What is it about Latin, whether whispered or chanted, that has made it Hollywood’s favorite tool for the creation of fear? Norman Jewison’s Agnes of God opens with the ancient language echoing through the walls of an isolated convent and it keeps resurfacing whenever tension needs rising.
Although not known for suspense, Jewison begins the film with adequately scary shots of empty stairwells and hallways before a scream breaks the silence. A nun has given birth. The baby is found dead. These nuns live in perfect protection from the realities of the outside world and it’s hard to tell what frightens the Mother Superior (Anne Bancroft) most: the fact that Sister Agnes (Meg Tilly) gave birth but cannot explain how, that the baby was found murdered, or that the incident is attracting external attention into her secluded domain.
Jane Fonda, always at best playing women as headstrong as she is, is Dr. Livingston, a Montreal psychologist assigned to evaluate Sister Agnes before she is to stand trial. Fonda represents a world as far removed from the convent as can possibly be. She is a doctor and attempts to reach out to the accused nun through science.
Soon after Fonda arrives at the convent and clashes with the antiquated methods of Mother Ruth (Bancroft), Jewison makes the mistake of approaching this animosity through humor. His levity doesn’t fit with the competent intensity that preceded it and is too obviously a play for effect. How more bluntly can he make his point?
“I don’t approve of you,” warns the stern Bancroft. “I don’t want that mind cut open.”
Jewison even throws in a jab at the Catholic Church which is almost as old as Mother Ruth’s ideology, by putting the old nun in the awkward position of explaining where babies come from. When the misplaced humor passes we are left with two dynamic women butting heads forcefully, but the effect is weakened by simplistic categorizations.
Jewison fares better in developing atmosphere instead of believable characters. For instance, the convent where most of the action takes place is cleverly photographed to appear small and closed (the film’s stage origins help here), creating a feeling of claustrophobia as it draws the viewer into its secret-harboring walls. Indeed, the convent is so well guarded that no sign of an outside influence can permeate through its walls. Although set in the modern day, the interior shots of Agnes of God could easily fit in a movie set centuries ago.
As considerable a problem as the lack of character development is, Jewison could have transcended it had he stuck to the investigation at hand. How was this infant conceived? Who killed the baby and why? Jewison is distracted away from these questions by his insistence to play on the key differences between Mother Ruth and Dr. Livingston. This is one of the worst possible angles to tell the story from since we know from the very start how it will play out.
What we do have working here to good effect are the three lead performances. Meg Tilly is particularly impressive as Sister Agnes. It’s a hard performance to pull off, requiring a balance of innocence (at least of the superficial kind), psychosis, and paranoia. Miraculously, Tilly avoids falling into the pit of ridicule lurking just below the tight rope that is her performance.
Anne Bancroft also does a fine job as Mother Ruth, a woman well aware of her reputation as a primitive-minded control freak. She takes exception to being accused of living in the Middle Ages but goes to great lengths to shield the novice nun from progress. No wonder Sister Agnes is such a confused woman.
Despite the performances and some nice directorial touches, including an homage to Vertigo, however, Agnes of God cannot overcome the problem of not knowing what it’s really about. It ends up being not much about anything.
Even Tilly’s role, as effective as it remains throughout, goes down an all too familiar path as she begins disclosing her history of abuse and torments. Soon, the movie as a whole follows into this path of predictability until Jewison forces a mutual understanding between Fonda and Bancroft that comes too easily to be realistic. Making this turn all the more painful is that it comes right as the film was setting up a possible breakthrough revelation about why Mother Ruth fears the world beyond the convent walls. It’s almost as if Jewison is deliberately dodging his own questions. This is the most egregious example in a movie in which everything is handled and resolved too easily.