Catholics love movies about nuns—and we’ve got plenty to select from. Whether you’re within the mood for a preconciliar classic like “The Bells of St. Mary’s” or a heartfelt indie comedy like “Little Sister,” or simply your fifteenth comfort-watch of “Sister Act 2,” the cinematic sisterhood is there for you. There aren’t quite so many great movies about priests, but there are still enough to fill an Advent calendar, from “Becket” to “I Confess” to “The Exorcist” to “Doubt.”
But what about other niches within the vocational ecology? Attempt to provide you with a listing of great movies about monks or friars, and at best you’ll give you the chance to scrape together a handful. There are some truly excellent movies about monks, with deep insights into the love of God and the character of sacrifice. But why aren’t there more? And what does this absence cost us?
There are some truly excellent movies about monks, with deep insights into the love of God and the character of sacrifice. But why aren’t there more?
Of the eight movies most relevant to our understanding of cinematic Catholic monks and friars, my very own favorites on this strangely small subgenre remain unchanged: “Of Gods and Men” (2010) and “The Flowers of St. Francis” (1950). (For the needs of this list I excluded movies about Orthodox Christian monks.) Each of those movies, like a lot of the movies on this genre, are hagiographies. “Of Gods and Men,” directed by Xavier Beauvois, depicts the lives of nine Trappist monks in Tibhirine, Algeria, leading as much as their kidnapping and murder in 1996 throughout the Algerian Civil War.
Beauvois shows the monks as a part of their area people. They provide medical treatment to the Muslims amongst whom they live. They experience village life with the awkwardness of outsiders, but show the care and unwavering commitment of community members. Considered one of the film’s most memorable scenes involves a young Muslim woman and an old Catholic monk discussing their experiences of affection.
“Of Gods and Men” shows its monks as individuals drawn like awestruck moths to the flame of Christ’s love. Beauvois captures the emotional intensity of the monks’ spiritual lives—including the alternatives that cause them to their deaths. Scenes of Mass within the monastery are hushed and reverent; the scene by which they vote on whether or to not flee, knowing that staying will likely mean death, is electrical. Within the film’s most moving scene, the monks enjoy a meal together while listening to a cassette tape of “Swan Lake”: secular music, an peculiar dinner, yet transformed right into a eucharistic liturgy by their knowledge that violent death may be very near.
‘Flowers of St. Francis’
Roberto Rossellini’s “Flowers of St. Francis” is certainly one of a number of biopics in regards to the stripped saint of Assisi. Rossellini’s film is about other than the remaining by several characteristics, all of which push the film farther from Hollywood conventions. A lot of the actors are real Franciscans, including the person who plays St. Francis himself. The friar who played Francis can be not named within the credits, turning his portrayal of humility into an act of humility. “Flowers” is an episodic film in regards to the adventures and misadventures of several of the saint’s early followers. It’s a community portrait—less about Francis the person, more in regards to the Franciscan lifestyle.
And it’s funny. (The unique Italian title, which translates roughly as “Francis, God’s Jester,” gets closer to the movie’s mood than its English title.) Rossellini’s film is an prolonged meditation on the paradoxes of the Gospel: the last shall be first, he who humbles himself shall be exalted, self-preservation is loss and self-sacrifice is gain. These paradoxes have develop into so familiar that it’s easy for us to forget how bizarre they’re—how genuinely difficult a challenge they present. So Rossellini opens his film with Francis and his followers splashing through mud in a rainstorm, proclaiming their joy. “May all men get well love’s joy!” Francis cries—and goes galumphing off in a twig of filthy water.
All of the Francis movies show the saint and his followers selecting discomfort over comfort, ridicule over flattery.
All of the Francis movies show the saint and his followers selecting discomfort over comfort, ridicule over flattery. But where the opposite hagiographic movies take these humiliations seriously, even self-seriously, maintaining a lugubrious piety within the face of mud and mockery, “Flowers” is stuffed with punchlines and slapstick. Francis’ commands are unexpected and sometimes mainly incorrect. When an old man says he can’t wander the world begging within the cape he loves, Francis agrees—and tells him to do away with each the cape and his shoes! In one other episode, Francis tells one other friar to trample him as punishment for his pride; the friar apologetically steps on him and quickly steps right back off. The movie’s comic tone gives it a grubby joy and a medieval weirdness that reflects its source material, the 14th-century compilation The Little Flowers of St. Francis.
The film’s most slapsticky episode can be its most heartfelt. A friar desperately wants to evangelise as an alternative of staying home cooking for the others. Francis severely says he can preach so long as he starts out by saying, “I talk lots but I accomplish little!” The obedient friar trots off and promptly gets mixed up in a siege. He preaches to the besiegers, who fling him around—they use him as a jump rope!—and are about to kill him when he’s rescued by a priest and brought to the warlord Nicolaio, a ridiculous figure trapped in his ornate armor. There’s banter among the many executioners (“Along with your aim, you almost cut off the last one’s rump!”) and a hilarious moment by which the hardly verbal Nicolaio indicates that he has read Aristotle. But the purpose of all this comedy is the miracle: Brother Ginepro converts the warrior, and the siege is lifted. Peace is completed through humiliation and give up.
