Bleak Week: Year 5

Nitrate

Mother Joan of the Angels was one of those rare experiences where I knew almost instantly that I was watching something that would stay with me for a very long time. This was a movie I had been looking forward to for quite a while, and watching it on the big screen only heightened the experience. The fact that a nitrate print of this still exists feels almost miraculous in itself. There was something almost spiritual about sitting inside the Egyptian Theatre watching these images flicker across the screen. It is very rare for me to consider a movie a favorite upon first viewing, especially one this dense and challenging, but Mother Joan of the…

Craft a god to stand against her. Pass Papal laws to suppress her. Build cathedrals to enclose her. The Wild Woman will emerge. The wilderness keeper. The life maker. Her blood tied to tides. War against her and you war against yourself.

My fear is that the same inevitability can also be said about the Wild Man.

It doesn’t escape me that the Devil as a woman in this is playful, sexy, irreverent, and full of personhood; while the Devil as a man is a murderer.

And just like that, 2021 turned into the year that I watched a shit ton of Jerzy Kawalerowicz. This is top tier Collab. Western canon cinema. 20th Century truth. Boss week from TheDionysiac.

The…

FIRST DIARY ENTRY OF 2017

Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival and predating Russell's extraordinarily versatile masterpiece of religious fundamentalisms insanity by ten years, Jerzy Kawalerowicz's tremendously potent masterpiece feauring the aesthetics of Dreyer's Day of Wrath (1943), a deeply religious Catholic priest with the piety and trembling faith of Bergman's protagonist in Winter Light (1963) and embellished with naturalistic and minimalist foreshadowings of the majestic cinematographic and visual tints of Vlácil's Valley of the Bees (1968) is a powerful hypothetical sequel set in 17th Century Poland taking place right after the events of Russell's The Devils (1971) in which a priest, visiting a nearby inn, is confronted with the task of getting rid…

Hooptober #17

Vague spoilers

Mother Joan of the Angels is dark and mostly joyless. It is a film of demonic possession and exorcism, but it questions faith at large. It ponders if Satan is needed for us to have temptation, because ordinary people and their ordinary thoughts are wicked enough. However the characters share a real fear of Satan. The film presents a theological approach to demons through both a Jewish and Christian perspective, daring to imagine that maybe Satan created the world, because why would such evil be present in a world created by God.

Faith in Mother Joan of the Angels is harsh and masochistic, demanding pain as shown through scenes of self-flagellation. The story follows a priest…

Viewed with the Amazing Edith's Collab Film Group.

Maybe the trouble is not demons but the absence of angels.

A brilliantly set-up horror film that can only be described as Poland’s version of The Exorcist before The Exorcist was even a thing. No—this isn’t your typical horror film in the vein of blood, gore, murder, and explicit violence. It’s themes flow in the “blood” and become ardent viewpoints of the characters. The first 45 minutes methodically builds tension and dread while the film’s core philosophies get introduced. Peasants squabble about God and demons and angels, and lambast the new priest who has come to their remote village to cure the group of nuns located at the nearest convent. The nuns are…

Yeahhhhh, but have you seen Mother Joan of the Angels on nitrate?

Sorry, I had to get that out of the way. The American Cinematheque programmer said we have bragging rights, so...

Having seen this before, I knew the imagery was stunning, but experiencing it in a theater (for Bleak Week: Year 5) on a nitrate print was otherworldly. The silver tint was gorgeous. The print's physical scratches and imperfections didn't distract; instead, they felt like being transported straight into the paranoia of this 17th-century convent.

The story kicks off with a devout priest arriving to investigate the possession of the Mother Superior. He tries his best, but he is fundamentally unprepared because, frankly, he doesn't understand women. From there,…

"All redemption is in love. Love is as strong as death"

Buenísima película, una joya desconocida.

"Matka Joanna od Aniołów" es una propuesta muy interesante en el subgénero de posesiones demoníacas, sorprende que se haya hecho hace tanto y es por eso que resulta tan original teniendo en cuenta la época donde salió, aprovechando al máximo los recursos que tiene para crear una historia bastante buena.

Sinopsis: Un sacerdote llega a un convento para exorcizar a una madre superiora y a sus monjas, quienes aparentan estar poseídas por los demonios.

La historia es buenísima, muy original. Lo que más destaco es la ambientación que logra crear, gracias al blanco y negro y las locaciones tan extravagantes que utiliza hace que…

Mother Joan of the Angels is an artistic Polish drama based on the same source material that inspired Ken Russell's The Devils; albeit the events of this film take place following the events of the other. We focus on priest dispatched to a convent full of nuns believed to be under the influence of demonic possession. Jerzy Kawalerowicz's film is sombre in tone - minimalistic sets punctuated with bland costumes, which makes it all the more impactful when it bursts into life with scenes depicting the blasphemous possessed nums. The drama is augmented with theological discussion, particularly on the role of God in demonic possession and how this relates to human nature. The heart of the film is a battle…