Thursday, April 02, 2009

Movie - Diary of a Country Priest

I do love movies -- I remember as a kid watching the 1:00 pm movie every single day on TBS. I saw a tremendous number of movies that way; I also would watch just about anything late night as well.

I've started to watch movies via my Netflix subscription online; it works well during the day, not so well at night. I also get about 6 movies at a time with Netflix. The LH likes to watch them too, so I can't watch them as fast as I would like.

This week I watched (twice) a very gripping movie from 1951 - "Diary of a Country Priest" written by Georges Bernanos and directed by Robert Bresson. It's in French (of course) with subtitles and portrays a young and inexperienced priest in a small country French parish. He has consistant "stomach troubles" which necessitate him eating nothing but bread and wine. He also has your basic parish that is a closed system with little support from his superiors. He encounters extreme dysfunction in the church because of an adulterous affair; the hint of the affair is in the very first scene.

The film influenced Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, or so Wikipedia tells us. It was not an enjoyable film, really. Thought provoking and incomprehensible at times, yes. Enjoyable, no. Today I watch "Diary of a City Priest" which was suggested as a companion piece because "it turns out better." We shall see.

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