Novitiate

Although similar in tone to Audrey Hepburn's 'The Nun's Story', this film is nowhere as good as that. Sure, there are many good things too in the film. The acting, direction & cinematography are all first rate. The movie however, drags a bit after half time.

This is the story of a young girl raised by a non-religious divorced mother. In the absence of any male or female role model, she finds it hard to find peace and love. At her catholic school, she learns that God's love is unconditional & therefore, she decides that she wants to be the Bride of Christ. At the Convent, she faces a lot of challenges, personal as well as spiritual.

The story takes place around 1964, which was when Vatican II reforms were brought about. The movie very successfully highlights how the nuns were never involved in any of the decision making process and how their standing in the church was suddenly reduced due to the reforms. Thus, a lot of nuns felt dejected, abandoned by their God and faced spiritual crises. So great was their despair that many of them even left their vocation. To me, this aspect of the film was quite interesting and informative.

A great debut by the director, Maggie Betts!

"Novitiate" is set during the 60s, when the Vatican Second council reformed completely the entire Church, by removing some old practices, being less strict. The story follow a young woman that decides to take her vows to become a nun, during this big transition. The Reverend Mother of the convent is very reluctant on changing rules.

Things start to go south towards the half of the movie: while there are beautiful depictions of relationships and conflicts between characters, on the other hand, there are others that are not deepen enough. For example, sister Mary Grace had a lot of potential, but she is dismissed too quickly. I did not have the chance to know her at all, and she was a key protagonist. There are here and there a few good scenes, but overall I am not really sure if the nun life represented in this movie was very accurate. I know that this kind of life is very hard and you need to earn your vows, and I am aware that there are orders stricter than others, but I felt that it was forced.

The acting is overall pretty decent, but I cannot say that I was astonished by it. I was definitely excepting more from Margaret Qualley, considering her successful career in recent years, but I was disappointed. There are a lot of cringey scenes, that I could not bare. At some point it seemed almost like a parody. I am aware that there are a lot of scenes that are very demanding in terms of acting, but unfortunately most of actresses did not deliver. Honestly, it is not a bad film, but considering the slow pace rhythm and its two hours length, they could come up with something better for sure.

Novitiate is not Audrey Hepburn's The Nun's Story, nor is it The Sound of Music, The Singing Nun, or countless other romances about happy nuns. It's closer to Doubt. This "expose" is merciless showing the almost Marines-like indoctrination of young girls, first to be postulants, then novices, then the real deal.

Although the film doesn't have drill sergeants, it has a super-committed Mother Superior (Melissa Leo). She will punish swiftly with, for instance, the girls kneeling to walk while saying Hail Mary's or disciplining themselves with knotted ropes. But the real torture is the interior questioning of the young women about even the existence of God.

Nevertheless they are moving to become "brides of Christ," which when they dress in bridal gowns for the actual marriage borders on satire, hokum, or downright pathos. As more than one postulant avers, "Where is He?" daily, the girls are giving themselves to God while not feeling the divine presence.

Perhaps the biggest problem is the emergence in the early '60's of Vatican II, that progressive body of prelates that liberalized the Church and demoted the nuns. So much for that disrespect as 90,000 pure souls took the last train outta there.

The central postulant, Cathleen (Margaret Qualley), has a tough time with her vocation, much less her attraction to another hopeful. The complications of sexual yearnings in young women is a nicely figurative way of showing the challenges of taking 17 year old girls from a normal life, which usually involves young men.

Cathleen's mother, Julianne Nicholson (Nora Harris), serves as the vox populi questioning the sanity of the process as she is losing her daughter to these unknown forces of religion. For Catholics, Novitiate is a confirmation; for non-Catholics it's a gloss on the complexity of Catholic faith.

I watched this at home on BluRay from my public library, my wife chose to skip it.

This is one of the better, maybe the best, of the movies I have seen this year. Maybe part of that is being a lifelong Catholic and remembering Vatican II and the changes this spawned in the Church. I was a boy about the same age the girls are depicted here in the early 1960s.

The movie deals with two distinct but interrelated stories. The most significant is the impact Vatican II changes had on cloistered Nuns. Melissa Leo, in a best-actress quality performance, is the Reverend Mother. She has not been outside the grounds for 40 years and she oversees the whole operation, only answering to the Archbishop. She is exact and she is stern, if she thinks a young girl does not have the right stuff she will send them home without review. When she gets instructions from the Archdiocese for changes she is stricken and saddened.

The other story is about a teenage girl from a dysfunctional and mostly Atheistic family. For reasons only she knows she was drawn to this "marriage with Jesus." She is played extremely authentically by Margaret Qualley (daughter of Andie MacDowell) as Cathleen, eventually Sister Cathleen.

The BD has a very informative "extra" showing the writer/director and 5 of the key cast being asked questions and their providing answers to the research and the making of the movie.

Superb movie, a bit underrated in my opinion.

Novitiate (2017) was written and directed by Margaret Betts. Margaret Qualley portrays Sister Cathleen, who decides to become a nun because of her love for Jesus. She was not raised as a Catholic. In fact, her mother (Julianne Nicholson) considers the decision as a horribly bad move.

As the movie progresses, I started to believe that her mother was right. Young women who want to love and serve Jesus are systematically brutalized and humiliated by the Reverend Mother (Melissa Leo). In fact, the Reverend Mother appears consumed by her desire not to allow the young women to think. She also makes it difficult for them to bond with each other. She demands total and absolute obedience from all the women--postulants, novitiates, and nuns.

Then, Vatican II ends, and the Catholic church wants to modernize and change. Whether this is good news or bad news for the nuns is an open question in the context of this movie.

You'll have to see the movie to learn what happens to Sister Cathleen and the other novitiates. We saw this film at Rochester's excellent Little Theatre, but it will work on the small screen. As I write this review, the movie has a anemic 6.7 IMDb rating. I think it's better than that.