On Saints and Movies

[cristina]

Just for fun: who, among your favorite saints, do you think have lives that are potential movie material? And, if you're daring enough, who would you cast?

For starters, we've discussed in our family how the life of St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland could be a good movie: Celtic setting, a courtly romance, a few battles, the tragic loss of her husband and son...

[katycarl]

St. Thomas Aquinas. I want to see him chase the harlot out with a firebrand.

[alaide]

Saint Francis Xavier would be a great movie. It would be expensive though, trying to film in all those different locations!

[firefolk]

Duuuuude--come on. Francis of Assisi. Ain't NOBODY more cinematic than St. Frank, not even John Wayne. (Although of course he's a tight runner-up.) Fighting the Perugians in his youth, embracing the leper, the voice in the chapel, taming the wolf (maybe we could get Frank Oz to do a puppet wolf instead falling back on CGI, for once), preaching to the Saracens in mid-Crusade. . . the Stigmata-vision. . . Just visually it would be at least as cool as the LOTR movies, and maybe we could get a Catholic director so they wouldn't hatchet-job the characters. (Like the dude with the beard that did Therese. Bob something or other.) And you know what they never do in movies anymore?--voice-overs. We could get some huge fat British guy to read excerpts from GK's Life Of during establishing shots, and it would be cool in a hagiologically campy kind of way. Man, I love this idea. Does anybody have, like, a hundred and fifty million dollars? I'll get you back on payday, honest.

[bluemaydie]

I second the motion to make a movie of St. Francis of Assisi's life (although I must add that it's doubtful he actually preached to the Saracens).

The dude with the beard that did Therese was Leonardo Defilippis, and he IS Catholic. I actually went to a screening of Therese at which he was present and said a few words before the movie began. And I wanted to strangle him by the time the movie was finished for making something so insipidly awful. I shudder to think what he'd do with St. Francis...

[syme]

Hehe. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but as I read it firefolk *did* realize the dude with the beard was Catholic, no? Hi did say he wanted to make it campy, after all...

[bluemaydie]

Syme--

Yeah, I realized that possible reading after I finished posting my comment. So it just comes down to the fact that I think hagiographical camp is a bad idea. Unless you're releasing the movie solely to Catholics who love and forgive bad movies. But definitely a bad idea for wide release.

[firefolk]

Camp can never be a bad idea, Kate. Without camp there could be no fish sandwiches. Don't you see? FISH SANDWICHES!

[bluemaydie]

Firefolk, YOU FOOL! When you put the fish sandwich before the s'more, you've just just bought a ticket on the Handbasket Express.

[bluemaydie]

In all seriousness, what about the legend of St Christopher--trying to find the strongest prince in the world to serve--done in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" style? Magnificent potentates and awsome battle sequences giving way to a humble shack on the edge of the river? Anybody have Ang Lee's phone number?

[Frank]

They recently made a movie about St. Peter that seems to have gone entirely unnoticed. (I haven't actually seen it yet!) They could definitely make a movie about of St. Maximilien Kolbe. I don't know if this counts, but I've often thought that a bunch of Old Testament stories could potentially be subjects of movies. (They'd have to take some artistic license for the many of the details of course.)

Finally, this is kind of off-topic, but I think The Nativity Story, while good, could have been MUCH better.

[cristina]

The life of St. Dymphna is also full of drama:

www.natlshrinestdymphna.org/history.php.

Like Katy, I would also like to see St. Thomas Aquinas chase the harlot with the firebrand!

As for Saint Francis Xavier -- I agree, it would be an expensive movie. But it would definitely be an interesting one with all those exotic settings. I wonder if there are any possible substitute locations for shooting those scenes. I heard that "The Last Samurai" was actually shot in New Zealand, but the sets were so realistic that the old Japanese who have actually lived during the period depicted were moved to tears of nostalgia when they saw the sets.

[gnovena]

I've thought about this topic quite a bit recently. For any artist, catholic or not, the lives of the saints represents such a rich source of inspiration. One day, I'd love to work on screenplays covering the various possibilities of the lives of the saints. Its silly that more artists havent taken more inspiration from this amazing vehicle for God's grace to come into our lives.

