Hadewijch

The 34th HK International Film Fesitval opened on 21st March at the Convention Centre, with Crossing Hennessy. Not for me. It opened last night, at the Science Museum with a film with a most peculiar name: Hadewijch.  Hadewijch of Antwerp is a 13th century mystic sometimes referred to as the Brabant mystic, associated with a medieval movement called Minnemystiek or "love mysticism".She is a woman of high birth who left behind a host of poems modeled after the traditional troubadour poetry of courtly love. Very little is known about her except that she could read Latin, French, Provencal and Dutch and was well versed in the mystical literature of St. Augustine, William of St. Thiery, Richard of St Victor and  Bernard of Clairvaux. This type of lyrical poetry was originally used to express man's longing for an unattainable worldly love for a beautiful lady. But Hadewijch transformed it into an intensely personal  vehicle for expressing her eternal love for God. To her God is love, at once present and absent. She wrote in a very lyrical Dutch vernacular style and influenced such later mystics as Jan van Ruysbroek. 

 

The Hadewijch being shown at the Science Museum last night, however, appeared to be a twentieth century version of the original Hadewijch but with a twist. It was played by Julie Sokolowski, a girl in her early teens,whose life seemed completely consumed by her intense love of Christ. The programme guide described her as a "revelation". She could not have been a better choice. She has a long roundish face, high forehead, straight fleshy nose, slightly plump, a completely innocent face. What is most remarkable are her eyes, which are always wide open. She would give complete attention to whomever it was that she was talking to, in a kind of open, utterly  defenceless, almost blank credulous stare, as if she were absolutely insulated from worldly guile. No matter what others say, she appeared accepting and anxious not to offend. She talks with a quiet voice. She appears always absorbed in thought and always moved with a kind of calm which nothing can ever seem to purturb except in her moments of prayer. She would stand in the rain dressed in little but a flimsy T-shirt or light woollen knitwear, seemingly unaware of the driving rain and wind. Her mind was elsewhere, in a different world. She was with Christ, and what she thought was Christ's immense love for man, for whom he suffered and died a terrible death on a wooden cross, for the sins of man. In fact, in the film, she was the daughter of a French Minister, living in a beautiful old Parisian mansion and had just finished her end of term exam waiting for the results to come out. She went to a convent for a trial stay to see if she is fit to be a nun.

 

As the film opens, we see a young girl, trying to climb a slope between some sparsely leaved trees, probably some time around Easter. The denuded branches had not yet sprouted any new leaves against a dull grey sky. She was walking, not too quickly, not too slowly. She grimaced a little as she struggled up the little collin, in a medium shot.  Perhaps a symbol of her lonely and bleak journey towards union with the transcendent. There was no music. Nothing except the sound of her feet rustling against the dead leaves, loose dirt and rubble. In the background, we see a tower crane. In the distance, we see two men working, trying to haul some building materials, outside of the convent . Then the camera zoomed in. We hear them talk about how hard it is to make a living. Then we see she came to a spot behind an old building, in slate. There was a black wrought iron fence. Flying about its floral patterns were tatttered white papers fluttering in desolation in the wind, probably prayers of petitions offered to whoever it was behind the iron railings in the hope that they would be answered. The girl approached, looked up, closed her eyes, mumbled some prayers, with fervour, completely absorbed in whatever it was she was saying, her hands upon her heart. She stayed a while and then retraced her steps back to the tiny garden outside the convent .

 

In the next scene, we see a dining hall, barely furnished. It was the nuns' dining hall. Sitting around were just a few nuns, mostly old. They said their prayers and started eating. The girl was not eating. She wanted to fast for the love of Christ. Earlier, she stood alone in the cold of the garden for the same purpose. She wanted her body to experience a little the immense suffering of Christ on the cross, hoping thereby to achive a kind of closer spiritual union with Christ, whom to her  was the sole purpose of her life, by partaking of his physical suffering. She rejected the offer of food and said she did not need it. She returned into her bare room with just a bed, a small and worn wooden desk, placed against a small window, through which we can see the horizontal arm of the tower crane, enshrouded in mist. On the side of the wall, against the bed was a small wooden cross. The girl knelt down, looked intently at it and prayed, her brows knitted together, her hands upon her heart, her shoulders bunched together. She was complaining why Jesus was not present to her all the time. She wanted him to be with her at all hours of the day and night. He was not.  

 

In the next scene. We see the girl, repeating what she did in the previous scene, standing alone in the garden and going up that hill to that altar and upon her return, another old sympathetic  nun gave her two slices of French bread which she had probably smuggled out against the convent rules, hidden under the folds of her habit and told her she must eat. She accepted. In the next scene, we see her tearing the bread into tiny crumbs, and feeding them to the birds. The nun who gave her the bread saw that, hidden in the shade of the arch-door leading to the garden.She returned to her tiny bare room and prayed some more. The next day at about meal time, she was told to see the mother superior of the convent.  She obediently did so. The mother superior told her she must leave for her own good. She said her mortification was excessive and that in her abstinence, she detected a hidden amplication of her "self" although the girl thought she was doing it for the love of Christ. She was told that she must go back into the world and there experience Christ's love again and that it was not only in a convent that one can encounter God and be in daily contact with him.  She did not understand. But she left, a rueful and baffled look in her eyes.

