Tuesday, March 30, 2010

In Memoria di Me

BBC 4 showed In Memoria di Me, with English subtitles, on Sunday, warch it here. It is about a young man who joins a novitiate, in search for "meaning", it is rather austere. It is set in San Giorgio Maggiore, in Venice, but only the vague images of Venice are glimpsed through a window.
It is a film the seach for the interior life, it is very sparse, you won't enjoy it but you might find useful.
I suspect most novitiates and seminaries are a little more fun than this. It is a challenging film for Holy Week, worth a couple of hours.

5 comments:

Cousin Vinnie said...

Dear Father,

I'd like you to take a look at this great orthodox and traditional Irish Catholic blog. They've just posted about a retreat to a Cistercian monastery. looks like something you could tell your readers about and maybe link to or blogroll...

http://catholicheritage.blogspot.com/search/label/retreat

In Christo,

Vin L

pelerin said...

A powerful film indeed - beautifully acted and filmed. Thank you Father for bringing it to our attention.

The music was superb too - and I loved the Kyrie from the Missa Luba. I wondered where I had heard it before and on googling it found it had been used in 'The Nun's Story' with Audrey Hepburn. And what I think was a Strauss waltz seemed surprisingly in keeping with one of the scenes.

'Silence is where God dwells' says one of the characters. How true although in the film the silences endured seemed almost menacing at times. I thought at first that it was meant to be a silent order but presume not as there was the occasional comment made by the characters.

The scene outside the infirmary was deeply moving - a deathbed scene without showing the body. There are people who say that in continental films 'nothing ever happens' and those who think this way would probably say the same about this particular film. However the action here is interior both within the actors and within ourselves watching rather than onscreen. Similar perhaps to comparing the NO with the TLM?

torchofthefaith said...

Dear Father

Isn't that the guy who played St. John in The Passion of the Christ?

He certainly looks familiar!

Wishing you a blessed Holy Week.
Alan and Angeline

John Berchmana said...

This film is based on a novel called 'The Perfect Jesuit'. It claims to be a representation of Jesuit formation before Vatican II. Alas, it presents only a caricature, although the novel itself is quite accurate. It omits significant passages to the film's cost. No Jesuit novitiate at any period of the Order's histpory was like this. Not least, no novitiate has ever been house in such grandeur.

Mark said...

I found it a strange film...

Reading up about it, it seems the novel was trying to illustrate certain 'undercurrents' between Andrea, Zanno and Fausto... I don't know how important it is, but that's because I don't really understand what the Director was trying to get at.

John is maybe right; perhaps it is a caricature.

Alan: It is the same chap, Christo Jivkov.

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