Word: monke
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...movie, adapted from a Pamela Berger novel, chronicles a monk's visit to a small, provincial French village, where he has been sent to conduct an Inquisition. In the course of his quest to root out heresy, the monk, who is the son of a nobleman, confronts his own past and encounters the mystical, healing presence of a woman who lives in the forest and treats the villagers with leaves and herbs...
...with first-time director Suzanne Schiffman, is primarily the tale of women--women as healers, as mothers, as workers, as the backbone of their community. These women, the lifegivers, are contrasted with the rigid authority of the Church. They represent the naturalistic opposite of "civilization" and they challenge the monk's--and the viewer's--nations of what constitutes knowledge, progress, society...
...scene of the movie, the monk starts quizzing Elda about her belief in God, looking for a chink in the impenetrable facade she presents to him. She responds by demanding that he teach her to write; when he asks her what she would write about, she declares with dreamlike intensity that she would write about leaves and plants and flowers and all their wondrous healing qualities. As her eyes stare into the distance, presumably lost in contemplation at the amazing power of the written word, the viewer cannot help but be somewhat skeptical...
...movie progresses, the monk is forced to assess the traditional concepts of knowledge and faith which have driven him to embrace the Church. What is so remarkable about Berger's message is that the anti-canonical philosophy of the plot is reflected in the personal growth of the characters, as well as in the political evolution of the story...
...only does the monk, played by Jean Carmet, come to acknowledge that his view of religion is too limited to understand the spirituality and customs of the local women, but he also confronts the inadequacies and hypocrisies of his personal creed. Throughout the movie the monk has flashbacks to a scene that occurred when he was a young man, hunting with his father, a powerful nobleman. After refusing to skin a deer that his father has just shot down, the monk runs away, ashamed at his cowardice, and rapes a young girl he comes upon. This act of degradation permeates...