 

Then as she was walking home, she stopped by a cafe to think things over, was accosted by a young Arab boy. He invited her to sit down with his friends. To his surprise, she agreed. She was invited to a rock dancing party that evening. She agreed to that too. She danced, half heartedly. Then she returned home. In the next scene, we saw the young Arab boy apologise to her. She said she was not offended. To show that she meant it, he held his hands. Then the Arab boy asked her why she did not appear interested in falling in love with boys. She said, she loved only one person: Jesus Christ. The boy looked puzzled and suggested that she was really fervent and mentioned that she was like his brother, Yassim, a devout Muslim. He said his brother was giving a talk on some readings of the Koran the next evening on the silence of God and that if she was interested, she could come too. She went. And gradually became friends with Yassim with whom she felt an instinctive affinity because both shared the same fervour for God. But there was a difference, she found. Yassim said that if we really loved God, we must act and do justice and not just contemplate about him. She stared in puzzlement but said she would try to think about it. She brought Yassim to the house where she was born. He said it was a beautiful house in a beautiful surrounding. It stood on top of a hill, in the countryside, overlooking some pastures, a wood and a pond.

 

Eventually, she told Yassim she was ready to act for God. She was led to a house. At the verandah, we see,  again in a medium shot, the girl talking to two other Arab men, sitting on rattan chairs. The boy's brother kissed the two men on the cheek three times and introduced the girl to them. Then we see each of the men shake hands with her.  Next we have a scene of explosion in an Arab quarters in the Paris suburbs: people talking in Arabic rushing about, carrying an injured Arab, loud shouts to do sometthing urgently etc. She was shocked. Yassim covered her in his arms. She did not like it. She almost cried, but did not. In the next scene, we see the girl accompanying the boy's brother to the centre of Paris in a car. Then we see white smoke all over the screen with a splash of red and the sound of another bomb blast. In the background, we see the L'Arc de Triomphe.

 

In the final scene. We see the girl going back to the convent. It was raining. She was looking at the sky, mumbling something or other, apparently to Christ. The rain got heavier. She took shelter in a nearby green house. One of the immigrant workers we saw at the start of the film was there too. He had just been released from prison for some kind of offence and also stopped work to take shelter in the same green house. The rain stopped. The girl went out. She walked slowly towards the pond, hesitated and then took a plunge into water. We see bubbles coming and some spreading ripples. We see some light shining on the surface of the water and the ripples. After about half a minute or so, we see two faces and two bodies emerge, entwined to each other. It was the girl and the immigrant building worker!

 

The film is very sparing. Almost static. Like a Greek drama. Just less than maybe a dozen scenes: the  garden, the dining hall, her bed room at the convent, the exterior of the convent with the crane, the cafe, the boy's home, the girl's home, the backroom of the restaurant where the boy's brother was giving talks on the silence of God, the exterior of the house where the girl was born,  the prison where we find the immigrant worker,a few street scenes when the boy tried to discover more about her through the busy Parisian streets ending up at the side of the Seine, the scene of the first explosion, the house where the girl decided to join the Muslim political action, the second explosion, the convent garden again and finally the pond.  Very few words. The camera follows the events, but always discreetly, at a distance. Often when the characters talk, we only see them. We only see their lips move. We do not hear what they are saying. Purely visual. Very little music. Just images. A cool, almost analytic study of strong mystical religious emotions and its potential for violence. The paradox of intense love leading to transcendence/transgression of more conventional standards of decency and right conduct. There are many ellipses. Was the bomb in Paris planted by the criminal immigrant worker?  We also see the girl's relation with her parents. Superficially, the girl had everything she needed, a nice big house, good school, high born father and upper middle class socially engaged mother, unlimited time to indulge in her bout of  teenage religious mysticism, complete freedom to do whatever it is she wants to do, even to become a nun. But everything is revealed when the girl invited the Arab boy for lunch during which he was "politely" interrogated as to his social backgorund, what his father did, what his plans were for study and career, what kind of professional training he expected to complete and when the boy said that he was not sure, her parents' only reaction was 'Oh", with a slight raising of their eye-brows and a slight tighening of their lips in silence! and ceased to be interested in any further questioning. Most economical! Is the director  Bruno Dumont, a former philosophy professor, trying to say that the division within contemporary French society  between races, between classes, between religion and secularism and within religion  itself between Christianity and Islam so complete that the only link between them is religious violence and/or sex?  Is violence and exclusivity at the root of both sex and religion? Can desire never be satiated by anything but action? Julie Sokolowski's performance was completely convincing! A very thoughtful start to my film festival fare.