Above: Brunot Dumont (left) and Hadewijch's lead actress, Julie Sokolowski (right).
In Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch, Céline (Julie Sokolowski, in a compelling first turn) has taken on the name of Hadewijch, the patron saint of the convent where she has been received as novice. At the convent her self-mortification in the name of Christ is disruptive to the rules of the nunnery; her behavior perceived as evidence of vanity. As penance, she is sent back into the world of her former life in hopes that she will gain a clearer understanding of how her spiritual calling might apply to the real world. Reluctant to re-enter the bourgeois world of her Parisian diplomat father, Céline struggles with finding a way to reconcile her passion for God with her social world. She befriends two Muslim brothers Yassine and Nassir who introduce her to the dangers of religious extremism and force her to make a life-determining choice.
Bruno Dumont's Hadewijch boasted its world premiere in the Special Presentations Program at this year's Toronto International, where it was awarded the FIPRESCI Prize. Here at The Auteurs Daily, David Hudson has gathered reviews from the film's screenings at both Toronto and the NYFF.
My thanks to Stephen Lan for facilitating this interview and to Robert Gray for his interpretive assistance.
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NOTEBOOK: Are you, by nature, a religious man? Or more a philosophic one?
BRUNO DUMONT: These days I am very interested in mysticism because it goes way beyond philosophy. Mysticism takes us to areas that are beyond questions of reason, beyond speech, and beyond our comprehension of the world. It takes us to an area that is very close to cinema, and I think that cinema is capable of exploring that area and expressing it. That's why, necessarily, I am attracted to mysticism. At the same time, it's a complex area. I'm not myself religious—I'm not a believer—but, I do believe in grace and the holy and the sacred. I'm interested in them as human values. I place The Bible alongside Shakespeare, for example; not as a religious work, but as a work of art. The Bible has the definite values of a work of art.
NOTEBOOK: Hadewijch stages a failing of protagonist Céline's father to provide her spiritual solace. It becomes necessary for her to seek it elsewhere. After being sent back to the world by the nuns at the convent, she comes under the influence of Nassir, a devout Muslim who becomes something of a spiritual father to her.
DUMONT: Céline's father is a politician. He's unable to follow her. But I see Nassir as being more Céline's brother in spirit than a spiritual father.
NOTEBOOK: In the scene where Nassir is counseling Céline, she asks him about innocence and he responds, "Can anyone be innocent in a world where people vote?" I'd never thought of democracy's culpability in quite that way before. I'd never wondered if democracy could afford innocence? Can you speak more to what you mean by Nassir's statement?
DUMONT: I believe in that statement. I agree with it completely. We are all responsible for everything that happens in the world. In our Western democracies, we appear to be responsible, we vote, and we completely don't care. We brush that off. Céline, however, is not like that; she's responsible. Today, our democratic societies are devoid of a sense of responsibility and that's something that has to be developed. That's why—when she goes to the Middle East with Nassir—Céline acknowledges and recognizes her responsibility and guilt.
NOTEBOOK: She weeps.
DUMONT: [Nods his head yes.]
NOTEBOOK: One of my favorite characters of Christian literature is Mary Magdalen, whose love for Jesus—and, later, the risen Christ—I've long read as the love of the Soul for Spirit, and the desire of the Soul to be wed to Spirit. Her story exemplifies for me the longing of the mystics to be—almost physically—connected with Spirit. That longing, that desire, that dalliance runs through all of your films to one degree or another; but, never as consciously as we find it here in Hadewijch. The corporeality of your films, the bodies of your actors, have inferred the incorporeal and the spiritual; but, in Hadewijch they are directly referenced.
DUMONT: What you speak of is present in so much of the writings of the mystics—the physical experience of the presence of God. It's what you find in so many accounts of the visions of mystics, this direct contact with God. Hadewijch in her writings also speaks of direct contact with the body of Christ and the pleasure she takes in his body. Mystics are able to experience the sense of infinity through their bodies. They refuse themselves food. They don't allow themselves to sleep. It's through their bodies that they're able to experience the sacred.
NOTEBOOK: The pleasures of renunciation and abstinence are multifold.
DUMONT: Oui! Abstinence, chastity, yes, very much.
NOTEBOOK: Why—at this juncture as a filmmaker—have you become specifically intrigued by the mystics? Though, admittedly, even your early films exhibit "the upward glance." At some point your characters always seem to look towards the sky for guidance or solace.
DUMONT: It's something I find enormously interesting. They're visionaries. They have access to the invisible through their gaze on externals—perhaps the sight of a pasture, a winding path, a small river—but, they access the invisible through the visible world. They know how to see. Because they know how to see, they can see what to others is invisible and interior.
