the Pedro Almodovars of the world who recognize the glory of their current situations and turn away from the siren’s call of Hollywoodland. 

So it was that when I read Kyle Smith’s review of WATCHMEN in the New York Post, my head shook uncontrollably with despair:

Director Zack Snyder’s cerebral, scintillating follow-up to “300″ seems, to even a weary filmgoer’s eye, as fresh and magnificent in sound and vision as “2001″ must have seemed in 1968, yet in its eagerness to argue with itself, it resembles “A Clockwork Orange. Like those Stanley Kubrick films – it is also in part a parody of “Dr. Strangelove” – it transforms each moment into a tableau with great, uncompromising concentration. The effect is an almost airless gloom, but the film is also exhilarating in breadth and depth.” 

Really? Comparing Snyder to Kubrick? REALLY? Luckily, my loneliness and horror can be eased by comments like Kenneth Turan’s in the Los Angeles Times:

Despite being prematurely canonized by the film’s publicity apparatus, Snyder stands revealed here as more of a beginner than a visionary in his uncertain approach to making an on-screen world come alive. 

Now I know my comments here will be met with some hostility from the fans of the above-mentioned films, but like I said, I’m just some old fogey complaining about how things were when I was younger. “Back in the day,” as they say.

So I’ll just shut up and go back to my little home theater to take in another viewing of THE CONVERSATION or MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER or POINT BLANK. And maybe I’ll follow those up with some antiquated old-timer fair like BLACK NARCISSUS or THE BIG PARADE. You know, films that were made before the visionaries came along.

Black Narcissus (dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, United Kingdom, 1947) had a very intriguing plot about nuns who try to start a school and hospital in a small Himalayan village.  But there their dreams and vanities are brought to the fore, creating a beautifully shot film with something almost devilish underneath.   Black Narcissus is very much like Picnic at Hanging Rock in that regard, capturing a sort of austere repression that is then punctured by a wild landscape.

The film has an unique visual texture, due to its revolutionary (at the time) use of Technicolor and the great vibrancy of Alfred Junge’s sets (which seem to make their own statement about the lust and dreams of the collective past).  At the end the set is turned into a claustophobic emotional space of violent desire with expressionistic lighting, all tense reds and sickening greens.

The camera style sets up a compositional dichotomy between the great shots of the Himalayan landscape and old palace to some of the most dramatically potent facial close-ups I’ve seen, the lighting beautifully sculpting the character’s face as she recognizes the implications of a previous action or dialogue with an interiorized horror.  And then there are times when dramatically one would think a close-up would occur but the camera is kept at a full shot; when Sister Ruth runs in covered in blood it is not there is no close-up but the vibrant red of the blood seems to suddenly make itself part of the rest of the bold mise-en scene, pulling everything into a chillingly coherent and theatrical whole.

The film is not without its problems: some dialogue exchanges seem rough, almost like the adaptation of Rumer Godden’s novel needed to skip over multiple lines; some of the scene structuring seems dated; and we won’t get into the colonial politics (especially the one ethnographic montage near the beginning).

But overall Black Narcissus is a very engrossing film.

Okay, so only one sister goes wild in Black Narcissus, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s 1947 film about nuns in the Himalayas.  But the entire film has a wild undercurrent of unease that sucks all the nuns in; some fight the current with all their might and some surrender completely to it.

While made in 1947, Black Narcissus feels revolutionary in some ways; the film doesn’t feel like an oldie, thanks in part to its breathtaking cinematography and art design (the film deservedly won Oscars for both).  It feels new and fresh, and had it been made today, I don’t think much would have changed.

What’s it about?  The film starts briefly in India, where Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr, The King & I) has been assigned to lead of group of sisters to start a school and clinic in the Himalayas.  The Palace of Mopu was donated by a rich general, who housed his concubines there. 

Clodagh does not get to choose her fellow sisters for this assignment, which include Sister Briony (Judith Furse), the strong,no-nonsense nun; Sister Phillipa (Flora Robson), the anguished soul; Sister Honey (Jenny Laird), the perky and compassionate one; and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Bryon), the one who’s a couple beads short of a rosary.

Upon arrival at Mopu, Clodagh instantly locks horns with Mr. Dean (David Farrar) a Brit who lives down the mountain.  Dean is there to help, but often his methods clash with Clodagh.  But there’s a subtle–yet never consummated–attraction between Dean and Clodagh; Dean is a bit of a louse at times, and Clodagh frequently calls him on his crap.  Their relationship never even rises to flirting,  but Ruth senses something illicit is going on between the two and jealously obsesses over their platonic relationship.

Life at Mopu is hard; the wind blows incessantly, as if there will never be calm to Clodagh and the sisters.  Clodagh catches herself reminiscing about her life prior to becoming a nun; we get glimpses into a life that seemed so full of hope and optimism, contrasted to what Clodagh has now become: stoic and unsure of her ability to lead the sisters.

Sister Ruth becomes and increasing concern for Clodagh.  Ruth’s deterioration into madness is the juiciest part of the entire film, and what she does to defy the sisters isn’t really that boundary-pushing, but is nonetheless shocking.

