Movies that deal with faith honestly are a rare breed, which makes THE INNOCENTS a special movie indeed. Set in the wake of WWII, it follows a French doctor asked to help deliver the children of several nuns raped by Soviet soldiers. The nuns are afraid of the information getting out, thus destroying their images as Christ's chaste brides and possibly even leading to the dissolution of their order. To make matters worse, several of the women feel having their bodies examined is a breach of chastity and the Mother Superior is more concerned with the convent's image of saintliness rather than getting the nuns medical help or even ensuring that their babies survive.
The movie is about many things-- trauma, tradition versus modernity, forgiveness-- but the themes of faith were most compelling to me. The violence of the war has marked everyone in the story, from the isolated nuns to the Jewish doctor the protagonist works with, and everyone must struggle to try to make sense of what has happened. For the nuns, the mass rape has impacted their view of the goodness of God. Some lose faith, some become outright monstrous. Some cling to their faith out of desperate hope, some come to see faith differently and thus grow stronger in their convictions. The film is neither staunchly pro- or anti-religion, instead examining how these characters deal with their problems in the light of whatever belief system they have adopted.
And I could go on-- the acting is phenomenal and the cinematography perfectly evokes the barren deadness of wintertime-- but all reviews have to end somewhere. This movie is fantastic, very much worth your time.
The movie is about many things-- trauma, tradition versus modernity, forgiveness-- but the themes of faith were most compelling to me. The violence of the war has marked everyone in the story, from the isolated nuns to the Jewish doctor the protagonist works with, and everyone must struggle to try to make sense of what has happened. For the nuns, the mass rape has impacted their view of the goodness of God. Some lose faith, some become outright monstrous. Some cling to their faith out of desperate hope, some come to see faith differently and thus grow stronger in their convictions. The film is neither staunchly pro- or anti-religion, instead examining how these characters deal with their problems in the light of whatever belief system they have adopted.
And I could go on-- the acting is phenomenal and the cinematography perfectly evokes the barren deadness of wintertime-- but all reviews have to end somewhere. This movie is fantastic, very much worth your time.