Reviews

"Teresa de Jesús" is a jewel of Spanish cinema, with Concha Velasca playing the role of Teresa of Avila (for this is how most of us know her), mystic and, ultimately, Doctor of the Church. This is no naïve, sweet interpretation of sainthood. The writers and Concha Velasca make us aware of Teresa's struggle to be humble and remain faithful to the church one the one hand, and reform an entire religious order (the Carmelites) taking them back to their primitive rule and thereby launching one of the most effective answers to the Protestant challenge to come out of Spain. Along the way, Saint Teresa of Avila, discovers and launches another saint (and Doctor of the Church), John of the Cross. "Teresa de Jesús" is an 8 hour mini-series, and Concha Velasca's "aging" (she was about the same age as Teresa when she began her reform at the time this was filmed) with the character seems both effortless and natural -- what talent.

Here is a "masterpiece", but you will not see it on American television, which seems to have a parochial view of religious content (unless it is Count Dracula, of course). What a loss. This series is less about religion and more about the spiritual journey. The writers (two women and a man, including the director, Josefina Molina) were able to be sympathetic to the plight of women in Spain in the 16th Century without breaking the spell of age with modern messages. A example of their success is the discussion of the dilemma of women -- marriage, childbirth and higher odds of an early death, or celibacy and, typically, life in a convent.

This reality of women was sharp enough that numbers of Spanish women did choose a convent life, and this invariably led some convents to gravitate to the comfortable life. Teresa of Avila upset this trend, and much of this story is about her struggles with "conventional" Christians (who preferred a self-contained life with some luxuries and who battled her most of her life), her ability to inspire others even in the face of violent opposition, and her adroit handling of superiors. As difficult as the bishops and priests are (everyone has an agenda), the women of nobility raise the biggest fires. Noblewomen were not only patrons of convents, but often had them attached to their grand homes. The film successfully introduces us to their complex personalities: vain or pious, they too have agendas. Some considered convents a good source of female help; moreover, as Teresa's reputation for sanctity spread, some would coerce priests to order Teresa to visit them. It was then fashionable to have a presumed saint in residence.

The writers carefully pace the series. They gradually introduce more elaborate costumes (beautiful and authentic Spanish costume of the period), exotic locations (Medina del Campo for those of you who know it from James Mitchner or Carlos Fuentes) and new characters, and these add to the enjoyment each episode. I would like to mention two women in particular. Mid-series we meet the Princess of Eboli (yes, she really was a beauty and she really did have only one eye), played by Patricia Adriani (pulling it off as one of the youngest of the adult actors in the series). You will not forget the image of this powerful and willful person as she conveys her dead husband to their castle and, she presumes, her future convent. Compared to her, the Inquisition was for Teresa easy. The other woman is Sister Ana, who takes care of Teresa late in her life. Sister Ana is Teresa's, ah, left hand (we who are sinistral notice these things). I enjoyed Sister Ana's subtle maturation, all in the last hours of the series, from someone "not able to write" to the embodiment of all of the saints successes. I do not know for sure who played the role, Silvia Munt I think.

So how did I see this? A friend bought a copy of the series (3 DVDs on the bargain counter) in a Madrid department store. They are PAL format (European standard), but I was able to play them through a laptop (with commonly available DVD software). I S3 videoed and audio jacked it out to an LCD TV. And as an American poet, who also read St. Theresa's autobiography, wrote -- "that is that, is that."

The Nativity Story is a meditation on Matthew 1:18-25; its dramatic focus is the dilemma of Joseph and Mary after she is found to be with child in Nazareth. The film opens with Herod's slaughter of the innocents before flashing back to the days leading up to the angel's annunciation. The immediate introduction of a menace before the telling of a pastoral story brings to mind the opening of the Chronicles of Narnia. Nativity also borrows and extends Chronicles ocherous color palette; you almost always feel as though you are in a dream, and this is clever, for dreams are the important medium for supernatural communication, especially for the men.

This is a film that explores the idea that faith is a gift from God, and one of its delights is that woman are much quicker (smarter) in seeing the hand of God. A woman simply cannot argue about the reality of an impossible child in her womb. If the stories of Elizabeth and Mary parallel, so too do the stories of Zachariah and Joseph. Men of course have other problems -- men are, well, rationale. We want to wrestle with God about what is "reasonable" in our lives. There is a practical aspect to this reasonableness, concern for the social reaction to an unexpected pregnancy, and the director and writer carefully bring to life the social mores that threatened this pregnancy.

The careful exposition of this story allows you to reflect on the necessity of Mary's visit to Elizabeth, on the necessity of the census requiring Joseph and Mary to leave Nazareth, and on the necessity for the trip to be a difficult one (spiritual preparation). Again, there is a parallel journey, that of the three Magi coming out of the East to Jerusalem to witness the rational if rare conjunction of three planets. As the planets tighten in the sky, the story brings together the destinies of Joseph and Mary, the Magi and King Herod: the spiritually ready, the spiritually curious and the spiritually dead.

