So I am continuing my journey through the horror output (or more frequently, as is the case today, horror adjacent output) of this country in which I’ve made my home (you can check out the first two films here and here). It’s an interesting process, bringing a number of films to my attention I might never have otherwise encountered, and today’s entry really justifies doing a project like this. I’m sure some English speaking cinephiles will know this one (I read that Scorcese is a fan), but I had never heard of it until I started this series and asked some Polish friends for recommendations. The world is so wide and there is so much to discover when you start digging in any one place. As a caveat, this can only barely be considered a “horror movie” but it is pretty amazing. If you want some gore, check out last week’s entry on Zombie. So, without further adieu,…
Matka Joanna od Aniołów (1961)
While Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s film may not exactly be horror, it does include enough elements to justify consideration here: mass demonic possession, a double axe murder, a surreal, uncanny setting that feels out of place and time, the lingering horror of witch burnings, and an intense struggle with the demons within – with the dark drives that one may be drawn to, defined by, and drowned in, losing all sense of self. Also, it dovetails so perfectly with another not-quite-horror-but-still-dealing-with-witch-trials-and-mass-possession classic, Ken Russell’s 1971 The Devils. They are both based on the same historical event, the witch trials of Loudun, France in 1634, with The Devils culminating in the burning at the stake of Father Grandier and Mother Joan being directly preceded by this event. Only in this case, following the novel by Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, the action has been moved to Poland, removing the political issues inherent to France at that time (Richelieu and such), and thus shifting the theme to something both more personal and spiritually allegorical.
And what a visually striking piece. The cinematography is so stark, so spare; the blacks are deep and inky and the whites almost hurt the eyes. The landscape surrounding the convent where all the action takes place seems somehow lunar – rocky and sandy, devoid of life, pitted with craters. It feels like we are out of the world – in an other space where these questions of self and desire and good and evil and love and life can play out, free from the minutiae of living. References are made to a forest, but it is never seen, never felt – and it seems almost impossible to imagine someplace green and dark and wet from the vantage point of this barren space. I suppose that is fitting for the convent – a place that is meant to be a retreat from the world.
The story centers on a priest, Father Suryn, who has come to help with the exorcism of the Mother Superior of the convent, Mother Joanna (the same part played by Vanessa Redgrave in Russell’s film). The impression is that as leader of the convent, the other nuns follow her lead and are only as possessed as she shows herself to be. Interestingly, I feel that the film never declared with certainty whether anything supernatural is actually happening here. Is Joanna, as she declares, possessed by eight powerful demons, and by extension, are the other nuns possessed as well? Is this a kind of mass hysteria? Is this a kind of liberatory performance, allowing these cloistered, repressed women the freedom to act out – to be wild, to be angry, to be silly? The film even seems disinterested in tackling these questions – I don’t think it’s really the point.
It doesn’t matter what is true – it only matters what people do in their present situations. Perhaps there really are “demons” but they are merely the oft-denied aspects of human nature which, under sufficient repression, must finally explode and reassert themselves. What the characters do with these impulses and how they interact with each other – torment each other – seduce each other – love each other – or rob each other along the way is really at the heart of the piece.
And there is real contrast between the main players here. When we first meet Father Suryn, as played by Mieczysław Voit, in a local inn across from the convent, he is shown against the backdrop of a collection of villagers and others who have travelled from afar to see the spectacle of the possessed nuns (though one bemoans the fact that they never take off their clothes and complains that they should have gone to see a tightrope walker instead). All of them are so folksy, earthy, grotesque and funny – everything that he is not. He slices his bread as thin as paper so as not to partake in gluttony and he seems to own only one possession, his cat o’ nine tails, with which he self-flagellates. On his way to the convent the first time, he talks with the local priest who now cares for the illegitimate children of Father Grandier, a priest who really lived in the world. Near the ashen stake on which Grandier had been burned, a striking black structure standing out in this white expanse, Suryn asks the priest to pray for him before he must do battle with the “evil one.” Shrugging, the father makes a half-hearted sign of the cross and calls the kids to go home, leaving Suryn kneeling alone. His world is not one of dark spirits and grand meaning – there are children to feed and care for, and beer to drink.
Suryn continues to the convent and in this moment, we have a touch of horror. The place is ominous. He is clearly frightened. And the mood of the whole piece is tense and overpowering. And then he meets Joanna and there is a kind of spark. Intelligence flashes in her eyes – whether that of a good soul beset upon by evil forces, or an alien awareness housed behind her own, or the light of independence and defiance; she captivates him. Lucyna Winnicka is quite magnetic here in the title role, lightly dancing between a sweet young girl in need of help, a demonic, sweaty, rough talking visage of evil, and a powerful woman, certain in her powers, satisfied with her choices, defying the world, and proud of her apparent “sin.”
We then see her in relation to the other nuns who seem to model their on plight on hers. A key scene takes place about halfway through the film when some visiting churchmen (whose presence has preceded Suryn) lead an exorcism mass in the church. First we see in close up, one by one, the line of nuns making their way to the service – on each face, we can read different emotions – anger, sadness, fear, confusion, and one of them just keeps spinning in circles. They enter the church and spread out in a kind of phalanx behind Joanna, and it is an intimidating image. The priests chase them around with holy water and they shriek and hide, all but Mother Joanna standing rebelliously before the altar, and one nun who has been unaffected by the possessions – Sister Małgorzata, to whom I shall return in a bit. The focus then shifts to Joanna. They pray at her; they tie her down and shove crosses in her face, commanding her various demons to vacate the premises. In turn, she gives no ground.
