yes, that is a great movie. You’ve reminded me that my hubby loaned it to his pas­tor (Lutheran) back dur­ing West­ern Lent! I’d like to watch it again.

Yes, I give it five can­dles.

Sorry Grace, but I have to dis­agree on this one. It makes a fun­da­men­tal the­o­log­i­cal error of con­fus­ing remorse and repen­tance. Ana­toly was remorse­ful, but he never repented of the act. Instead he kept going back to it and caress­ing it with his tears and self-pity.

The fact that remorse and repen­tance were con­fused is not sur­pris­ing, given that it is not a Chris­t­ian film that seeks to be the­o­log­i­cally accu­rate, but rather the Russ­ian equiv­a­lent of a Hol­ly­wood film that seeks to be entertaining.

I know I’m in the minor­ity on this one, but after writ­ing about this orig­i­nally in early Jan­u­ary (and get­ting ham­mered by Ortho­dox peo­ple who were in love with the fact that a decent movie was made about Ortho­doxy) I went back and saw the film again. I’m still con­vinced that while it’s a nice story, it’s not a par­tic­u­larly Chris­t­ian pre­sen­ta­tion of the theme.

I saw it dur­ing Lent, and I agree, very very good.

hmmmm…James. I’m not sure your take on repen­tance is a slam dunk. St. Paul ref­er­ences his per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians etc. and his con­tin­u­ing humil­ity etc. after decades of faith­ful ser­vice had passed. Did he weep about it? I don’t know. With all the Father’s talk of “tears of repen­tance” in gen­eral, you may be read­ing too much into the movie’s “the­ol­ogy”. I have some griev­ous sins I have repented of but am also con­tin­u­ally sorry for after 16 years. Any­way, at some level “art films” per­mit us to read our­selves and our issues into the char­ac­ters. Across the board I thought it was pretty “Ortho­dox” and reflected life in a monastery and the pur­pose of the spir­i­tual life pretty well with what lit­tle dia­logue and scenery there was.

James has an inter­est­ing point. But in the end, I think I’m with s-p on this. This isn’t to say that James’s obser­rva­tion is wrong but that it is incom­plete… kind of as Steve sug­gests. But to be more spe­cific, Archi­man­drite Zacharias sug­gests in his writ­ings that what may starts as tears of remorse can and usu­ally is redi­rected by those more advanced in spir­i­tual war­fare. The remem­brance of the pain caused oth­ers and the remorse can be used to feed a higher level of prayer. By this notion, the imme­di­acy of the pain of the moment can trans­form and feed into a life long source of repen­tance. At least that’s how I remem­ber it.

I think the film does its very best to por­tray a sim­ple but holy life. It’s a stark life and starkly por­trayed. Not a whole lot of sub­tle or nuance in it for the most part… and it goes against so many of our tra­di­tional Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­tion expec­ta­tions that it’s pos­si­ble I imag­ined more than was there… or filled it in. There’s a the­ol­ogy to that as a grace of artis­tic license… or more specif­i­cally a psy­chol­ogy of see­ing what we expect rather than what’s really there.… like the film where ask you to count the num­ber of times they pass the bas­ket­ball and you get so engrossed in count­ing you miss the fact that there’s some­one who walks through the group in a gorilla suit… which about 50% of the audi­ence does.

I’m with s-p and James the Not-Really-Thickheaded, and find the con­ver­sa­tion per­son­ally helpful.

I enjoyed the film, but can­not get one glar­ing flaw out of my mem­ory of it: the abrupt cut to the admi­ral and his daugh­ter on a train — so abrupt I thought I had bumped my remote and was dropped into another film! They could have just as eas­ily arrived by ship, keep­ing the entire story to one form of transportation.

Still, good to see.

James (of P): You’re right — that was a bit sud­den. If we’re list­ing things we’d like to have changed, I wanted Ana­toli to give a *lit­tle* more infor­ma­tion to the woman he told to sell every­thing and go to France look­ing for a hus­band she thought had died in the war. Because she has absolutely no infor­ma­tion to go on and France is, you know, a whole coun­try and stuff. Still, I sup­pose you have to believe that if the word Ana­toli gave her was from God, He would provide.

James (of thick-headedness): I almost never endorse a movie uncat­e­gor­i­cally (and shouldn’t have done so this time) because the older I get, the more I under­stand the mean­ing of cha­cun à son goût, (or, if you pre­fer, dif­fer­ent strokes for dif­fer­ent folks). And it is, after all, only a movie, so I wouldn’t want to get caught up on what’s “true” or “false” about Ana­toli as if he weren’t just a fic­tional char­ac­ter. I didn’t see a lack of repen­tance there, but if you did, you did.

I think it’s inter­est­ing though, since it is just a movie, that you’re a detrac­tor. In that way, you seem to be act­ing the role of some of the peo­ple that are around real life holy peo­ple. They always have their detrac­tors. If I knew a saint in my life (and maybe I do for all I know), I can believe it pos­si­ble that I just plain wouldn’t like them. I’d have to deal with that sooner or later, prob­a­bly. But it’s just some­thing I can imag­ine. Real holi­ness isn’t the same in per­son that it is to read about or med­i­tate abstractly about. A really holy per­son might be really irritating.

Uh… Grace? Did you read my 2nd sentence?

My full review is here :http://vvcix.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/the-island/
and writ­ten because I’d heard the buzz, but also a fairly sub­stan­tial body of opin­ion who found it a “tough watch”. I tried to process that just as I tried to process James P’s view. If I don’t always make myself clear, then I ask that you try to remem­ber that after all, I am Thickheaded.