Why this film only score a 7.4 rating is beyond me. This should be Fred Zinnerman's signature film (Though "High Noon" and "From here to Eternity" are great too). Audrey Hepburn gave a fantastic performance here. Is it because the religious themes turns audiences off? Audiences are not used to watching Audrey in a full drama?
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Yesterday, saw this film again!This film is very true,It did not have painstaking construction.It made me fall into and think deeply about again yesterday.
This film is not that most people can understand deeply and compliments,so it has been really underestimated value.Its theme is caused very much deeply! Different angles, there is different understanding.This film involves religion , intelligence subject , theory of human nature and value and meaning in life.
This film is a great immortal masterpiece which has reached the summit pinnacle!
I had a hard time believing that being a nun was so unrelentingly grim. From the first time that Hepburn leaves her father, the music induces a mood that is as if she is being led off to an execution. Whenever she says ANYTHING personal later in the movie, we are meant to believe it is very wrong according to her order's Rule.
I find it hard to believe that any order requires nuns to refrain from saying, e.g., "I like ice cream", at the risk of having committed a terrible sin. Or to never EVER refer to one's memory of anything before one became a nun -- to ever laugh or smile -- or say "I'll miss you".
I guess I just find this movie incredible about the reality of being a nun. Sure, I can accept that months of silence may be imposed, that ways of walking and speaking are prescribed, that one has begun a new life as a nun (hence the new name).
But this movie tries to make us believe that all human emotions - of sorrow or joy, of grief and pleasure -- must be completely eliminated to conform to the Rule. I just don't believe it. And that falsity is basically the story of the movie.
In that sense, I felt that the book from which the movie was adapted, by a FORMER nun, must have greatly exaggerated the difficulty of conforming to her order, in order to rationalize why she left.
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This is only a movie. You emphasized a lot on believability of this film but say nothing else about the film's quality, something which I find puzzling. This film is not a documentary, and the setting was during a dramatic era of war, so you'll never know for sure. Maybe it is exaggerated, maybe not.
I think it is Fred Zinnermann's direction that turns you off. It is so disciplined in it mood that it never get sappy. The characters are not constantly grim as the mood of this film suggest. It takes attention to feel for the characters.
Still, to each his own. You made some pretty good points nevertheless, even if I feel that you misinterpreted the film.
This is the first film with Hepburn I have watched. Wow, I didn't realize how great she was, now I have made it a goal to see all her films. What was I thinking passing up her movies in the video store? Hello, someone should have beat me upside the head. I have been missing out.
I rented this movie because I have a strong conviction that I am being called to serve God as a nun. I have been looking strongly into it the past six months and speaking with nuns from various orders, so when I was browsing the video store for something good to watch I happened past this, the title got my attention so I rented it. I was skeptic , but very pleasently impressed and surprised.
I don't think monacal life is exaggerated at all, either in the film or in the book that it's based on -I would rather be more prone to believe that the book didn't tell the truth in all its rawness. There are disciplines like those and even more rigid in nuns' convents. Not all orders are equally rigid, but many still are -there are nuns who sleep in cells, on the bare floor; who are never allowed to speak to anyone; who can never see their relatives; the denial of emotions and all contact with the world is real in some cases. I'm not saying this is general, but it definitely exists.
I can't agree with your following point:
(Warning -might be spoilers here).
this movie tries to make us believe that all human emotions - of sorrow or joy, of grief and pleasure -- must be completely eliminated to conform to the Rule.
In my opinion, one of the greatest things about the film is precisely that we can't fight our own emotional nature, and that values such as humility, obedience, the ability to serve others, etc. lose their meaning when they're used as mere concepts or rules to follow, not in touch with the real world and the real people. That's what Sister Luke struggles with, and that's what she fails at -because she can't keep denying her mundane (in a good sense) nature, her feelings, her own sense of what's right and wrong.
I agree that the movie The Nun's Story depicted the harshness of religious life back in those days. Since Vatican II in the '60's you will find that things have changed dramatically in religious orders. I recommend a visit to this web site www.poorclares.ie. You will see nuns who seem peaceful in their disposition, smiling and to me very happy. Read some of their stories. If only those of us who are in the world could show such peace and happiness towards each other.
