Review of Léon Morin, Priest (1961) by Andrey B — 29 Jun 2017

I'm not Christian and what I know about Christianity I know more from media than anything else, so I say this as a sort of disclaimer for my review and interpretation.

This was an interesting movie for a lot of reasons - it gives you a glimpse into that WWII french occupation life, it presents Christianity in a more philosophical than emotional way that's not typically represented on film, and apparently its ideas about Catholicism in general are a bit more radical than you might expect from the 1960s. However, this movie is split between two possible interpretations: a loss of power and then the ra-ra-Catholocism message it seems to turn into by the end.

Barny's husband is dead, her towns being occupied, her daughter is living in the country, and she has nobody except for Leon; her conversion to Catholicism seems to be more about her desire for stability than anything else really. Even that bizarre crush she has on that woman in her office seems to be more about a desire for power; Sabine is in control, she's beautiful, she's confident, especially considering it magically dissipates once Sabine starts to despair. Then once Leon decides to peace out she's totally crushed because he became the staple of her life... which was annoying! I wish the movie had given at least 5 more minutes on what happens to her - its almost like they got so wrapped up in their Catholic promotion they forgot by the end of the film that the main character isn't actually Leon.

As for Leon himself, he's a shitty 26 year old. I got bored by the fact that everything he said was witty and wise and how everybody fawned over him for saying it. He isn't the perfect priest they all praise him to be, he does flirt with the girls and he's also cold and childish half the time. He leads people on most likely because he's also lonely and wants company but he's so married to his profession (quite literally) he ends up having to cockblock himself and move. They could have explored his inner life more too but again they got too wrapped up in the philosophical side - which again, like, WAS interesting but to the emotional detriment of its characters in my opinion.

So watching this as both an atheist and a woman I was mostly bummed out by the character of Barny (and most of the women in general in this film tbh) being too flat. They do touch upon some interesting sexual themes for her that are fairly bold for the early 60s but they never fully explore them. There's some interesting arguments for Catholicism in here but the pro-communist and atheist arguments are weak at best. That alone brings it down from "great" to "good" in my book. Other than that, if you're catholic you'd probably get more out of it. In that way it kind of reminded me of Silence... musings on what makes a true catholic, what is catholicism, etc.