"Night sun" is based on "Father Sergius" a short story by Lev Tolstoy that was posthumous published in 1911. It was earlier adapted by Yakov Protazanov in 1918, a movie I haven't seen yet.
The story is about father Sergius (Julian Sands), a man who hopes to find solitude and piety in the church after leaving a promising career. He never finds the solitude he is looking for. As a monk in a monastry the abbot shows him off in front of guests because of his former career. As a hermit he becomes the center of a fairy like situation because people belief he is capable of performing miracles and heal the sick. At the end of the film as a beggar he meets a woman who had realized piety not by retreating from society but by standing in the midst of it. Only then he realised that it was not the world that had prevented him from reaching his goals but his own vanity.
The story of father Sergius is deeply religious and philosophical. The moral made me think of something I once read about Zoroatrian religion. In this philosophy the aim is not minimizing doing bad things (for example by becoming a hermit) but maximizing the balance between good deeds and sins. This can only be realized by staying in real life.
"Night sun" was made during the heydays of the Taviani brothers, which lasted in my opinion from "Padre Padrone" (1977) to "Fiorile" (1993). The Taviani brothers are born storytellers and the images are once again very beautiful. The story however is rather slow and the main character is one that shows (and wants to show) as little emotion as possible, his ultimate aim being to control all his emotions. This makes the film rather static.
On top of that the credibility of the main character was for me undermined in a fairly early stage of the film. His decision te become a monk was primarily based on the collapse of his intended marriage. Before the marriage he confesses to his future wife that he initially selected her to further his career (she forgives him). She confesses to him that she had had an earlier affair with the king (he does not forgive her). To me his confession to her seems more humiliating than her confession to him, so his reaction was for me a rather inappropriate one. Maybe this was an early sign of his vanity, that would bother him for the rest of the movie.
The story is about father Sergius (Julian Sands), a man who hopes to find solitude and piety in the church after leaving a promising career. He never finds the solitude he is looking for. As a monk in a monastry the abbot shows him off in front of guests because of his former career. As a hermit he becomes the center of a fairy like situation because people belief he is capable of performing miracles and heal the sick. At the end of the film as a beggar he meets a woman who had realized piety not by retreating from society but by standing in the midst of it. Only then he realised that it was not the world that had prevented him from reaching his goals but his own vanity.
The story of father Sergius is deeply religious and philosophical. The moral made me think of something I once read about Zoroatrian religion. In this philosophy the aim is not minimizing doing bad things (for example by becoming a hermit) but maximizing the balance between good deeds and sins. This can only be realized by staying in real life.
"Night sun" was made during the heydays of the Taviani brothers, which lasted in my opinion from "Padre Padrone" (1977) to "Fiorile" (1993). The Taviani brothers are born storytellers and the images are once again very beautiful. The story however is rather slow and the main character is one that shows (and wants to show) as little emotion as possible, his ultimate aim being to control all his emotions. This makes the film rather static.
On top of that the credibility of the main character was for me undermined in a fairly early stage of the film. His decision te become a monk was primarily based on the collapse of his intended marriage. Before the marriage he confesses to his future wife that he initially selected her to further his career (she forgives him). She confesses to him that she had had an earlier affair with the king (he does not forgive her). To me his confession to her seems more humiliating than her confession to him, so his reaction was for me a rather inappropriate one. Maybe this was an early sign of his vanity, that would bother him for the rest of the movie.