“Flowers” is the Francis biopic most concerned with the community, slightly than the person. Within the two other Francis movies I watched, St. Clare is portrayed because the only woman in Francis’ company, whereas in “Flowers” she appears along with other sisters. Perhaps for this reason community focus, that is the one certainly one of the three hagiographies by which poor people appear as opinionated individuals slightly than an undifferentiated mass of need. One family is joyful to dump their “easy” grandfather on Francis, and the old man becomes certainly one of the community’s core followers. Everybody’s selections matter on this movie, and everybody’s soul is up for grabs.
Other Movies About St. Francis
The opposite two Francis biopics I watched speak to my very own spirituality less, but they’ve strengths Rossellini’s masterpiece lacks. Franco Zeffirelli’s “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” (1972) provided a generation of Catholics with a template for his or her faith: anti-authoritarian, nature-loving, youthful and idealistic. I discussed the movie to a friend, and she or he sang from memory certainly one of the movie’s sweetest songs, a paean to simplicity. She had learned the song, she said, from a Catholic layman who devoted himself to serving people in need: “the one that showed me what unconditional love is.” Zeffirelli emphasizes Francis and Clare’s dewy youth, echoing his famous 1968 adaptation of “Romeo and Juliet.” “Brother Sun” is simplistic, and its second half, specializing in Francis’ conflicts with church hierarchs, is far weaker than its first half. Nevertheless it’s an unabashedly inspirational film.
Liliana Cavani’s “Francesco” (1989) suffers from its casting. Mickey Rourke and Helena Bonham Carter, each talented actors, struggle to portray Francesco and Chiara (Clare). Rourke seems tamped-down, as if afraid of setting a foot incorrect when playing a saint, and Bonham Carter, an actress with a present for coquetry and command, gives Chiara a perpetual petulant moue. But in other respects Cavani blends medieval piety and modern concerns more completely than the opposite two filmmakers. We see the total effects of Francis’ military service. He will not be only a spoiled wealthy kid, but a veteran affected by PTSD. His clash along with his merchant father follows a recent Pixar-film script by which the parents are all the time incorrect. It’s striking to see Francis take a recent interest in the fabric basis of his family’s wealth, visiting the dyeing rooms and seeing the impoverished individuals who work themselves to the bone so he can party. This film interrogates the moral psychology of the conscience-stricken wealthy, though it shows less interest within the moral or spiritual lives of the poor.
“Francesco,” like most movies of its era, mistrusts institutional authority.
“Francesco,” like most movies of its era, mistrusts institutional authority. Rossellini starts by saying Francis won approval from Pope Innocent III; Zeffirelli and Cavani focus more on the clash between Francis’ poverty and the church’s luxury. Cavani gestures at later controversies by which people looking for to follow Francis veered into heresy, and she or he gives as much respect to persecuted heretics as to the loyal son of the church at the middle of her film. Where Zeffirelli’s film shows its spiritual side within the lilting, golden shots of nature, Cavani uses El Greco colours and bleaker light to suggest a more damaged and doubt-ridden world. Francis himself doubts—and his anguished query to God receives an unexpected answer on this movie’s most haunting and trusting moment.
Other Movies About Monks
“Dos Monjes (Two Monks)” is a 1934 melodrama from the Mexican director Juan Bustillo Oro, preserved and highlighted by Martin Scorsese’s World Cinema Project. Two men vie for the love of 1 woman, but when Javier catches Ana in Juan’s arms, any person shoots—and Ana, coming between the 2 men, dies as an alternative of the intended goal. Each men then develop into monks, neither knowing that the opposite has been tonsured. Their unwanted reunion, and the conflicting versions they offer of that fatal encounter with Ana, unfold in gorgeous, Expressionist light and shadow. The monastery is a stage for near-allegorical scenes of guilt, uncertainty and forgiveness: a spot of heightened emotion, as private and riven because the human heart.
Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The Hawks and the Sparrows” (1966) is a comedy in regards to the depredations of the owning classes on the poor. It follows a Little Tramp-like semi-vagabond and his slow-witted son through time and space, guided by a talking Marxist crow from the far-off country of Ideology. Within the prolonged middle sequence that offers the film its title, father and son are friars ordered by St. Francis to evangelise to the birds. They suffer greatly in pursuit of this goal and think they’ve been successful—however the hawks still slaughter the sparrows. Francis rebukes the friars, saying they need to preach that “this world have to be modified,” and that in the long run, “a person with blue eyes will bring awareness of sophistication inequality.” “Hawks” is a movie with as much whimsy and irony as moral conviction, and it wears its Catholic-Marxist fusionism frivolously.
“The Name of the Rose” lacks either faith or atheism, and without those undercurrents, it’s just a fancy dress drama.
