Agnes Of God

Agnes Of God

It may have been impossible to make the play “Agnes of God” into a film because movies are more real than plays in all possible ways. The speeches that seemed stylishly theatrical on stage seem, on screen close ups, to be merely theatrical. But this is not the least of its problems. It raises, or pretends to raise, some of the most fundamental issues of human morality and treats them at the level of “Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Convent.”

The story: A dead baby is found in a lonely convent where the nuns live a cloistered life and there are no men around who could possibly have fathered it unless you count poor old Father Metineau, the nuns’ spiritual adviser, who has a drinking problem. The police investigation indicates that the baby’s mother and perhaps its murderer was Sister Agnes (Meg Tilly), a young, simple-minded girl of utter naivete. We never quite learn what particular condition afflicts Sister Agnes; she clearly has parts on order.

A psychiatrist (Jane Fonda) is assigned to the case and soon enough it becomes clear that she will get nowhere with Sister Agnes, who suffers from total amnesia about the entire episode. The convent’s mother superior (Anne Bancroft) appears at first to be more helpful she is a “modern” woman who was married before she entered the convent and who shares an illicit cigarette with Fonda but then she too turns hostile as further investigation leads her down memory lane.

I will not be giving away any essential secrets if I reveal that nobody ever does find out exactly what happened in terms of how this child was conceived, born or killed.

To put it another way: Figuring out whodunit hardly seems to interest this movie very much at all. It aims for higher metaphysical game; it wants to know if miracles are possible.

While the film uses typical elements of a crime investigation (jaded detectives, forensic evidence, courtroom drama), it has an extremely unclear agenda. The mechanism of the whodunit spins wildly but does not propel itself forward. Meanwhile, we infer that Fonda has a personal vendetta against the Catholic church, Mother Miriam is too interested in covering for Sister Agnes, Sister Agnes herself has the kind of rapturous global vision usually reserved for saints and that we should not overlook the possibility that the baby had no father at all.

In other words: Sister Agnes had a virgin birth. Or (to put it another way) the murdered infant was a child of God’s. There is some pressure on Fonda’s part she plays an agnostic to accept the idea that a miracle occurred; she resists it (I think quite sensibly), since what this implies about miracles would be horrifying: If indeed God begat the kid in Sister Agnes’ uterus, then why’d he let her kill it with her own hands?

But (you’ll say) God also gave Sister Agnes free will; so she was free to kill the baby whether or not it was miraculous yes; and yet then why did God create a baby to be killed? Here we touch upon, I suppose, an even larger question about why God makes any of us and puts us here on earth where we’re bound to die.

That said religion is all about. The thing that drives me nuts about “Agnes of God” is how it tells a story that makes these questions necessary and then refuses to ask them. It’s just such an awfully confused movie. It takes on murder mystery shape and then dodges all hard edged inquiries into murder through flirtation with supernatural hints. Then when it seems like it might start grappling with fundamental supernatural questions contained within back into court! Each half of this tale is used to avoid dealing with the other.

Under these conditions, the performances are as good as they could be. Given lines that sound like they were written for reading aloud, given characters who always refuse to ask obvious questions, given a story that won’t say what it’s about, Bancroft and Fonda and Tilly work their trade so as to seem as if they know where they stand. It is acting in vain.

Watch Agnes Of God For Free On Gomovies.