Success in small things
O'Brien, Tom
keeps postponing it, granting Ford a measure of success as a American character is the most American of all. genuine visionary. Ford buys a "town" ( in fact a downtrod- Ford's...
...She contented that...
...and practical dissent in the Catholic Church- He CAVALIER: I looked for the face of a includes all letters and statements from Rome as woman that would not transmit a single well as an extended molecule of sexual implication...
...I was very moved...
...One thing I wanted tem of shooting took on a symbolic Carmelite nun, Saint Therese of Lisieux to film - but couldn't because of time meaning...
...If you love the Church...
...And tion of "maybe," even in interpreting Christmas this is the only thing she ever thought of sanctity...
...In Ford, he found an actor willing to extend himself destiny...
...This is didn't want to approach in any clear way, "Freudian...
...But she that, when Therese sees the mortification by the other nuns in the story, especially wrote a little diary which has touched of Lucy, Therese says, "Do you think the one named Lucy...
...We made her a saint, that will please Him...
...a priest, a day, in the very small amount of time for words before they would burst out laughcardinal . . . a lobster .. . freedom that a Carmelite has, but the ing...
...My film tries to record the inexpensive, to remain "poor" on that rector whose recently released importance of every single object in the level: But we also realized that this sysfilm, Therese - a study of the Carmelite convents...
...For her the in the hospital...
...A film would never reconstruct the Carmel I had admit they loved their father...
...This leads into one of the most beautiful phrases in the film, "Whoever touches me steals my strength...
...And like Of course, use of the simple green TOM O' BRIEN the Carmelites, I attempt to do a lot with background also allowed the film to be A LAIN CAVALIER is the French di- very little...
...mous place in my life...
...dissent...
...night, such short intense moments of Jesus...
...film and are transported by it...
...weekdays) lines because this book was written on order from her Mother Superior...
...never did any miracles...
...We never thought it would cause Do you recall the letter from her sister same time my father, and an expression any controversy...
...maybe also God...
...MO 64111 have too much energy to go and do some 26 December 1986: 69/ light, that there's a "hygiene" of good CAVALIER: The saintliness of Therese flagellate themselves, all twenty-four tohumor that's indispensable to keep go- causes confusion for people...
...She felt that maybe Therdse was a little bit too Sheed & Ward exalted, and she gave the order like you 115 E. Armour Blvd...
...letter...
...Weir and over natives and family alike...
...I didn't of the highest genius, and he can answer change a word of it...
...I understand very well how cer- cated response...
...For example, moments when you just need to laugh...
...Mosquito Coast is thus a ture and intelligence...
...Therdse loves 287 pages...
...but I can't tell her...
...Some Catholics see this discussed in the diary...
...She tastes Therese's bloody saliva Therese became tubercular...
...Ford buys a "town" ( in fact a downtrod- Ford's secret sharer is an obnoxious evangelical missionary den set of hovels as far "upstream" as he can get), and to the (Andy Gregory...
...This disappeared after two or tain women could get together around a three years in Carmel, as it usually does...
...almost childlikeness...
...That's why she says, "I love her, really are...
...Father even a textile and vestment, has its own Curran provides complete documentation music...
...Catholics regard Therese as their homosexual...
...the Church...
...she transmits life...
...Can you imagine if I had filmed ing...
...Celine that's read in the film...
...I'm flab- ways, when I was making the film, I was didn't love them and they escaped him...
...in Hollywood, producers wanted a happy Ford's abusive derision of his sons when they doubt his wis- ending...
...sexuality...
...In and the music of objects...
...tell people [Cavalier laughed here] who Kansas City...
...I told myself I nary man because they didn't want to CAVALIER: I don't understand it...
...Did you try to eye of the spectator on something very isolate those few times, for dramatic purprecise...
...Indeed, while Ford is one grisly apocalypse, he has the hubris to declare, "I'm often referred to as "Father," he calls her "Mother," which is happy because,now we're really free...
...She film was insulting, while another priest had no idea what I wanted to do, but she CAVALIER: We're dealing with a man defended it...
...Helen Mirren, one of the finest actresses in suave, ideological master of slogans and half-truths: even after England, never challenges her husband...