What’s good about it?  The cinematography–as I mentioned before–is absolutely beautiful.  Kerr and Farrar’s performances are solid, but it’s really Bryon’s Sister Ruth who steals the show.  She’s not only crazy, she’s down right frightening.

While the film is (obviously) steeped in Catholicism, Black Narcissus isn’t really about religion.  It’s not a pick-me-up type of film.  It’s one of those films where people learn from their failures.  Sister Act this ‘aint.

What’s bad about it?  The film is on slow burn, so if you’re expecting Lots of Stuff Happening At Once, you’ll be disappointed.  

Perfect for: Deborah Kerr fans, cinematographiles, and anyone looking for a film with right amalgamation of drama, suspense and artsiness.

While Pushing Daisies may have garnered 12 Emmy nominations, it may also have been one of the shows most hurt by last year’s writer’s strike. A story that is not only quirky but that is built on a dense and complicated–if entirely charming–mythology, Daisies didn’t really have the luxury of disappearing from our screens for an extended period and emerging unscathed. Built around a murder committed by bees, the season premiere sagged for the first third as the convoluted set-up–piemaker gifted with the touch of life; nature’s balance requires life for life; piemaker’s mom/Chuck’s dad/Chuck’s mom/homeopathic mood enhancers…you get the idea–was spelled out for viewers who might have forgotten it over the 10 months since we had a new episode.

Luckily, both the basics of the show (the glorious visuals; the warmth and connections between lonely people) and the new twists (moving Olive to a new setting; moving Chuck out of Ned’s apartment) are strong, and the rest of the episode shone. There might always be a corpse, but this isn’t CSI–this show is about both overcoming and incorporating grief to build yourself into something new. The identity of the killer hiding in a whacked-out version of Bert’s Bees isn’t the real story here–the point is Ned realizing how his home expanding is about making something new; it’s Aunt Vivian being able to get on a bus for the first time (having gotten over her feeling that public transportation is too intimate). The disconcerting thing about procedurals is that their obsession with death makes life seem so disposable. Pushing Daisies reminds us over and over through its obsession with death that life is glorious. While the mystery wasn’t terribly difficult to figure out, the way Ned and Chuck’s relationship is growing and maturing reflects what the show is really about.

As charming as Ned and Chuck might be, Kristin Chenoweth and Chi McBride are really the stars of this show. Chuck and Ned’s sweet romance might become entirely too sticky if not cut with the lemony comedic bite Olive and Emerson bring to the pie. We’re eaten up with curiosity wondering what secret tragedy has severed Emerson’s daughter from his life and where the story will take Olive and her new animal friend, Pigby. Pigby. If Chenoweth and Swoosie Kurtz in teal nun’s habits don’t make you laugh, I don’t think we’ll find anything that will.

Last year, we started keeping track of all the Hitchcock references Daisies was throwing at us. While I’m not sure I caught any of those tonight, having Chenoweth spin and sing in the Alps and make direct references to Sound of Music lyrics is almost as funny as having Ned pop up at Betty’s Bees as a temp from Happy Time, the temp agency in creator Bryan Fuller’s previous brilliant and underappreciated medidtation on death, Dead Like Me. None of those, however, can top the prettiest, most color-saturated show on television stashing the incandescent Chenoweth in a nunnery straight out of Black Narcissus–I nearly fell off the couch when they revealed that long shot of the abbey, the well, and the gates.

There’s no other show on television that’s so gorgeous (hexagon-tiled floors at a honey-products company), so well thought-out to every last detail (bee-magnet Chuck dressed in florals), or so clever (Black Narcissus! Are you kidding me?), but there are a lot of shows getting better ratings. Susannah begged you the other day to tune into Life, reminding you of the tragic fates of other quality shows that reward attention and devotion. After seeing Wednesday’s ratings, I’m coming on bended knee to beg you to give Pushing Daisies a chance. Give yourself a chance to fall in love with a lonely piemaker and a dead girl and a knitting PI and a waitress who is a gun loaded with truth buckshot–and with the idea that love really can conquer death. You won’t be disappointed.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature.

- Seneca

There I was, impingly (i.e. happily) watching one the most rated films of our modern age when a thought struck me, just like that. No, not like this, just like that. (Sorry, that was a Tommy Cooper moment for those old and British enough). Anyway, the film was Black Narcissus, a finely told and beautifully filmed tale of nuns who are frightfully keen to be good and holy, but who go doolally in the Himalayas, unable to deal with “this place” they have come to.

“This place” is Mopu, a mountain summit palace, where formerly the old General (who was Nepalese, not a colonial Brit) kept his women. In less than a year, the nuns each fall to pieces, haunted by memories of life before they joined their order: lives that were in part far happier than the deliberate struggle they have chosen by becoming nuns.

By contrast, the “child-like” native people of the village, whom the nuns have come to “help” (o, the silent editorial power of the inverted comma) are happy, content, laughing, their lives apparently full of joy, although hard. They work because they have to; the nuns work because they want to forget the past and, after a time, blot out their doubts in God.

Mopu, the palace and especially the garden and summit, very much has its own spirit, in a way quite like the Marabar caves in the wonderful A Passage to India.

