Diary of a Country Priest (1951)
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Diary of a Country Priest Movie Review
Diary of a Country Priest is a 1951 French drama film directed by Robert Bresson and starring Claude Laydu. It’s a flawed, but phenomenally scripted drama.
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“The simplest tasks are by no means the easiest“
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A young priest is sent to a parish in an obscure village in Northern France. Here, he tries to deal with the lack of faith among the villagers while also worrying about a terrible pain in his stomach. Robert Bresson is not among my favorite directors as his suffocatingly slow, dreary filmmaking style isn’t quite appealing to me, though I do respect it on artistic grounds.
This film is one of his best. It still has its flaws and I do not agree with the critics’ assessment that it’s one of the best movies of all time, but I still do admire it a lot for its screenplay in particular. This is one of the most religious and especially spiritual films ever released. Certainly a movie like this one would never be released today for various reasons.
The film’s treatment of martyrdom is an interesting one. The protagonist’s plight is emotionally powerful and very well explored while his interactions with everybody else ranged from sweetly endearing to downright heartbreaking. A story about the cruelty of the modern world and how these timid, good-natured priests almost feel like alien beings in such a world, it’s rather timeless in that theme and even more relevant now in an era when Christianity is possibly going out of fashion.
Diary of a Country Priest deals with humanity, emotional anguish and the complexities in the relationships between spiritual people and regular folk, but throughout I could see that it was based on a book, and sure enough it was. This material with so many thought-provoking, powerful conservations is much better suited for the literary medium. Yes, Bresson did imbue the film with excellent cinematography and strong editing, but it’s still far from a true cinematic achievement as other French films of the period were.
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The excessive narration was also not my cup of tea. It made the film feel even more literary, which further limited its scope and appeal. The main performance from Claude Laydu is a strong one, but I would hardly call it one of the greatest screen performances of all time as the role isn’t so complex as to warrant that proclamation. This is a film that is hard to enjoy during watching as it’s extremely slow in pace and rather monotonous in its imagery and similar sequences repeated throughout, but it’s the case of a feature that I admire more than I truly love.
Robert Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest is a thematically rich and sophisticated film about religion and spirituality that was somewhat undone by excessive narration and an extremely slow pace employed throughout. The screenplay is undeniably phenomenal, but it’s the type of story that was better suited for the literary than the cinematic medium. It remains an emotionally engaging, strongly written and well shot film that I ultimately respect more than I truly love.
My Rating – 4
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