Film Showcases Beauty in the Midst of Tragedy

If unthinkable suffering tested your faith in God, would you remain steadfast? A new film, The Innocents, from French director Anne Fontaine, explores this topic in a quiet and thought-provoking manner with beautiful cinematography, top-notch acting, and meaningful dialogue.

In the winter after the end of WWII, a determined Benedictine novice shows up at the temporary French Red Cross hospital in Warsaw, Poland. She finds Mathilde, a young French doctor (

later she looks out a window and sees the nun outside fervently praying on her knees in the snow, and so she relents.

When Mathilde and the novice arrive at the convent, Mathilde is faced with the inconceivable—a nun, huge with child, in the throes of labor. She learns that Soviet soldiers passed through the convent, raping the sisters and leaving several pregnant.

Although it’s dangerous, Mathilde helps the nuns despite resistance from the Rev. Mother (Agata Kulesza, known for the film Ida), who is concerned about concealing the pregnancies for reasons of safety and reputation. The doctor also receives little cooperation from the pregnant sisters, who because of their vows of chastity and the trauma they have endured, fear someone touching them. However, increasingly, Mathilde becomes the sisters' unlikely friend and savior—in spite of the language barrier (only Sister Maria—Agata Buzzer—speaks French) and her atheistic, Communist leanings.

Beauty in the midst of ugliness

Even though the subject matter is horrendous, the film is beautiful to look at, and there is beauty in its silence. There is no word spoken that is filler; meaningful dialogue and moments of silence are punctuated by the emotion in the actresses’ faces. This is especially true for the character Mathilde played by de Laage. The camera loves her natural beauty, and whenever the camera lingers on her face, there is no need for words; the audience understands what she is feeling. 

Though the dialogue is sparse, the film never gets boring—it is rich in subtext. You see this in the relationship Mathilde has with another doctor

who obviously loves her, but cannot bring himself to say it.

The Innocents makes me wonder why most Hollywood movies—especially religious ones—fail to reach this level of art? This film does something that most religious-themed films do not do; it has pleased critics, the Vatican, and the public. Though I must caution, if you are a victim of rape, viewing this movie could be traumatic.

I also don’t want to fail to mention that when they did the casting call for infants, they happened to find the cutest, fattest-cheeked newborns, which will trigger varying degrees of baby-hunger.

Backstory—stranger than fiction

I wish I could say that this is a fictitious story, but I cannot. The Innocents is based on the accounts of Red Cross doctor, Madeleine Pauliac, who was the inspiration for the film. Pauliac recorded accounts of 25 nuns being raped—as many as 40 times—by Soviet Soldiers in their convent. This was sanctioned by the soldiers' superiors. In the Soviet's wake, twenty Polish nuns were killed, and five were impregnated.

It’s interesting to note that Fontaine—who calls herself a non-Christian though she was raised Catholic—took her craft seriously enough to do extensive research by attending two Benedictine retreats. She says, “I can only work on a theme if I know it perfectly well, and I wanted to experience what life in a convent was like from the inside. I felt it was important to learn about a nun’s daily routine, understand the rhythm of her days.” Fontaine was impressed by the nuns praying together as a community seven times a day.

Perhaps it was this research that helped her to give a fair portrayal of nuns and religion.

The matter of suffering

Watching this film, one cannot help but contemplate suffering. What is its purpose? Mother Angelica’s recently republished book, Answers Not Promises, looks at suffering. In Mother’s matter-of-fact manner, she writes, “If you look to the world to

answer the question of why we suffer you will come up empty-handed.” The mystery is, “God permits all suffering. […] He does this because he wants more for you than a shallow and untested existence. […] His will is that you be perfected. In the process of perfection, it is necessary that He sometimes allows you to suffer extraordinary pain…”

During the film, it was difficult for me not to fixate on the terrible act and my fears of this happening to me. It was also deeply troubling to unravel why God would allow the violation of His brides, but only He can see the bigger picture.

Often Christians attribute great suffering as a punishment from God, but as Saint John Paul the Great explains in his Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris, “it is not true that all suffering is a consequence of a fault and has the nature of a punishment.”

Using the example of Job, St. John Paul writes that suffering not only serves “to repay the objective evil of the transgression with another evil,” but more importantly, in some situations, the suffering’s main purpose is to “create the possibility of rebuilding goodness in the subject who suffers…[and it] strengthens goodness both in man himself and in his relationships with others and especially with God.”

There is hope

In my opinion, Fontaine’s The Innocents does a commendable job of contemplating the question of suffering and remaining faithful in the midst of suffering. Without being sugary or trite, she shows the nuns experiencing healing and hope—beauty shining through the sorrow.

The Innocents is a French/Polish film with English subtitles. The DVD can be purchased online.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go63ZVVwivI