Close-Up is a feature that spotlights films now playing on MUBI. Valentina Pedicini's Faith is exclusively showing on MUBI starting December 2, 2020 in the Undiscovered series.
A pulsing techno beat. Strobing lights. A voice, demanding movement. And bodies, bodies, bodies. Sweaty, exhausted, ecstatic. Valentina Pedicini’s Faith opens with what could be a club sequence, driven by rhythm and entranced with the physicality of its subjects. As the viewer has been made aware by a brief introduction, the voice commanding the room is that of a kung fu master, and the room is a gym in a monastery, inhabited by a religious community called Warriors of Light. Pedicini’s stylistic choice to introduce them in such a surprisingly earthly way is undeniably bold, but she’s not interested in mere shock value. Rather, her approach is a testament to the idiosyncrasies of the group as a documentary subject, and to the monumental task that it is revealing their essence in a film.
Pedicini’s first encounter with the Warriors immediately sparked her interest and inspired her own first cinematic venture, a 15-minute short about one of the members of the community that ended with a resolution: “to be continued.” A decade and a handful of critically acclaimed documentaries later, the director returned to the monastery to pick up the Warriors’ story from where she left off, and to revisit her own narrative. The resulting feature is a daring, engrossing immersion into a way of life that revolves around abstract concepts of faith, freedom and salvation. Pedicini’s undertaking as a filmmaker is ambitious to say the least, and calls into question the very essence of cinema, as well as her role as a documentarist: here is a community that doesn’t usually interact with the outside world and practices a religion that revolves around the idea of purity, trusting a film crew not only to enter their sanctuary, but to effectively communicate their private beliefs to the outside world. Pedicini’s solution is then not to simply relate the Warriors’ beliefs, but to incorporate them in her filmmaking, finding a way of “filming the invisible.”In the same way they channel their faith through their bodies, Faith conjures images that make the abstract tactile.
Starting from the choice to film in stark black and white (photographed by cinematographer Bastian Esser), the visual dimensions of the film strip the story down to the essentials and immediately place the emphasis on its protagonists—the monks’ all-white outfits naturally stand out, and confer them with a sense of solemnity and purity that gives the film an otherworldly quality. While the specifics of their creed are never explicitly explained, they are entrenched in their every move, and Pedicini’s camera follows. Their search for spiritual perfection and obsession with physical form are mirrored in her meticulous, geometric compositions, as her focus always stays on the body and the way it occupies space. However, complications arise when bodies meet.
Beyond the spiritual realm, the members of the cult also exist in a much more secular dimension, regulated by unwritten human principles and feelings that are as ineffable as religious beliefs, and just as powerful. That jealousy, frustration and rebellion exist within the structure of their small enclosed society, run by the imposing presence of a Master and structured around exhausting training sessions, is not surprising—however, the way these are expressed and dealt with is often ambiguous. While, on one hand, the Master encourages his Warriors to be open about whatever negative feelings they might have, starting collective conversations about their shortcomings, on the other hand anything diverges from the path traced by the Master is immediately, and harshly, punished. This contradiction, and this stark opposition between high ideals of purity and the imperfect nature of individuals, results in an underlying tension that manifests itself in subtle ways, and that Faith just as subtly captures. Pedicini positions herself within the scene, working and living with her subjects, and the entire film rests on a basis of trust and mutual respect that she never breaks; however, her eye is not uncritical. She never passes any judgement and never intrudes, but she looks, and waits, for a glance that lasts a second too long, a touch that’s a little too soft, a word uttered under one’s breath. These moments of hesitation are not enough to suggest a desire for rebellion or defiance, but they show the documentary’s subjects as individuals who are capable of doubt—and while we don’t get to know if it extends to their beliefs, looking at what’s hidden just underneath the surface of perfect bodies and perfect souls provides the viewer with just enough perspective to question the narrative they’re being presented with.
Faith’s spellbinding quality lies in Pedicini’s ability not to capture the invisible, but to recognize its effects: this is a film that starts with absolutes—Faith, Purity, Trust—and breaks them down into human-sized glimpses of a daily life, looking at the way they are individually experienced. No matter how small the scene, the weight behind every gesture is made palpable by a uniquely sensitive approach that centers the humanity of the documentary’s subjects, but never fails to channel the immensity (and unattainability) of the concepts they devoted their lives to.
The film opens and closes with two dance sequences, bookending a string of moments of prayer, training, intimacy, and conflict. Pedicini’s choice to focus on these raucous scenes of collective release is a way of offering the Warriors some kind of filmic, if not existential, salvation: as the holy and unholy mix to the beat or a remixed pop song, the divine becomes earthly, flowing freely through their bodies. And we might just get a glimpse of it.