Review by Keri O’Shea
“Satan has only the power we give him.”
A highly tense chiaroscuro Confessional gives us the opening scene of The Monk (2011), and introduces us to our main character – the ‘model of rectitude’, Ambrosio (Vincent Cassel), a monk legendary within his order and for miles around his Capuchin monastery, an institution so central to the culture and society of 16th Century Madrid. Once an abandoned child, adopted and raised by the order, Ambrosio has grown into a man of intense faith, and a brilliant orator – certainly not the spawn of Satan he was feared to be, when superstitious monks uncovered the hand-print birthmark on his shoulder and assumed it to be the devil’s mark.
Ambrosio’s piety does not unequivocally do good, however. He shows compassion towards a would-be novice, Valerio, who is so horribly burned that he rarely removes the mask which conceals his face, and is therefore unwilling to eat, or sleep, with the other monks. Although this behaviour is against the rules of the order, Ambrosio permits it. On the other hand, when he discovers a note to a lover in the possession of one of the novice nuns who visits him for Confession, he’s utterly inflexible, and passes the note to her Prioress, unleashing hell for this young woman. It seems that the rules by which he has always lived are coming under considerable strain, and when the head of Ambrosio’s order warns him that the Devil is present amongst them all, Ambrosio gives credence to it. Strange things are indeed happening – duplicity, human weakness and most importantly, lust are soon vying for possession of the man of God’s soul, leading him into an inescapable personal nightmare.
Roughly a century before cinema existed, the nineteen-year old author Matthew Lewis was working on his novel, The Monk (1796). The extreme content of his book shocked contemporary audiences, even whilst impressing them with his skill as a writer – it’s a state of affairs which modern horror fans are no doubt familiar with, as movies continue to appear which walk a fine line between technical prowess and abhorrent content, but perhaps unusually, The Monk’s love-letter to excess has only rarely made it to the silver screen, even though it is in many ways tailor-made to form the basis of a seriously over-the-top screenplay. When I heard about the 2011 movie, I half-expected that this would be the case. However, and although writer/director Dominik Moll has not shied away from many of the novel’s still-shocking plot-lines, this is not an exercise in gratuity for its own sake at all. What we have here instead is a character-driven movie, with the performance of Cassel at its heart; some of the other characters have accordingly been removed, or repositioned around Ambrosio, so that we are given the moral collapse of an individual in remarkable circumstances. This is our focus, and the result is an absorbing, brilliant piece of filmmaking.
As you might expect, it’s all on Vincent Cassel to hold it together, and his performance here is nothing short of extraordinary. He’s magnetic as Ambrosio, always looking like his religious serenity is on the verge of breakdown, whilst communicating a great array of complexities despite little dialogue. You really believe he is battling with his conscience. The way in which many of the shots are framed means that the light frequently catches his eyes in an ominous, otherworldly way, which serves to highlight that there is a darkness to his inner world – this effect is reinforced whenever Ambrosio walks out in the hot Spanish sun wearing his cowl, which shrouds him in darkness, making him look like his own constellation, a character swathed in pitch-black and separate from the people he moves amongst.
Thanks to a lot of the cinema we might associate with ‘Gothic’, it’s easy to forget that the early provinces of Gothic were not the cold, storm-assaulted castles of Northern Europe but the balmy locations of Italy and Spain, and The Monk makes much of the contrast between the bright, hot streets of Madrid and the dark interiors of the monastery, which are lit only by intermittent sunbeams or, more often, moonbeams (much of the significant plot developments occur at night). The film looks beautiful, with care evidently going into each and every shot. As for the camerawork, it is slow and sweeping. This further humanises the characters in the film, by pausing on them, drinking in their postures and looks, and allowing us to see them as people with internal lives, not just bit-part players in an incredible turn of events. The use of a visibly closing aperture in several shots seems to add to the film’s insistence that we focus on certain scenes, and the people in them. It’s an interesting visual tic.
Perhaps one of the reasons that the film can successfully focus on one man’s struggle with his morality is because the film’s country of origin, France, is itself a Catholic country, as is Spain, where the film was shot. The Catholicism which was so bizarre and ‘Other’ to Lewis, an Englishman, doesn’t have the same issues in countries where it has so long held sway, and rather little is made of the rituals and beliefs themselves, more looking at how they provide a structure which is jeopardised or found lacking by Ambrosio. Elements of the supernatural present in the novel and film, though again played down in the latter, are also more significant in how they precipitate Ambrosio’s ruin rather than viewed as very important in their own right. Rather, the question of personal culpability – whether some people are fated to sin, or choose their own paths – seems to be central to this version of The Monk.
Those expecting a high-action treatment of a novel which is peopled with bleeding nuns, wandering Jews and the agents of the Inquisition, to name a few, will find The Monk (2011) a far more sparse, morose and ponderous piece of work, but by no means is it devoid of all of the plot elements which have always made the book so transgressive. The weighty tone of the film may not suit everyone, true, but for this reviewer, this is an accomplished, aesthetically-pleasing film underpinned with good performances and, at its heart, a brilliant performance by Cassel, one of the finest working actors we have. This is a brooding piece of modern Gothic, which deserves not to be overlooked or underestimated.
The Monk is released to UK cinemas on April 27th, from Metrodome.