So what is lost in this film? The acting is uniformly good, but only adequate to the task. Mr. Hinds was able to suggest some of the devils in Herod's heart. Oddly, no one seemed able to convey the awe of someone caught up in an apparition (dream or otherwise). Where things should flare, they are scraggy. This is particularly true of Miss Castle-Hughes Mary, which simply lacks depth. Just watch her reaction to the angel then go and compare it with that of Sydney Penny's reaction to the apparition in Bernadette (1988), where every muscle in her body seems to be amazed at such a completely unexpected sight.

At one point in the film, Joseph wonders when in Jesus' life they will first see that he is not just another boy. It is an intriguing question, but it is left unexplored. The film ends quickly after the Nativity with the holy family decamping to Egypt. There is no presentation at the temple, though an old shepherd they meet as they near Bethlehem seems to represent the sentiment of Simeon. This is an Advent story, and in the end the film tacks one last time, this time back to the beginning, as we hear Miss Castle-Hughes voice over the Magnificat, curiously recited out of normal verse order.

When I walked away from the theater, I walked away admiring how much more story there is in the few pages of the Bible that are devoted to the birth of Christ.

The more you watch this film, the less you will see, and yet our hosts have some hope that perhaps it is worth ten lines of text. I came up with nine:

"Sulking and silly, anti-Weismannist spinsters -- Brokered this dreary, silty absolute winter -- Imagine trying to capture masters of rings -- By asking king's men to pull from the lees -- A taunting, torching dragon, whose dentures singe -- Poor writer, poor director, milkman and whey -- And also those bellows men living on dregs -- Henpecked and hush-pupped -- And on winged dump trucks."

That said, I ask you to indulge me this throw away line: the movie is a blue egg.

This moving picture is like cheap champagne. It is full of party bubble in the early evening, strange lovemaking at midnight and a splitting headache in the morning. The movie is Mansfield Park, and it is reminiscent of Miss Jane Austen's longest and best novel. The novel plays the part of one Lady Scenario who is invited to a Hollywood party. When she arrives, Lady Scenario finds herself in the hands of a silent film director whose interest is to improve the story. The scenarist says, "Dear, we really need to do something about you before my guests arrive". Sitting to watch, she orders her servants to strip Lady Scenario to her bodice. The director then begins the process of filming the adopted child wearing various fantastic garments.

The principal fantastic garment in this film is the makeover of Fanny Price. Miss Austen's Fanny Price is pious and patient. She is a Christian woman in possession of great spiritual strengths. These guide her when she finds herself wary and unsure of the intentions of those around her. The novel generates a good deal of moral tension as the world (Mansfield Park) tries to corrupt her, to make her believe she is a prig, all the while she attempts to understand her changing feelings about Edmund and Frank. The film's Fanny is a budding author, whose writings comprise Miss Austen's juvenilia. She has some mischievous opinions about the world, an untidy disdain for Miss Norris and a certainty that she has the moral goods on the people. The problem with this approach is that the screenwriter's opinions about how things should progress keep colliding with the reality of Miss Austen's story. Everywhere in this film the bubbles fly, as the director wrings and twists poor Miss Price through one scene after another. For this film's Fanny to want to marry Edmond in the end is perilously close to illogical and hypocritical.

We ought not entirely to blame the director and screenwriter for this. In the context of a two-hour movie, it would take good intellectual leaven to raise Miss Norris beyond being merely heartless and the Crawford siblings beyond the merely lifeless. The resulting Mansfield Park movie has the thrills and titillations of an old silent film. And an organ accompanies the film. This organ usually puffs out something that sounds like Miss Austen, but when it thunders, loudly, we find ourselves in a scene more like a modern morality play.

One can only wonder how this loud organ cry ever found its way into a comedy of manners. The screenwriter is intrigued by black slavery, women disrobing women, and the idea that a woman who might be an author has a superior moral voice. These fetishes intrude everywhere like unwanted guests reeking of absinthe. The screenwriter would do her interests more good, it seems, if she were to make a movie about the current issue of black slavery in the Sudan. Or perhaps she could combine her interests and cleverly reverse black/white roles by filming Evelyn Waugh's "Black Mischief". At the end of this new film, we could wickedly watch as the black women slowly disrobe the Englishwoman Prudence before preparing her for their dinner.

Then there is the business of Fanny the budding author. No doubt there are talented alter-ego's for Jane Austen in her books (I think of Jane Fairfax in Emma), but Miss Austen's clarity of vision precluded making any of these women more exalted than one might find in general society. That meant no one of Miss Austen's rare talents could exist in her novels. To remake the retiring Fanny of the novel into an author with an attitude, and to give her the familiarity with Edmund Bertram she enjoys throughout the movie, are modern touches that blanch and spoil the terror of Mansfield Park. It is as trite and nerveless an approach as the current trend to replace Christmas Trees with Holiday Trees.

What a lost opportunity. Mansfield Park is not one, but two, perhaps three movies. The first film need not taking us any farther than Chapter 10, which concludes the Southerton expedition, a gold mine of character study that properly handled could overtop a decade of European film making.

But for now, I just have a splitting headache.