Post by hibernicus on Jan 5, 2011 15:03:24 GMT
I'm hoping to put togwther a few thoughts on the film OF GODS AND MEN which I saw over Christmas for a possible BRANDSMA review.
As you may know [and if you don't know and haven't seen the film, you may not want to read further], the film depicts the last months of nine French Cistercian monks living in the Abbey of Note Dame de l'Atlas at Tibhirine in the atlas Mountains of Algeria. It describes how as the violence of the Algerian civil war of the 1990s between the Algerian government and Islamist guerrillas comes closer, the monks debate whether they should leave or remain. They eventually decide to stay. Shortly after Easter 1996 Islamic guerrillas burst into their monastery and abducted seven monks, who were later killed. (Two monks hid themselves and escaped - one is still alive in a French monastery.)
This has been a surprise hit in France. Some of its strengths - such as its depiction of the monastic life (it is punctuated by scenes where the monks sing in choir and gives a striking insight of the role of liturgy in holding together a monastic community) will transfer easily to anglophone audiences - others may not. (One interesting detail an English reviewer points out is that whereas French audiences would know what happened to the monks, many of the audience at the preview the reviewer attended were genuinely uncertain about whether the monks would stay or go, and were palpably shocked at their fate.)
One little point that surprised me is that when one thinks of North Africa one thinks of the desert, but in fact the film shows a Mediterranean summer climate which in winter looks remarkably like some mountainous parts of the West of Ireland; much of the film takes place in winter and the final abudction of the monks is accompanied by heavy snow.
Another odd touch is that most of the monastic chant is in French - I suspect some of the hymns might be fairly familiar to a French audience though of course they are as unfamiliar to English-speakers as FAITH OF OUR FATHERS or HAIL QUEEN OF HEAVEN to French people - and this is subtitled, but towards the beginning of the film they sing the SALVE REGINA in Latin and this is not subtitled. Did the distributors assume the audience would understand it, or that French and Anglophone audiences would be equally ignorant of Latin? (This is not necessarily the case; the classics have survived much more in the secular French education system than in Britain and Ireland.)
As you may know [and if you don't know and haven't seen the film, you may not want to read further], the film depicts the last months of nine French Cistercian monks living in the Abbey of Note Dame de l'Atlas at Tibhirine in the atlas Mountains of Algeria. It describes how as the violence of the Algerian civil war of the 1990s between the Algerian government and Islamist guerrillas comes closer, the monks debate whether they should leave or remain. They eventually decide to stay. Shortly after Easter 1996 Islamic guerrillas burst into their monastery and abducted seven monks, who were later killed. (Two monks hid themselves and escaped - one is still alive in a French monastery.)
This has been a surprise hit in France. Some of its strengths - such as its depiction of the monastic life (it is punctuated by scenes where the monks sing in choir and gives a striking insight of the role of liturgy in holding together a monastic community) will transfer easily to anglophone audiences - others may not. (One interesting detail an English reviewer points out is that whereas French audiences would know what happened to the monks, many of the audience at the preview the reviewer attended were genuinely uncertain about whether the monks would stay or go, and were palpably shocked at their fate.)
One little point that surprised me is that when one thinks of North Africa one thinks of the desert, but in fact the film shows a Mediterranean summer climate which in winter looks remarkably like some mountainous parts of the West of Ireland; much of the film takes place in winter and the final abudction of the monks is accompanied by heavy snow.
Another odd touch is that most of the monastic chant is in French - I suspect some of the hymns might be fairly familiar to a French audience though of course they are as unfamiliar to English-speakers as FAITH OF OUR FATHERS or HAIL QUEEN OF HEAVEN to French people - and this is subtitled, but towards the beginning of the film they sing the SALVE REGINA in Latin and this is not subtitled. Did the distributors assume the audience would understand it, or that French and Anglophone audiences would be equally ignorant of Latin? (This is not necessarily the case; the classics have survived much more in the secular French education system than in Britain and Ireland.)