How to do a religious film without mentioning God.

raypaquin

How does one write about religion without hardly even mentioning God? This masterpiece shows better than any other film that religion is not about God, but about us. Religion is a box into which we try to put God. As Voltaire said or wrote, "God has created us into His image , but we have returned the compliment." I am a deeply religious man, yet I have not set foot in a church for the past 30 years or so, except for marriages, baptisms, funerals and the like. In that sense, this is a deeply religious film. However, it is about religiosity, not strictly about religion. It is about the wife who will speak about the sins of her husband for an hour during confession, and where the priest has to interrupt her and tell her "Now that I have heard the confession of your husband, may I hear your own?" How such a movie could have been made by an avowed atheist is beyond me. In that sense, I feel a deep kinship with Robert Bresson and with the writer, Georges Bernanos. In short, this is a blue-blood MASTERPIECE !!! Buy it, steal it, rent it, lie for it, but see it, please !

score 10/10

raypaquin 12 July 2004

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0042726/