...On top of rassed by some sexual suggestions made since the beginning of the order...
...Voild...
...Using Theroux, they made a movie that combines adventhem they'd better "act like men...
...The fact that they are closed up Mother Superior had already forgotten means they have a certain freshness, and O'BRIEN: But is this to isolate the blood, about it...
...I went to the library of the onto Lucy...
...like the Mother Superior...
...The film is better than its defects...
...Or maybe this man can it cause so many protests...
...Such a reflection on the role of face is very hard to find...
...She's against it...
...though she already was, just as many Maybe these protesters reproach me beCAVALIER: Therese understands her very Carmelites are, or many people in life cause I did not make a work of propwell...
...It's a question that I will say, "Nuns do not do this...
...of music, like the absence of sets, allows authoritarianism in the one really to listen to the music of words Catholic Church...
...Every object, Faithful Dissent...
...CAVALIER: She says one hundred times in so that every one of us in our fundamental her little book that she has almost a coal experience can give his or her own pe- CAVALIER: In the nineteenth century, of love, a fire of love, inside her, and she sonal answer...
...The absence crisis of authority vs...
...This is because reason that she herself found, that saint- I come from a very Catholic backLucy's love for Therese is sexual, indeed liness is in an accumulation of successful ground...
...during her whole life...
...He refused, then found Saul Zaentz, who financed dom...
...TOM O'BRIEN AN INTERVIEW WITH FILM DIRECTOR ALAIN CAVALIER Success in small things - like the Carmelites are poor...
...every Friday, the Carmelite nuns would feels that she needs to give of this warmth, first to her husband, who then O'BRIEN: Isn't the whole movie a ques- give commonweal for distributes it to the others...
...He even realizes Deep down, Weir and Schrader suggest, they are different his deepest fantasy: to build a gigantic ice machine which expressions of the same conquistadorial temper, tyrannizing needs no energy and only ammonia as raw fuel...
...In a small part, Gregory's Ford's achievement is to retain enough plausibility for these daughter (Martha Plimpton) is allowed some rather lewd, but events to delineate the narrow border between genius and realistically idiosyncratic lines to express comically her rebellmadness...
...The screenplay, writ- less a statement of equality than an alias for "little woman...
...Did they go and marry an imagi- cell...
...John tells the anecdote of the woman who O'BRIEN: But why did you want to pro- There are such passages in the mystical was losing blood and touches the hem of vide humor...
...This also involves a style which is a little bit pauvre - poor CAVALIER: We realized that the only important red in the film was blood, and TOM O'BRIEN is Commonweal's film critic...
...better open themselves up to the world...
...He is a awful defect...
...Therese loves her, but in small things...
...It's almost indispensable to mystical the Gospel is read at one point, where love to have a sense of gaiety and joy...
...The inevitable disasters in the film's second half are less The treatment of Ford's family, however, involves one interesting than Ford's language and family conflicts...
...On the surface, they are enemies, with Ford astonishment of family and natives, transforms it into a hating Gregory's use of the Gospel as an opiate for the masses...
...At bookstores, or MC and VISA orders accepted at: CAVALIER: Her humor is in the little 1-800-821-7926: in Missouri call collect 816.531.0538, book, but we had to read between the (HAM - 4PM Central Time...
...you must read .. . CAVALIER: Silence is of utmost imporThe "Curran Affair" has tance in the convent...
...bergasted...
...It ten by Paul Schrader, is filled with perfect illustrations of those is hard to believe that she would be so passive and dependent, worst of evils-evils rationalized with the aid of ideology...
...Weir had a hard time The most brilliant element in The Mosquito Coast involves getting it made...
...the O'BRIEN: But doesn't she transmit radiant key statement by this good nature...
...of his controversy with the Vatican over the O'BRIEN: Why did you choose actress legitimacy of theological Catherine Mouchet to play Therdse...
...One day the Mother been a love of sister for sister...
...O'BRIEN: Did you find the humor of Therese in her famous diary...
...The stucco would never get me the trace of that in the film, although I about love - and not sexual love - how truth I saw with my own eyes...
...I am their father...
...private property...
...Therese is someone they don't like...
...am life...
...To see a face well, all you should poses...
...gay...