She occasionally plays along, at one point, leading the rest of the sisters in an odd dance of hysteria, in which you can so clearly see how they are watching her and trying to copy, however imprecisely, her movements. At one moment, she reaches her arms up as if in prayer, only to bend over backwards into a bridge, and a horror fan has to wonder if this moment was directly stolen by Friedkin for the Exorcist “spider-walk” twelve years later. At the end, a temporary peace is achieved as Joanna leads the others in prostrating themselves on the ground, lying face down, arms out in prayer. It’s an evocative image, but what has happened? Is this an act of submission or subversion – even in apparent defeat, exerting her influence over the other women of the convent?
Following this outburst, Joanna is separated from the other sisters and their condition seems to immediately improve. Much of the rest of the film consists in private scenes between Joanna and Suryn as he determinedly seeks her “salvation” whether this is something that interests her or not. It’s noteworthy to me that for a film this visual, I felt compelled to transcribe a lot of the dialogue as, even in translation, it is thought provoking and stirring. We get a sense of how this possession frees her, gives her life, makes her special:
“Who am I? A poor servant of the lord – who worships him in a remote convent? I am just a nun. Even though my father is a duke, our family is impoverished. He stays in the Smolensk marshes and nobody knows him. Who am I? A poor nun. And yet eight powerful demons possessed me.”
As a nun, she is already outside of the world, and possessed, she is free from any expectations or restrictions that would remain to her. She loves her devils, her freedom. She takes pride in them, in it. In this sense of liberation, I had another modern resonance, namely of Eggers’s The VVitch. I think Joanna perhaps “wouldst like the taste of butter.” In a later scene, she declares how “this possession gives [her] joy” and lashes out at Suryn who would seek to steal it away from her:
“You only want me to calm down, to become grayer, smaller, to be exactly like all the other nuns.”
Her plight is somewhat reflected in the story of Sister Małgorzata, the one nun unaffected by all of the apparently spiritual activity. We first meet her as she’s slipped out of the convent to visit the inn and gossip with her friend. She is joyful, in the world, and full of life, and she doesn’t need demons to be self-possessed. In the inn, she drinks some vodka with the villagers and meets a handsome visiting noble, here to view the local sensation. Coquettishly, she sings a sweet song about how ‘she would rather be a nun than to have a brute for a husband who would beat her black and blue with his stick because he thinks she needs a beating, no, she’d rather be a nun.’ But obviously, she wouldn’t. She is stuck here at the end of the world and craves love and life, and she feels she has found her way out in sweet flirtation with the nobleman. Sadly, by the end of the film he has had his way with her and escaped before dawn, leaving her “ruined.” Even still, she declares that she will not return to the convent. She does not want that, even after her recent love lost.
Love, or something like it, is also in the air for Joanna and Father Suryn. There is a clear attraction, a chemistry, between them. In one scene, having relocated their private exorcisms to an attic space, divided by white habits hanging to dry, they both whip themselves, scouring the flesh to purify the spirit, or possibly just finding physical and emotional release together in the only acceptable fashion available to them. Afterwards, they dress and exit the attic together shyly and sweetly, like first time lovers. Then Joanne takes it a step too far by trying to kiss the priest’s hand and he flees (his own desires as much as hers).
And there is much talk of love as we reach the climax of both the possession story and their emotional journey. (A warning – while this film is not primarily a vehicle for plot, this next part is certainly a spoiler) Claiming to be motivated by love (for her, for God, for “the good”), the priest takes her demons into himself (again, presaging the end of The Exorcist) and falls down the stairs. Everyone now knows that she has been freed of her affliction and that the demons now reside in a new host. To be sure that his new infernal residents will never leave him, Suryn goes on to brutally murder two servants with an axe while they sleep among the hay in the barn. The film doesn’t show us the actual violence, but rather the reactions of two horses who watch in terror. It’s an effective choice.
But what was this love? Did he really feel for her (maybe he did) or, for all that he had berated her for the sin of pride in loving the attention that she received thanks to her possessed state, has he demonstrated himself to be even more proud, claiming for himself the ultimate mantle of both suffering and heroism, and in the process, stealing from her that which she cherished most? There had been a real impression of connection between them, and in this act, he has robbed her of his intimacy and affections, as well as her freedom. Perhaps that was his intention – if he has the demons within (either spiritual or metaphorical), she cannot; she must be saved, whether she wants it or not.
Either way, we do return to some solid moments of horror in the killing, in Małgorzata discovering him holding the axe, and in a final moment of the Sister and the Mother weeping together as the churchbell (meant to call to lost travelers, wandering in the forest) rings, but while we may see the bell, the soundtrack is only their cries; no traveler is saved – all must wander still.
It is quite a piece, and one which lends itself to multiple readings. I feel I come to this from a modern perspective and in it see a story of frustrated liberation, of joy in defiance, of a claim of love which is actually greed. But I have read an interview with the director in which he indicated primarily a love story. How would this have been received in 1961 in Catholic Poland? (Apparently, the Communist authorities were fine with it, but the church decried it as ‘anti-clerical.’) Is it more of a horror story (or more of a love story, for that matter) if you actually believe in demons? In any case, the style feels so symbolic, so poetic, that it feels truly open for interpretation. We are free even if poor Joanna, ultimately, is not – free to find what meaning we will, or lack of meaning, as the case may be.
