Word: livingston
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...known it was a political endorsement of any kind, we would not have let it go in," said Cabot House assistant Susan Livingston...
...that's when Dr. Livingston (Jane Fonda) enters the scene, armed with Dr. Freud and a court warrant, determined to find out if Agnes has all her marbles before the trial begins. Her efforts are slowed by the government, the Church, and, for her own reasons, the indomitable Mother Superior Anne Bancroft). All parties are determined to see the case quickly brushed under the rug, which places Fonda in her familiar, irritating role of crusader. Amusingly, Fonda chain smokes throughout the movie, which certainly won't sell any videos...
...PARTIES DRAG in their psychological garbage for viewer perusal, which consists mostly of good old-fashioned Catholic guilt. Livingston's sister died in a convent, so she would like to hate Catholicism, except her senile mother makes her feel guilty about being ungodly, and professional ethics call for objectivity in the case. Agnes thinks her child's father was God, so naturally she has ambiguous feelings towards her heavenly spouse. And poor Mother Superior has the misfortune of also being Agnes's aunt, which makes her feel responsible both for Agnes's abuse as a child and Agnes's eventual...
...gravest fault of all with this film is its insistence on answering all questions ambiguously. But real contradictions and questions appear in the movie that should upset Livingston's new found spiritual agnosticism. Which of the conception stories do we believe, and why does another nun appear to have acted as liason in one of them? What was the Mother Superior's real role in the crime? After all, she was present exerting her maximum influence on Agnes during hypnosis, and one can lie under hypnosis. And who is the baby's father...
...younger characters tell their problems to O'Toole. Their difficulties thump like so many case studies from everyone's favorite bearded Viennese couch-keeper, with the lifelessness ordinarily confined to pre-pubescent diaries. O'Toole's answers whisper forth with the naive, 60's-style moral rhythm of Jonathan Livingston Seagull without the ocean breeze...