Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A difficult but rewarding film., April 17, 1999
By A Customer
This is certainly a difficult film, requiring both considerable concentration and familiarity with the less sunny, more tortured aspects of Catholic theology. The main character is a simple but saintly priest who is painfully aware of the sway that evil holds over the world and whose desire to liberate other souls from the clutches of the devil is so overwhelming that he is prepared to give his own soul in exchange. The paradox is that for this priest the devil is very real and tangible (he even dreams he encounters him in the form of a traveller while walking through the fields at night) while God seems disturbingly distant and inaccessible. His struggle against evil leads to constant self-torture, but is motivated by boundless pity for those whom the devil has cheated out of happiness and salvation. The dialogue is dense but can have an enormous impact. This is a very, very literary movie (which can put off quite a few viewers) based on a novel by the great French Catholic writer Georges Bernanos, which in turn was inspired by the real-life Jean M. Vianney, a parish priest in a tiny French rural village that is now revered as a saint. Not for everyone, but highly recommended for those interested in some of the most difficult issues raised by religion.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An admirable masterpiece!, August 22, 2007
The excel Spanish essayist, Ortega y Gasset said once. "The words are logarithms of things, images, ideas and thoughts, and so, just can be used like signs of values, and never like values."
This clever reflection has to do with this remarkable movie, an extraordinary and superb dramatis personae narrated in four movements, will make us to reflect around multiple issues in this confrontation between moral, ethics, good and evilness, faith and hesitation.
First movement: we realize about the tormented tribulations of a priest, who lives oppressed by the miseries of human condition, are mirrored through a zealous script based on Bernanos' novel.
Second movement: we have Mouchette, a sixteen years old who lives according her own patterns of behavior, and is pregnant by one of her two lovers and decides to murder him, a prominent Count, and as she had nothing to hide reveals the terrible secret to her other lover.
Third movement: Bernanos, smartly conveys us to a mythic through a dark forest in which we aware the priest who has had to undertake a long journey of 13 miles, meets a weird peasant in the middle of nowhere, and this sudden encounter will be decisive to speed his weak equilibrium based on what remains of devoted resignation and febrile sense of duty.
Fourth movement: we will assist to the expected encounter among this girl and him, who will mean for both a crucial twist of fate in their respective existences.
To appreciate will its admirable intensity this nothing to watch film I would suggest to watch or read, "Diary of a country priest" to widen the whole purpose of what it's nestled in this unusual film.
On the other hand, the minimalist narrative strle of Maurice Pialat is narrowly linked with Robert Bresson that it might be said this was a posthumous homage in life to this unique and talented filmmaker as well as Bernanons himself.
It's useless to remark the astonishing performance of Gerard Depardieu and the sensitive acting of the young promise by then Sandrine Bonnaire in this film which won deservedly La palm d' or in Cannes 1987.
I think to myself when will this film be released on DVD format?
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DVD ~ Sandrine Bonnaire
DVD ~ Emmanuelle Devos
Video On Demand ~ John Huston
DVD ~ Silvia Pinal
DVD ~ Jacques Dutronc