...At its best, The Mosquito Coast has the Dostoyevskian leaving America, but the scene is inadequate to explain how power to remind us how many emotional dictators feast on much she tolerates in the jungle...
...I found only the moral theologian in one...
...The word blood comes it's like physical training - there are tion...
...where Therese died, where she ate, her vent...
...But I didn't film that...
...To him, they are namby-pamby to question "upstream" Amadeus...
...In many thought about it...
...But O'BRIEN: Your film is open to different then there are so many ways of being O'BRIEN: Was the relationship to Lucy interpretations of sanctity...
...see is just the face...
...Everyone I met was always very up a great deal in the film...
...I didn't see the bad in anywere killing him, and when he had a O'BRIEN: But Lucy is sometimes per- thing...
...On one grueling trek, he asks them sarcastically if beyond the conventional heroic mode that brought him starthey want popsicles or rooms at the Holiday Inn, then tells dom...
...I had no preOr maybe they didn't realize that they meditations...
...There are a few Therdse was writing her little diary every convent, and I could never say three other reds at the beginning...
...Catholic now...
...This fits women who write the answer on the same envelope so close themselves up only to be able to O'BRIEN: Why did you choose a neutral that they don't waste it...
...It's within silence called attention to the that one hears things well...
...Some people the story in Therese...
...Maybe this particular her universal, unconditional way...
...Not especially considering her character's probable familiarity enough sixties gurus have been so examined, so dissected, for with sixties feminism...
...To canonize her, we found the aganda...
...CAVALIER: I spoke with Carmelites in the tendency to take it out...
...She practices extreme O'BRIEN: What do you see as the center of "father" may not just be the father but mortification of the flesh...
...CAVALIER: Personally, I have a grand When we were shooting this film, we CAVALIER: What was published was her passion for Flaubert, and he has an enor- thought it would have a very small audidiary as well as the letters of her family...
...Maybe it's this that shocks them...
...O'BRIEN: The color red appears only a CAVALIER: To concentrate the view, the few times in the film...
...It was stronger than if it had since Jesus spent all of his life saying, I Carmel at Lisieux...
...How do you respond to the let me see everything - the infirmary whose four daughters left for the con- charge that the film insults religion...
...CAVALIER: Absolutely...
...There's no that only speaks of love, and is only seen...
...But outside of the ISBN: 1-55612-045-1 system of reproduction...
...People don't want to know these herself with trying to be a perfect Carme- things and they refuse the truth about O'BRIEN: Why is Therese never embar- lite, just like thousands of Carmelites them...
...genius - Jesus was a genius - and CAVALIER: I was much more innocent In the story, I displaced such feelings consider him practically alive, especially than that...
...member of a religious order claimed this going to have you visit the Carmel...
...paradise of low-tech farming and carpentry...
...once I became conscious of that, each Commonweal: 690 time we saw any other red, we had a exercise, just to get it out of them...
...To be a genuinely mystical person - order for reasons of health or nonadaptaCAVALIER: Yes...
...Superior said, "I'm going to do something for you which I have never done O'BRIEN: Why underline the suffering of O'BRIEN: At a preview in Ireland, a even for the historians of our order...
...stroke, maybe it's at that time that verse...
...I also met with to make it stand out...
...You could do a lot worse, and recent double-edged satire with a single center: the most anti- films have rarely done better...
...With the sets, we constructed a - won a special jury prize at the 1986 limits - was the Carmelites receiving a "free space" with no walls, no winCannes film festival...
...controversy*s principal figure...
...you must read Faithful Dissent...
...He's at one and the ence...
...Commonweal: 692...
...Therese gether...
...millions of people...
...Schrader and Weir try to finesse the the evil spirits lurking inside their spirited critique of social issue by showing her happily abandoning unwashed dishes on evil...
...If you love the Church, O'BRIEN: There is no music in the film, and very little sound...
...they unglue the envelopes, and dows, no ceilings...
...Therdse was both comical and mysti- many Carmelite nuns who had left the cal...
...green background for the film...
...When Celine came many small problems that I have during O'BRIEN: Were you aiming for a compliinto the convent she still had a strong the day...
...paper $9.95 life...
Vol. 113 • December 1986 • No. 22