NOTEBOOK: So when they look upwards, they see into the invisible world through the visible world?
DUMONT: Voila! Through their gaze, because of their gaze, because they know how to see, the visible becomes an evocation of the invisible. They are like spectators at movies.
NOTEBOOK: From a very early age I've felt that the word "through" is one of the
most beautiful words in the human language. How one sees through physical or visible objects into the invisible fascinates me. Scrying. In my training as a Mayanist, I was fond of the Mayan term il bal, which basically means "seeing instrument", an appellation that could be applied to various objects—a rock crystal, water coursing in a stream, a leaf falling from a tree, a cloud, a book, a Mayan stelae—any number of things that can help you see into the invisible world. In your case, I would say your camera lens and the physically-projected films themselves are il bals.
What distinguishes Hadewijch from your earlier films, however, is—as I mentioned earlier—Céline 's consciousness. Though in your earlier films your characters may be visionaries who glimpse into the invisible, they don't seem as conscious; their longing is not as articulated. Would you agree?
DUMONT: Yes, you're absolutely right. In this film the protagonist is conscious for the first time. There is an element of light and clarity that's not in my previous films. Hadewijch/Céline is a lighter person—"light" in the sense of illumination—and her clear gaze is able to transform the world.
NOTEBOOK: I hope to understand your film on its own terms and not read more into it than you would perhaps want me to; but, I wonder about Céline's statement that "the sweetest thing about love is its violence"? Is that a statement specifically taken from a spiritual text? What were you trying to say by that?
DUMONT: That's a literal quote from Hadewijch's writings.
NOTEBOOK: It sets up a dissonant tension between love and violence, just as there is a tension between Céline's spiritual quest and her involvement with religious fanaticism. By contrast to the politicized martyrdom of Islamic fanatics, Céline's spiritual quest seems almost anachronistic and out of touch with contemporary events, or at least hazardously susceptible to them. I could fully understand why Yassine said to her—"You're nuts."
DUMONT: I needed Yassine because he's so real. He's the only character who's in touch with reality. I needed him as someone spectators could identify with and also because—through his gaze, through what he says—he puts Céline in a certain position. He sets her up in a certain way and I needed the audience to relate to Céline in a certain way. Yassine is the only person who's "normal" in the film. Everyone else is absolutely crazy.
NOTEBOOK: [Laughs.] The character of Yassine—as well as the film itself—exhibits more humor than I've seen in your previous work. Yassine was clever. I laughed outloud when Céline clutched him and he said, "You're needing love or something?"
DUMONT: He is very funny.
NOTEBOOK: Another distinction from your previous work is Hadewijch's aspect ratio. You've set 'Scope aside to create a more contained, intimate frame?
DUMONT: The 1-66 projection ratio is best suited to the subject. When I'm determining a film's technical aspects—when I'm choosing film stock, what microphone I'm going to use, what camera, what camera lenses—it's always in terms of what I'm trying to convey. Here, I was trying to use something as humble and as close to the character as possible. This almost square frame is simple and humble. Cinemascope is far more spectacular and conveys a force that I didn't need in trying to come close to Céline. I chose something much simpler which worked better for the film, I think.
That was the same reason, for example, that I chose to mix the film in mono-sound and not use stereo because the sound stays right in the picture; it doesn't go outside the frame.
NOTEBOOK: the accordion band, the church ensemble, the sung Muslim prayer, and the use of Bach's "Passion of St. Matthew" as coda. Were you trying to show through such diverse music how it expresses the different voices of Spirit?
DUMONT: Yes. Mystics have always used music—Bach's cappella, for example—to express faith. Through music, one can obtain a glimpse of the hidden side of the soul that otherwise is difficult to express.
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[The following is not for the spoiler-wary!!] I ran out of time before I could ask Dumont the burning question I was hesitant to ask, what actually happened at film's end? Was that scene after the explosion in the Paris subway? Was it a flashback before Céline was sent away from the convent? Was it some kind of dream? Is that withholding of information purposeful? This elision proves provocative and frustrating. At indieWIRE, Michael Koresky writes that "at film's end there remains a baffling opaqueness, both in terms of the director's and the characters' motivations." At Variety, Justin Chang concurs that the Parisian act of terrorism is "quickly called into question by a rain-soaked coda." At Not Coming To A Theatre Near You, Mike D'Angelo muses, "I've read at least three different interpretations of the film's perplexing coda, which makes no logical sense unless you conclude either (a) that it precedes certain other events chronologically (my initial assumption), or (b) that certain other events weren't real."
I have vacillated between these various possibilities and imagine I will do so for some time; but, today—conjuring the image of a raven hunched in the rain—I have decided it is a portent, an omen and that the scene is a flashback. What do you think?