Here's a good link to take a peek at various efforts to organize the history of the lives of the saints...an important project itself:

www.fordham.edu/halsall/sbook3.html#web1

For an example approach to utilizing the lives of the saints in one's art, take a look at J Michael Walker's website:

www.allthesaints.com/

He writes short narratives and paints, drawing inspiration from the streets in Los Angeles named after Saints. He achieves a unique mix of local history sprinkled with themes found in the lives of the actual saints after whom the streets/neighborhoods are named.

Perhaps it would spur some of aspiring catholic artists to know that Walker is not catholic!

Finally, biographical movies on the lives of the saints are great. But personally, I think what's needed these days is a fictional account of a young catholic living today and trying and succeeding on the road to sainthood, complete with padre pio-esque miracles, rebuffed attacks from the devil, humility and love as an instrument of God's work, etc. It seems like the problem though is you almost have to be a saint to do it right.

What I find missing in most movies about the saints is an insightful portrayal of the experience of God that the saints have had in their lives. Typically, movies have this one scene where a saint sees a bright light and has a vision or something and afterwards they have a bit of a zombie look on their face as they carry out their received mission, etc. What's needed though is a development of the transformation from a soul believing he/she has an individual ability to achieve great things--->to experiencing one's smallness in the universe with an experience of God's glory--->to a new understanding of what one life can be for the lives of body of christ if one strives only to let God's work flower in us.

Another lacking thing here is a portrayal of the joy the saints carry in their hearts...what is this mysterious and hidden joy all about? Is it the knowledge that God is so much more than anyone has ever written or said...something fantastic beyond all imagination? The saints are the ones bold enough to ask God for more in their life and He has answered them with a tiny pin prick view into heavan opened briefly. They come away with a completely changed understanding of good/evil in the world... How do you portray this? Answering this question would be a great thread in itself.

[pauls]

Pitch #1: I know there is one about Damien 'the leper', which I have not seen so don't know how good it is and am assuming is not a masterpiece, but I have in mind a straight forward, austere tour de force about him, with extended silent sequences of him building coffins and houses and burying corpses and slowly but gradually the leprosy on his face getting worse and worse, but in black and white. Quiet and powerful.

Pitch #2: St. Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, and a whole lot of other angels, taking place before the start of the history of mankind. It will be like the beginning of the Silmarillion. It will be three and a half hours. The entirety of the film will be like the last thirty minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. We'll get Mel Gibson to direct it. He'll also pay for it. It will have lots of those strange Australian instruments on the soundtrack which I don't know the name of, but which sound spooky and cool. We'll get George Lucas to invent a new sound system to contain the supersonic comsic thunder booms and roaring rhetorical questions, "Who is like unto God?" The new system will be called 'THX Beyond'. The emotional target will basically be to frighten the living hell out of people. What think?

[syme]

Now that second pitch sounds AWESOME. Hurrah for THX Beyond! Seriously, though, it would a weird movie, but in the right hands it could just be a masterpiece. I'm not even kidding. Though I do think it could also be HORRIBLE if done in the wrong way... and it probably would be.

But enough fantasizing, apperntly one movie that is actually in the works is Michael O'Brien's "Father Elijah." Here's an article about it from Hollywood Reporter:

www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/international/news/e3ifb546e6f6aa33273582da6fcfd98bd2b

The IMDB site (here) is empty thus far. It only says that it is due out in 2009.

In any case, I know we've discussed Michael O'Brien's books in the past, with mostly positive comments, so this seems like an exciting project. On the other hand, it's a new company that's producing it, so it makes me wonder whether it will be a serious film or just some low budget production. It would be awesome to see a thoughtful, aptly done Catholic "thriller" (can I call it that?) on the big screen. Plus Dappled Things could boast that one of its featured writers has his own film! That sounds pretty great to me!

I have only read one Michael O'Brien book, though, and it wasn't Father Elijah. I read "Plague Journal," which got off to a great start, but soon got rather slow and perhaps repetitive. He definitely lost me by the end. To those who have read more of his books I would ask: how do you think Father Elijah would translate into film? Could it earn mainstream acceptance? And how is the book in comparison to Plague Journal?