The Nun's Story is my favourite film. They don't make movies like that anymore. I hope it comes out on DVD soon.
Kathryn Hulme, the book's author, was never a nun herself. The book is based on a Belgian former-nun whom Hulme met while working in a refugee camp in Europe after WWII. See http://www.dp-camp-wildflecken.de/kathryn-hulme.htm for more information.
I find the depiction of a nun's life very credible for that place and time and order. My parents grew up in Europe during and after WWII, and I had two uncles who became priests and an aunt who became a nun. While their orders were not as proscriptive as the one that Gabrielle joined to become Sr. Luke, there were similarities. I rarely saw my aunt the nun smile, let alone laugh. Life itself was grimmer for many people in those days, and Catholicism did not exactly lighten things up.
Also, I don't accept the premise that the Rule required eliminating all human emotions. The nuns in the Congo showed great joy in helping the local people, and great grief when one of their one was brutally murdered. The point of the order was that unquestioning obedience trumps all -- and that's what Gabrielle could not accept in her heart.
True about the sisters in the Congo, but I think it was simply impossible in the noisy, joyous, spontaneous African society to follow the Holy Rule the way they did in Belgium, where it was a tradition and well understood.
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Please put some dashes above your sig line so I won't think it's part of your dumb post.
Miss Hepburn acted the leading lady was a nun, was a clergy, she and the ordinary belief person was different.
The Nun's Story is a philosophy dialectical ponder movie. Its content widespread and is deep. I think watches a movie to have to seek to the essence.Should watch several time this movie.
This movie is the essence and dialectical discusses human and the religious relations, religious and the war relations,the religion with the relations which loves,different cultural andthe religious relations.These questions continuously do not have a conclusion and the answer in the human history.
In the movie leading lady continuously profound and in the complex contradiction questions, the ponder, the introspection unceasingly in the humanity. She is searching the life significance continuously. Profound human nature analysis.
In brief, The Nun's Story is a very great movie. Movie ending any music has not promulgated this is a humanity's forever ponder proposition. This movie is not each person can like.The Nun's Story regarding the human which deeply loves the ponder is huge pleasantly surprised! Was waiting for deeply loves the thinking the people dig it!
I believe from what i have read about it that this is an accurate portrayal of life in a nunnery, at least at the time the film was made. Fred Zinneman had Audrey Hepburn and the rest of the 'head' nuns live in a convent for a week so they could learn the rules and discipline needed. Being a nun is a very tough life, unlike some people believe, with lots of seemingly unnatural rules - eg not being allowed to speak of what happened before you became a nun
shareAs an Atheist, the religious themes were an enormous and uncomfortable turn off for me and it required multiple times to watch the entire thing, but Audrey Hepburn is my favorite actress. I found the film to be very slow and long (not always a bad thing necessarily) but it did pick up once she arrived at the Congo in my opinion. By the end of it all I didn't think too highly nor poorly of it. I don't think I could watch it again with ease.
shareI'm basically atheistic myself and found all the ritual, programming, discipline, etc. in the mother house fascinating and is actually my favorite part of the movie, it is filmed beautifully, the music invoking and comforting, and wouldn't exactly call the movie slow since it keeps a nice steady pace, and I wish it were much longer, it needed at least another 45 minutes to flesh out Sr Luke's conflictions and a little more time spent during the war. I'm the kind of guy who likes to tell dirty nun jokes and ridicules religion, but also find The Nun's Story full of reverence and I'm enamored by it, and I also have nothing but respect for it. This is Audrey Hepburn's finest movie and I have watched it a dozen times at least, and could never tire of it, The Nun's Story is a beautiful movie, 9/10 stars.
shareNicely put! Though I've not watched it anywhere near as many times...
shareI completely agree, I couldn't find a flaw in this masterpiece, Audrey Hepburn's performance was perfect, the direction and everything else was just brilliant! Definitely underrated!
shareBreakfast at Tiffany's is her most overrated role and movie; in fact it's one of hte most overrated movies ever. Not much to like about it except Audrey herself and the kitty. But unlike a lot of old movies, this one was easy to get into.
Bone, it is what it is.