“The Name of the Rose”: This 1986 adaptation of Umberto Eco’s novel about heresy, murder and a secret library in a 14th-century Benedictine abbey was made with great skill. James Horner’s eerie music and Dante Ferretti’s gargoylicious production design are pure pleasure. Sean Connery portrays a Franciscan detective, allowing the film to play on the difference between mystery because the name of a literary genre by which against the law is solved, and mystery as a theological term exposing the unknowability of God. The movie condemns monks who live off the laypeople but will not be capable of say much beyond that about Christ’s poverty or the potential of Christian comedy, the film’s two stated mental concerns. It feels as if the film lacks either faith or atheism, and without those undercurrents, it’s just a fancy dress drama.
And last—no tribute to friars on film can be complete and not using a mention of Friar Tuck, the most-filmed friar of all of them. My very own favorite Tuck is the plump, sincere badger in Disney’s 1973 cartoon “Robin Hood.”
The Meaning of Monks
Perhaps there are fewer movies about monks and friars because there are fewer of them. The Vatican’s numbers for 2019 give 630,099 women religious and 414,336 priests, versus just 50,295 religious brothers. Tim Markatos, an Orthodox Christian film critic, suggests that filmmakers may additionally be limited by the fabric available to them: “Taking a fast take a look at my list of faith-related movies, I’m seeing loads of nun movies which are adaptations of books or something similar…. Is there simply more nun [intellectual property] to go around than monk IP? Or is there another reason why the nun stories get the movie treatment and the monk stories don’t? I don’t have answers, only more questions.”
My very own suspicion is that filmmakers just don’t see what sorts of stories monks and friars is likely to be best suited to inform. Movies about Christian vowed religious are sometimes movies about power and trust. Stories about priests sometimes show the priest because the rare good man with power. Perhaps more often, they query whether it is feasible to be each respected, with all the facility and protection that respect implies, and good. Movies about religious sisters, especially newer movies, often give attention to the clash between religious hierarchy and the subordinate individual. In movies where a lady is the spiritual authority, the film often activates the stark division between spiritual authority and hierarchical power.
Movies about monks and friars, against this, often depict those that once had the social power of men but have deliberately stripped themselves of it. Where a non secular vocation might offer a lady authority she wouldn’t be granted in lay life, movies about monks and friars could emphasize their newfound submission and powerlessness. We hear an excellent deal nowadays about empowered women; the concept that there’s something beautiful and holy in willingly disempowered men is much more countercultural.
Movies about monks and friars often depict those that once had the social power of men but have deliberately stripped themselves of it.
Monks and friars would also offer recent ways to inform stories about community. Many movies about nuns and sisters give attention to the community as a world set apart: the nun genre overlaps with the “women’s picture,” that beloved genre of movies in regards to the trials and shared joys of a bunch of friends. There isn’t a “men’s picture”; movies in regards to the trials and shared joys of men who love each other are mostly war movies or sports movies. “The Flowers of St. Francis” and “Of Gods and Men” portray men who learn to like each other in loving God. They’re “Steel Magnolias” with the stigmata, “The Joy Luck Club” with martyrdom as an alternative of mahjong.
But what stood out to me greater than anything, as I watched these movies, was the way in which they talked about love. A lot of the movies about priests and girls religious I even have seen don’t spend much time on love. They could explore the concept of vocation, they usually actually understand that romantic or sexual love is likely to be a temptation, but they will not be discourses on the character of affection in the way in which that so most of the movies mentioned on this essay are.
Chiara in “Francesco” confesses her love for Francesco—and certainly one of the brothers immediately chimes in, “For me it was like an earthquake.” It is a love of Francis that’s romantic, and greater than romantic. “Brother Sun” talks about love somewhat less, but in portraying Francis and Clare as young lovers united not in marriage but in celibacy, it offers a vision of affection by which all our temporal loves point upward as hints in regards to the love God offers us.
“Flowers” doesn’t talk much about love, however it does portray the deep tenderness shown by Francis toward his followers and vice versa. Even “Hawks and Sparrows”strikes its most unresolved note when it has the friars close their preaching to each sets of birds by speaking of “love,” a word the birds take up and repeat as they fly away; we never discover what the birds think it means. It appears that evidently love requires class-consciousness, requires structural change in society, and yet it goes beyond those intelligible demands into some as-yet-unknown mystery. “Hawks” is a comedy more comfortable undercutting ambitions than evoking longings. The repeated cry of the birds, “LOVE. LOVE. LOVE,” is the one exception.
I discussed the scene in “Of Gods and Men” by which an old monk and a young woman discuss love. That is essentially the most explicit, almost programmatic statement on the character of affection in any of those movies, and it suits with the concept of affection that all of them share. The abbot, Dom Christian, will later explain the monks’ selection to stay regardless of the threat to their lives by saying: “We’re martyrs out of affection, out of fidelity. If death overtake us, despite ourselves, because as much as the top, as much as the top we’ll attempt to avoid it, our mission here is to be brothers to all. Do not forget that love is everlasting hope. Love endures all the pieces.” However the monks’ understanding of affection has already been summarized best by the aging Brother Luc, who tells the village girl that he, too, has been in love, as she is in love now: “Several times, yes. After which I encountered one other love, even greater. And I answered that love.”
Perhaps that is the unique narrative nexus that stories of monks and friars can provide: the depiction of the romance of give up, of wilfully losing all for love.