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From the start it’s clear that the stage is set for a confrontation between faith and reason and that’s just what we get, with Jane Fonda as the psychiatrist and Anne Bancroft as the Mother Superior going head-to-head in a series of increasingly acrimonious clashes. Most of the time the film stays on this fairly schematic level, further loading the dice by making Martha a lapsed Catholic with a failed marriage and an abortion in her own past. As the simple-minded Agnes, Meg Tilly relies mainly on a tight, beatific little smile that soon grows wearisome, while Jewison can’t resist dropping in nudging close-ups of crucifixes and holy pictures at every opportunity.
Still, the chilly, repressive atmosphere of the convent, all whispers and mistrustful sidelong glances, is effectively conjured up, while the two formidable actresses in the lead roles play the lines for all they’re worth and a bit more. Agnes of God is never as significant as it thinks it’s being, and the ending is woefully fudged, but it’s a creditable attempt at an impossible subject. And cinematographer Sven Nykvist brings to it some of the luminous intensity he deployed for Ingmar Bergman.
On the DVD: Agnes of God on disc has zilch in terms of extras, not even a trailer. The transfer preserves the 1.85:1 ratio of the original release. --Philip Kemp
Customer Reviews
Meg Tilly stars as a young woman who's recently given birth to, and apparently murdered, her baby. No surprise there, except that she also happens to be a young nun, Sister Agnes, tightly cloistered in a French Canadian convent. Agnes has no memory of the deed, so Jane Fonda plays the court-appointed psychologist, Dr. Livingston, tasked with unearthing the facts of the matter. Who was the biological father? How did he breach the convent's walls to gain access to Agnes and impregnate her? What were the circumstances of the birth and killing? Anne Bancroft plays the head of the religious house, who apparently knows more than she's telling. Livingston won't be stopped, and the Mother Superior is indomitable. It's a case of the Irresistible Force meeting the Immovable Object.
All three actresses give exceptional performances in a film that pivots around two key elements of Catholicism, the doctrines of the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth, as well as the phenomenon of the Stigmata. There's even a lighter moment as the Fonda and Bancroft characters discuss what sort of cigar might have been the favorite of certain of the Apostles. (Can you envision Peter smoking a big stogie?)
It's been argued that the picture, while undeniably excellent, was ultimately unsatisfying. I think such a conclusion misses the point, which is that some things, like the Immaculate Conception and the Virgin Birth, will never be proven facts, but must be accepted on faith by those so inclined. And, not all movie endings are necessarily tidy, nor should they be. Sometimes, the conjecture one is left with is the point of it all.
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