MAY 13

Thérèse: The Story of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Director: Leonardo De Filippis. Cast: Lindsay Younce, Leonardo Defilippis, Maggie Rose Fleck, Linda Hayden. 96 minutes. 2004.

Unknown during her short life—she died at 24—and at her death, St Therese, also known as the Little Flower, became revered and loved all over the world after her death, especially through the favours people attributed to her prayers. In fact, she had said that she would spend her heaven doing good on the earth. Her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, which became world-famous, is the basis for this movie. She was canonized in 1925, and her parents have been canonized recently. The film begins with her childhood as the youngest in a middle class French family, the traumatic experience of her mother’s death when she was just four years old, and her desire to become a saint. She dedicated her life to God at fourteen. When she was denied entry into convent because she was under age, she went to the Vatican to appeal to the Pope. Life in the convent was no bed of roses for her. But her attachment to Jesus and her persistence saw her through.  The film presents her family, her struggles as a person and as a nun and her writing that finally revealed to the world the spiritual giant she was. There are moments of humour and pathos and deep inner conflict as she struggles with her faith. The movie is a deeply emotional and spiritual experience distilled out of a seemingly undramatic biography.

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Of Gods and Men

Director: Xavier Beauvois. Cast: Lambert Wilson, Michael Lonsdale, Olivier Rabourdin, Philippe Laudenbach, and Sabrina Quazani. 120 minutes. 2010.

Closely based on a true story, this movie presents the last days of a community of seven French Trappist monks caught in the crossfire of Algerian civil war who were abducted and murdered in northern Algeria by an Islamic rebel outfit in 1996. The film opens with a quotation from Psalm 82:6-7: “I have said, you are gods; and all of you are children of the Most High. But you shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.” The psalm echoes throughout the film, highlighting its central theme of the Living God against false gods of our time.

The civil war in Algeria arrives at the doorstep of the Trappist monks living in the poor village. They live a frugal life, devotedly serving the Muslim community around them, especially providing free medical service through the old asthmatic Brother Luc, who attends to hundreds of patients every day.  In the wake of a massacre of foreign labourers nearby, the government offers to protect them. But the abbot, Father Christian de Chergé, will not have weapons or violence in his monastery.  The soldiers leave, but the brothers are now to decide whether they should leave the place for safety’s sake or stay on, to be  true to their Christian commitment.  Fr Christian is determined to stay, because that is what God has chosen them for. One of the Brothers asks him whether they are to turn themselves into heroes by choosing death and martyrdom. The Abbot tells him that it is not about heroism; instead they are to be “martyrs of love,” “to be brothers to all.”

Before they can finalize their decision, the fundamentalist Islamic group under the leadership of Ali Fayattia breaks into the premises demanding medical service for wounded terrorists. Bro Christian is able to impress the terrorist by quoting the Quran about the love of Christians. Ali leaves them unharmed and offers to protect them too. But he is captured soon and tortured and killed by the government forces. The monks stay on, remaining faithful to their vocation in the face of violence. They are captured in a nighttime raid and led away to their deaths. We recall the abbot’s words “love is eternal hope.”

The film does not comment on the  politics of the time, but focusses on the idea of love, freedom and the failure of modern “gods,” such as political ideologies and violence. There is a memorable sequence in which a villager asks a monk “Have you ever been in love? He answers: “Yes, several times, and then another Greater Love came along and I responded.” It is this love that leads them to martyrdom. In a highly secular country like France, people who went to see this movie came out of the theatres with tears in their eyes.


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