As a reader and fan of Matthew Lewis’ melodramatic gothic
novel The Monk from 1796, I watched
this film carefully not to monitor its faithfulness but its tone and its
choices in depicting some fantastic scenes contained in the book, especially
its deux ex machina finale that was
hilariously mutated into something even more surreal in the 1972 film version
which, (though not directed by him), was written by Luis Buñuel and his partner
Jean-Claude Carrière. The conclusion and
nearly all of the plot’s particulars from the novel are intact in this version,
which is admirable, but what was missing for me was a feeling of medieval gloom
and squalor; as conveyed so well in Terry Gilliam’s Jabberwocky (1977) and Jean-Jacques Annaud’s The Name of the Rose (1986).
Dominik Moll’s film is a handsome period piece tightly focused on
inter-character issues and conflicts instead of the notion of the repressive
times, superstitions and institutions as being the real enemy. Vincent Cassel is great but probably too old
and weathered to be convincing as Lewis’ Father Ambrosio, who in the book was
youthful, idealistic and naïve, and much more believably capable of the
impulsive sins he commits throughout the story as well as the lust he
unknowingly stirs in his female parishioners.
The film also reverses a juicy element of the novel, which is that
Ambrosio is aroused by Matilda’s beauty while still believing her to be a boy;
whereas here, Rosario is revealed
as Matilda disguising herself as a boy before
Ambrosio’s thoughts start to turn carnal.
Aside from that my gripes are few.
The film effectively chronicles Ambrosio’s personal misery as he is led
into worse and worse corruption by Matilda the succubus. The monk is just as much a spineless wimp as
in the novel, whose high moral fiber lasts precisely as long as he is shielded
from any and all temptation and real world conflicts. It’s a story that was aching to be
interpreted by Buñuel, and it’s a pity he never got to make his own version; it
would have fit perfectly into his series of critiques of Christian piety like Nazarin (1958), Viridiana (1961) and especially Simon
of the Desert (1965), which clearly borrows some key elements from The Monk.
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