At my daughter’s recommendation my wife bought the DVD of the film Ostrov, and last night we watched it. There’s a description of the film and a plot summary on Wikipedia but you really need to see the film to appreciate it.
Though the film is fictional, it captures the spirit of Orthodox monasticism better than any other I’ve seen. The protagonist is a clairvoyant spiritual elder, Fr Anatoly, who lives his repentance as a hermit on an island apart from the main monastery. The main action of the film is in the 1970s, in the Brezhnev years, when monasteries were barely tolerated officially. It has flashbacks to World War II, when Fr Anatoly committed an act of betrayal that haunts him, and spurs him to the repentance that enables him to give spiritual advice to others, and also to see through their desire for a spiritual quick fix.
In the Bolshevik period in Russia, monasteries were poor, but Fr Anatoly’s poverty shows up the life of his monastic brethren as one of relative luxury, where even a pair of boots and a blanket are signs of wealth.
There is much talk nowadays of “new monasticism”, but I would recommend that those interested in new monasticism should also see this film to at least appreciate the spirit of the old monasticism.
Another thing that I find interesting is that nowadays we hear much of the “new atheism”, with much publicity being given to atheist polemicists like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. The film is set in a place and period when atheism was the official policy of the state, and where the dreams of the new atheists could come true. But in fact those dreams crumbled within fifteen years, and the film shows part of the reason why.
10 Comments
16 November 2008 at 6:40 am
I found it to be a great movie. It began in such a way as to be a little disorienting – I had no idea where the movie was going and saw it solely based on someone’s mention of it – but it quickly turned into a movie I find myself mentally returning to quite a lot.
16 November 2008 at 6:47 am
Joseph,
Yes, I think it is one of those films one should see several times in order to appreciate fully.
16 November 2008 at 8:32 pm
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll have to see if Netflix has it. The hermit life appeals to me more and more as I get older. In fact, I just posted on The Vital Role of Hermits, especially the underappreciated hermit-sacristans who attended the many little pilgrimage shrines.
17 November 2008 at 5:04 am
Joel,
Perhaps someone needs to start documenting the lives of some of those shrine keepers.
17 November 2008 at 12:16 pm
Sounds interesting.
The trouble with the New Atheism is that it’s just like the old atheism. A lot of them still want to stamp out religion, and don’t seem to realise that this is an irrational aim, or that religion is not only about belief, but also about practice and values.
17 November 2008 at 7:33 pm
Yvonne,
I think the difference between the new atheism and the old is that the new atheism is much more “in your face”. Actually one of the links in the post that tells about the film also gives reviews of the film, and you can see some of the negative ones there.
21 November 2008 at 1:18 am
I loved the movie. It was very surprising to me to see how harshly Fr. Anatoly seemed to treat the woman who came for a blessing for an abortion, but when you think about it I’m sure that’s exactly what she needed at that point in time. I loved how the movie showed his humily; he wouldn’t even acknowledge to most of the pilgrims that -he- was Fr. Anatoly. I also enjoyed how it demonstarted that pride could even invade a monestary, even the abbot of that monestary. I wonder what form a Fool for Christ would take today in America?
21 November 2008 at 5:41 am
Zacharias,
Yes, one of the good things about the film is that it does not idealise monastic life. A monk from Mount Athos once told me that more people go to hell from monasteries than from anywhere else.
The film also shows the continuing tension in Orthodox monasticism between “possessors” and “nonpossessors”, even in the Bolshevik period, when the few monasteries allowed to remain were stripped of their possessions.
15 February 2009 at 8:50 pm
[...] more prominence than that of Jesus. No, rather it is done in humility, as portrayed in the film Ostrov (the Island), where people come to the spiritual elder for advice, and he pretends to get it from someone else [...]
27 March 2009 at 7:54 am
[...] there is another side to Russian Orthodoxy, revealed, for example, in the film Ostrov (The Island). I think that is where the future of Orthodoxy, and indeed the future of Christianity lies. But [...]