Title: Agnes of God
1985--Rated PG-13--6/2/2000

When Agnes is rushed to the hospital after giving birth in her room, her infant is found strangled and dumped in the wastebasket. This leads to charges of manslaughter, which everyone involved, including the attorneys, just hope will soon go away. Dr. Livingston refuses to have her job dictated to her, however, and tries to befriend the flighty girl who claims she doesn't even remember being pregnant or giving birth. Abused by her alcoholic mother--who turns out to have been Mother Miriam's sister--kept home from school, belittled and terrorized, then immediately sent to the shelter of the convent upon her mother's death, Agnes is so innocent (or ignorant) that she's never seen a movie, never read a book, never had any schooling, and doesn't even really seem to realize where babies come from. She is desperately pious but working through the psychological damage inflicted by her mother, who still torments her in her mind. Flashbacks show her, for example, refusing to eat because she thinks she's fat, too fat for God to love--all the statues in the convent show thin people, starving people, people who were beautiful in the eyes of God, so for God to love her she must suffer and be beautiful as well. "God blew up the Hindenberg, he could blow me up, too! Soon I'll be too fat to squeeze into Heaven!" Mother Miriam is a loving, sensible woman who nonetheless doesn't have the expertise to reach deep enough into Agnes's mind and permanently set her straight; she must learn to be content with small victories, such as getting Agnes to eat again. Agnes is not the sort of person who would do well either in prison or in a mental institution; the best place for her would be the convent, where she could be supervised by people she knows and trusts (although we can see that their supervision is somewhat lacking at the moment). In order to achieve this goal, Mother Miriam wants to salvage what they have and let only God be the one with the answers; Dr. Livingston also wants Agnes to stay at the convent, but she feels she must uncover all the hidden secrets, to ensure that they can be properly dealt with.

How did a man get into the convent to impregnate Agnes? Was she raped or seduced by a farmhand hired to work the land owned by the convent? Did she meet him in the barn by sneaking out through the secret passageway in the kitchen, behind the statue of St. Michael? Why did her mentor Sister Paul mouth the word "Michael" to her on her deathbed, which Agnes took as a suggestion/command to meet the mysterious father in that manner? Was the mysterious father really a mysterious Father, since even under hypnosis Agnes says God hurt her, God impregnated her, the baby was God's mistake? And if we are talking about immaculate conception here, why did God choose a girl who killed her own child to make it go away? Was it all part of a divine plan meant to touch the minds of Mother Miriam and Dr. Livingston, to open the former's eyes to reality and the latter's to faith?

These questions are never really resolved, but the journey towards them is very interesting. I particularly enjoyed the very humanizing touches that are so absent from religious people in the movies, such as Father Martineau's pouring a little gin into his tea (not as a hypocritical alcoholic, but as someone who has devoted 70 years to God and knows that He won't begrudge him a little sip of something other than sacrificial wine). Dr. Livingston and the far-from-saintly Mother Miriam--a failed wife and mother in her previous life who smoked two packs a day unfiltered and sometimes finds herself doubting the existence of miracles--even share a laugh over what the saints would have smoked if tobacco had been popular in their day ("St. Ignatius would have smoked cigars and stubbed them out on the soles of his bare feet!").

There were only a couple things which I felt really required more explanation or follow-up, for the purposes of good storytelling. The first was Agnes's displays of stigmata, the bloody palms (and sometimes feet and sides) thought to be indicative of divine influence, since they resemble the crucifixion wounds of Christ (of course archaeological evidence shows that people were crucified not through the hands but through the wrists, but no matter). This happens to her at least twice in the movie and though onlookers are amazed, no one seems to really do anything about it. I mean, surely there's someone at the Vatican you call or something. Mother Miriam says she didn't report the first time because of the media circus it would have attracted--ironic given the media circus Agnes was currently in the middle of. I don't know, it just seemed like a pretty big, unexplainable event that happened spontaneously in front of sensible witnesses who should have wondered (aloud) just what exactly was going on. The second thing was Sister Paul's message to Agnes, which we see in another flashback. Sister Paul died in her 80's after living at the convent for 70 years and befriending Agnes when she first arrived; she even helped her find a "secret place," the top of the belltower. One night in January, Sister Paul's last, everyone is gathered around her in prayer with their eyes closed when Agnes slips into the room. Sister Paul catches her eye and mouths the word "Michael;" Agnes then slips out. Agnes says later that she and Sister Paul had seen "him," the child's father, from the top of the belltower; that it was Sister Paul who had shown her the passageway behind St. Michael's statue, which hadn't been used in fifty years; that in the six previous days, Agnes had stood by her window at night and listened to "him" sing in the most beautiful voice, songs she had never heard; and that Sister Paul's "Michael" was a signal for Agnes to meet "him" in the barn that night. First of all, if we assume that "he" is a really flesh-and-blood person, a farmhand perhaps, and at any rate not an incarnation of God, why would he be in contact with the nuns? Only Mother Miriam and I think Sister Marguerite--who seems to be a kind of very strict "floor manager" who "wouldn't let Christ in after dark"--are allowed to have contact with the public, and it's not like the nuns can slip him any cigarettes. Or have any money to pay him for contraband outside goods. And if we're suggesting that 85ish Sister Paul was having a sexual relationship with him in the barn, we're getting into a whole other weird area that wasn't even hinted at in the movie. Of course, if anything had been hinted at in the movie, I wouldn't be speculating here. Whatever was going on, for some reason Agnes was also involved in the scheme and, with Sister Paul dying, seemed to have been sent to meet him in her place--suggesting it must have been pretty important, for Sister Paul to remember to do something about it as she lay dying. I suppose, though, if we go for the mysterious Father theory, it's perfectly possible that He appeared in the form of a young man with a beautiful singing voice, given Agnes's love of music. I mean, if we're going to believe in immaculate conception, just about any other oddity in the story should be plausible as well. Not that I'm saying it's a bad theory or anything, mind you--I'm just saying I think it should have been explored a bit more, that someone should have at least voiced a question, even if they didn't answer it.

In any event, a thought-provoking, intriguing film with excellent performances by the three leads. Not a film for everyone, though--people who are too conservative, in a bad way, will probably be offended by it, although in my personal opinion anyone with good sense, whatever their faith and whatever strength it is, will see that both sides are handled well and be inspired to do some thinking about it on their own.

Agnes of God at Amazon.com

Agnes of God at IMDB.com