The idea of a place having a spirit is called ‘locus genii’. That translates first as ‘the geniuses of the place’: but here a genius is a spirit, like the genie in the lamp, not some prodigy/nerd (we get ‘genius’ from the Roman idea that very clever people were tutored by spirits – genii – living outside their body, guiding them forwards).

And the thing about Mopu’s spirit is, for the nuns, is that it demands of you:  you must either live in total harmony with it, like the holy man who sits naked on the hill top, mute (but multi-lingual and with several British honours – KCVO etc, making him a “Sir”), or you must ignore it, like the General’s English agent, Mr Dean, a rugged (denied) love interest character.

The wind blows through the convent at all times, the water is so pure it brings impurities of the body to the skin’s surface, the air so refined at such altitude that the nuns become over-tired, the snow so isolating they have only themselves to deal with. There is no avoiding the locus genii. And here was my interrupting thought: you feel the spirit of the place, so strongly, but the nuns seem alone, spiritually un-nourished: where is God?

Throughout, but unspoken, is a thread of inner-outer, of liminal, conflict. These women are trying to do their best by a code imposed upon them by their order (but which they readily accept, and have chosen).  We see that each has become a “bride of Christ” (how sexist the church is, amongst other things) because of heartache or troubles in the “outside” world.

And that is how it is known: “outside”. So what, then, is inside? What is deemed safe and permissible enough to be termed “inside”? These nuns have taken themselves away from their own families to a religious order, then away to Nepal, then from the large convent there, to Mopu. It is as though they want to become the smallest of the Russian matryoshka dolls. They retreat inside, and inside, and further inside.  But again, where is God? They bristle at the casual (although reverent) reference to Christ made by the General’s son – “we do not speak of our Lord so lightly”. They keep their sense of God apart, as well as inside themselves, and inspire (breathe in) within themselves a resulting conflict so great that it drives one of them to insanity and attempted murder.

Now, you can go several ways from this point:

• You can say that there is a conflict between a Christian god and a pagan spirit of the place (the word relates to the countryside: paganus = country-dweller).
• You can say that the nuns are unable to reconcile their isolating, distancing and rigid, rule-bound idea of God with the true experience of God in the world around them.
• You can say that God is testing them, or has even abandoned them.
• You can say that their sense of God is misplaced: they are in one of the most beautiful, rarified places in the world (the best God could make), surrounded by good people, but all it brings them is pain because they feel they must cling to an inappropriate, structured religion instead.
• You can say they have a chance really to see the magic around them, to compare it with their teachings and strictures and draw their own conclusions, but they choose to resolve the conflict by running away rather than asking questions.

What a terrible irony – to be surrounded by the very best the world can offer, only for it to cause you heartache and conflict.

For me, it doesn’t matter what you call the beauty, the spirit, the specialness of a place to yourself. Regardless of your system of belief, it is being (or trying to be) ‘at one’ with the surroundings that matters. The nuns could have seen a Christian God surrounding them there (cf. the thought-provoking and great Gabriel Byrne / Patricia Arquette / Jonathan Pryce film Stigmata -“lift up a stone and you will find me,” writes Christ). The local holy man has obviously found something in it; a pagan might find their own gods or spirits. The experience of and quest for spirituality ain’t about religion. It can be, but it’s not nearly the whole story. The nuns chose religious structure (stricture) over possible love and new experiences; they chose religion over spirituality.

This morning, I happened to turn on Dave Fanning-as-Tubridy on Radio 1 only to hear Esther Rantzen being interviewed (click on Tuesday’s show here to listen). That’s Life was one of my favourite TV programs as kid, and an excuse for being allowed to stay up a bit later on a Sunday school night. Always a consummate interviewer, she was an equally engaging interviewee. Straining to hear above the noise of our wheezing kettle boiling, I could have sworn I heard her mention nuns. An odd coincidence, given that myself and the other Anti-Roomers were only talking about this very subject last night. The reason? This article in The New York Times about Beguinages (love that word), which have been operating in Europe since after The Crusades.

According to the NYT:

“Unlike sisterhoods that required a life spent apart from society under vows of chastity, these Catholic women looked for holiness outside monastic norms. Although they lived and prayed together within an enclave, partly as a form of mutual protection — some historians believe they banded together after losing their men to the Crusades, which left behind mainly criminals and louts — beguines were not confined to the cloister. Many ministered to the poor and sick outside their walls. Lifelong celibacy was not required either. They could leave the order and marry (but not return).”

Rantzen mused about how she might once have considered becoming a nun, and that living in a convent can lead to a long life. She cited the example of a Convent graveyard in Galway where the graves of all the Sisters revealed that they had lived until their late 90s. This, according to Esther, was down to “lots of fresh air, a plain diet, a life of routine and no sex.”

The Beguinages and their model of a female only community seems to offered more than the implied life of service under the aegis of the Catholic Church. They offered refuge, options, peace, independence even. If the set-up in Black Narcissus had been a bit more like this, perhaps Sister Clodagh wouldn’t have lost the plot. Personally? I think the scarlet lipstick pushed her over the edge – literally.