The Monk

Pastor and Flock: Vincent Cassell in The Monk

Dominik Moll's The Monk received a mixed reception when it was released in France in 2011 and New York in 2013. I think it was a tad bit underrated, a common fate for Mr. Moll's films. Certainly there is a clash between the cool irony of Moll and the hysterical moralism of the source material of this film, Matthew Lewis' The Monk: A Romance. However, I think Moll has seized upon the very datedness of the book in order to film a tale of Gothic horror not dependent on CGI overkill. Moll even films the novel in a dated style, replete with irises and superimpositions, to signal that this tale is in a time distant from modern sensibilities when Christianity had, temporarily, displaced Paganism in the West.  

Lewis' book was first published in 1796, just two years after Ann Radcliffe's influential Gothic Romance, The Mysteries of Udolpho. Lewis was a fellow traveler of the English Romantics, pals with Lord Byron and The Shelleys. The Monk is set in early 17th century Spain at a Capuchine monastery. A charismatic monk named Ambrosio is drawing followers with his impassioned sermons. Demonic forces take note and send an emissary to lead Ambrosio to temptation. The film eliminates some, but not all, of Ambrosio's fiendish deeds after he embraces sin. Moll would have had to make a six hour miniseries to film all of the book, so important supporting characters, like "the Bleeding Nun", are jettisoned. Still, most of the novel's transgressive elements are retained: including Satanism, rape, murder, transvestitism, and, most beloved by the Romantics, incest. 

Moll starts his film differently than the book. In the film, we meet Ambrosio taking the confession of depraved noble who revels in having ravished his niece. The character, who we later learn is Satan, is a fur clad wolf among the sheep, attempting to distract the shepherd from his flock. Satan is much more fanciful in the novel. Moll's change is to remind a modern audience that evil exist amongst us and does not just emanate from the underworld of Lewis' novel. I liked Moll's shots of the parishioners enraptured by Ambrosio's sermons. Ambrosio is a star to the masses in an age when the Catholic church had a stranglehold on what passed for media. If anything, Moll has ameliorated the anti-Papistry of the source material. Lewis' work, like that of Ann Radcliffe, drips with the rabid foam of hysterical hatred for the Pope and his minions. There is biting criticism of the Catholic clergy in the film, but it is measured and, typically for Moll, rational.

                                   

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I also dug Moll's use of myrtle, sacred to Pagan love goddesses. Seymour Cassell is unusually restrained as Ambrosio, leaking out the faintest whiff of charisma. I adored Déborah François as Ambrosio's unholy temptress. All in all, The Monk is a thoughtful take on a genre that often descends into the craven and obvious.