The road to Halloween is paved with good films. Wherein we countdown to the spirited season with a hundred doses of horror. 85 days to go.
The 1961 Polish film, Mother Joan of the Angels (Matka Joanna od Aniołów), is one of those significant few masterworks that spends sinfully more time in obscurity. Director, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and his film took the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. But not many today even know of the film’s existence.
Truth be told, Mother Joan of the Angels is not only a high point in a flourishing Polish cinema – of the time and the development since – but a crafty, essential piece of film-making to warrant a place on any film-lovers shelf. File under the decade, horror, religion – whatever – just make sure you are acquainted.
The supernatural elements of the picture are minimal. If anything, the film often manifests through its strange-goings-on as a secular level. Even given the setting of a middle-of-nowhere monastery. The appreciation the religious aspects play, though, is also one of the fundamentals of such tales of possession being told. The great Ingmar Bergman, of course, was walking on similar waters around that time.
“Mother Joan of the Angels is one of those significant few masterworks that spends sinfully more time in obscurity.”
Based on Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz’s 1943 novella, Mother Joan of the Angels floats respectfully around the 1634 Loudun possessions. Something else you likely have little awareness of. Aldous Huxley also wrote about such bewildering events in his 1952 book, The Devils of Loudun. And on the film scene, Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971), trawls through the relationship between Father Grandier and the possessed head nun. The former being burned at the stake is an established prelude in Kawalerowicz’s film.
Blistering, beautifully cinematic, Mother Joan of the Angels has already invited you in before you know where you are. The char-coaled mast at which the priest was burnt, is almost a monument stuck there in the desolate landscape. The living quarters of the select few locals and the prominence of nun’s dwelling are the only other structures inherent in this beguiling expanse.
It is uncharted dust for Father Suryn (Mieczyslaw Voit), though his calling here follows an illustrious experience with exorcism. Those church bells ring right away on his arrival, drawing us into the mystique of religion in these parts. Suryn even bangs his head on the door, literally not fitting in already perhaps.
Suryn meets the commoners, a squalid bunch one would maybe expect from this medieval community. Though as they partake in merriment, their yapping reflects their speculations of the strange events across within the walls of the convent. That the nuns eat meat, because the devil tempted them to. And the housemaid predicts that Suryn will love a crooked one.
“Their immediate common ground is entangled with the longing for sainthood and the repelling of evil.”
The atmospheric solitude is captured immediately, and it brews throughout. Suryn is rife with apprehension and seemingly short on confidence. For he is all too aware of the enigmatic nature of good versus evil. He also lacks belief in himself, rather than the legitimacy of the possessions.
When he finally enters the fray, and meets Mother Joan (Lucyna Winnicka), the priest gets to see the devilish behavior for himself. Establishing a kind of unlikely, untouchable sexual tension between the two troubled figures, their initial interaction is a candid one. Their immediate common ground is entangled with the longing for sainthood and the repelling of evil.
Joan’s sinister shift of facial expression as she is about to leave, is an eerie transition. As the eight devils take over, she darts around the quadrant walls, before dashing away. Later, the first attempted exorcism is a rather public affair, inside the convent. With so many of the nuns under the devil’s snare, the three priests’ attempts at negotiating with mischievous evil has little affluence. Eventually, they have to physically hold Mother Joan down, she claims that their orders for the fiends to leave her body will only torment her further. Which it does.
Elsewhere, Sister Małgorzata (Anna Ciepielewska) pursues her own quest for even a glimmer of freedom, by sneaking away from the convent to frolic with the commoners. More directly, lure herself into temptation with a visiting squire. The contrasts of what goes on between both sets of walls have such similar threads. In one scene, two of the male characters are constructing a wooden jail wall (intended for Mother Joan) as Małgorzata strolls across the barren land for further adventures with the locals.
“The ingrained practice of good and the endemic evil forms a duality of faith that is ultimately difficult to shake off.”
The two worlds exist unto themselves. The ingrained practice of good and the endemic evil forms a duality of faith that is ultimately difficult to shake off. Prayer, as abstract as it may seem, is the sanest form of comfort. Suryn has, you could say, chosen himself as a martyr, for the sake of another’s salvation. Those moments he whips himself, the slash scars appear, a harrowing transition. And again later, with Mother Joan at the opposite side of the room – a kind of mutual self-deprivation.
Suryn, in his most despairing state of mind, seeks counsel from the wise Rabbi. Takes him a while to realize it, but the Rabbi also appears to be him – and both played by the same actor. And in the end, inevitably, Suryn becomes a calm, yet menacing presence. Mother Joan’s seemingly logical rant about the mundane life of a nun as opposed to the possessed, but liberated, soul, was only the start of Suryn’s path to sacrifice.
There are the corrupted and infected at both sides of the fence. Like Father Damian Karras in The Exorcist, Suryn rallies through the self-doubt to offer himself in place of Mother Joan. There is not much concrete here to emphasize a classic love story, but those shared strands of unselfish efforts, bouts of hysteria, repressed desires, is plenty of the ingredients required.
“Mother Joan of the Angels needs to be clawed out of cinema ambiguity and labelled as influential.”
There is little doubt that somewhere along the way, this monumental film from Jerzy Kawalerowicz would inspire the likes of William Peter Blatty in parts of his writing of The Exorcist. And in doing so, Mother Joan of the Angels needs to be clawed out of cinema ambiguity and labelled as influential. There’s also a strong whiff of the movie’s hapless, transforming characters in the Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (2012). And while you’re at it, watch Mother Joan of the Angels as a Polish-nuns-in-personal-turmoil double-bill with Paweł Pawlikowski’s Ida (2014).
There’s a wholesome, profound sadness to Mother Joan of the Angels, embroiled at the surface of the mesmerizing horror and mystery – as refined as those discourses are played out. Those chaotic nuns flail around, dancing and yelling, or scattered static on the floor like white crosses made of cloth. Those robes appear to be so magnificently choreographed, the nuns donned in angelic white, flock together, like the startled doves that sporadically flap around.
It’s a fascinating feat in terms of cinema and story-telling. Mother Joan of the Angels demonstrates to us on numerous occasions, that we just can’t truly measure good and evil. And that in itself is a frightening concept. The fact the film is never explosive is a credit to the composed film-making. Not to say that his is not an intense experience, which it most certainly is.
“Mother Joan of the Angels is a breath-taking film, weaved together with such attentive, low-key force.”
The acting displayed here is with such empathy and dread under the skin, and a glint of fear and hope in the eyes. The music placement, often chanting hymns, is incredible. And the exposure through lighting and that immersive, gliding camera, gives the immaculate, era-appropriate production design even further grandeur. And lest we forget the sumptuous black and white photography from Jerzy Wójcik, as if every frame has something to say.
The subject matter – religion for example – is crafted with a fluid, perhaps even illusory kind of depth. Mother Joan of the Angels is a breath-taking film, weaved together with such attentive, low-key force. Kawalerowicz’s masterpiece closes on such a poignant scene. One where we still have a glimmering, nervous sense of what is next for the tormented souls. The two nuns, Joan and Małgorzata, come together after breaking away from ordeal. And their out-pour of emotion under such restraint is hauntingly beautiful.
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