Two more weeks left to go in Orthodox Lent, and I'm hitting the wall. Sick of fasting, and my prayer life has cratered. Last night, though, I got a major boost by watching the Russian film Ostrov, which means "The Island" in English.
The film opens during the second World War. Two Russians operating a tugboat are captured by Nazi soldiers on patrol. One of the Russians, terrified, gives the captain up to the Nazis, and ends up being forced to shoot him to save his own life. The Nazis blow up the Russian tugboat, thinking they've managed in doing so to kill the survivor. But they didn't: we see him wash ashore, and several cassocked Orthodox monks rushing to the shore to retrieve his unconscious body.
The second scene opens in their monastery in 1976. It is an interminably bleak place. The same man who washed ashore is still living there, and shoveling coal for the monastery. He's living in intense poverty, sleeping on a pile of coal and praying constantly. He's become a priest -- Father Anatoly -- and is still living in torment over having killed his shipmate over three decades ago. He has also become a staretz -- an Orthodox elder gifted with unusual spiritual insight (think the Elder Zosima in "The Brothers Karamazov") and even clairvoyance (think of Padre Pio in the West). He is also a "fool for Christ," a figure known particularly to Orthodox Christians; a holy fool is someone who lives to all appearances a life that makes no sense by ordinary standards (think of St. Francis of Assisi taking off all his clothes in public to show how he was turning his back on his life of wealth), but which in some mysterious way participates in the Divine Life, and manifests God's plan.
Father Anatoly, as he's called, resists calls from his brother monks to come in off the coal pile, and live normally with them. He is a sign of contradiction. As we follow his story, though, we learn more about him -- is he insane, or a saint? -- and begin to understand what God might be doing in him and through him. Obviously I won't tell you how the film ends, but by the end, we come to understand that God has His reasons that we cannot fathom, but which may become clear to us in an extraordinary way, as we see the surprising fruits of Fr. Anatoly's penitential life.
The only other film I've seen that was as powerful spiritually in the same way as this was the staggering 1996 film "Breaking the Waves," which was about a different kind of holy fool, and is significantly less Orthodox (and orthodox) than "Ostrov" (it's also got nudity and sexual situations; my recommending it is a deeply Catholic Christian film on EWTN caused a huge uproar, I found out). Still, both films are invitations to consider how God intervenes in our lives via what Kierkegaard called "the teleological suspension of the ethical." The original holy fool must have been Abraham, taking his son Isaac for sacrifice at God's request. It is to my mind the most bizarre story in the Bible (which takes some doing, admittedly).
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I agree with you, Rod, that this may indeed be part of the plot device, but I think it reflects poorly on Orthodoxy and on the Gospel.
> I agree with you, Rod, that this may indeed be part of
> the plot device, but I think it reflects poorly on
> Orthodoxy and on the Gospel.
Hi Eric,
Really?
I'm not sure what you're expecting.
When somebody starts telling me, "I used to be , but now Jesus made me ," I start checking out mentally. I don't buy magical conversion stories from ***anybody.*** They just don't ring true to me.
But YMMV.
Far more plausible to me are stories of people who sweat blood to find grace e.g. the oddball characters in Flannery O'Connor short stories or the mysterious visitor in Brothers Karamazov, or for that matter, Fr Zossima himself.
John
John:
I'm not saying it always comes quickly, or suddenly, or in a few months or years, but at some point Christians should confront the things St. Paul writes about the Gospel - i.e., the GOOD NEWS - and the new creation that believers have become (not "are going to become maybe someday hopefully in the sweet bye-and-bye"). St. John says that our faith is the victory that overcomes the world. A lifetime of morbid weeping and penance and guilt-carrying is, to me, the antithesis of the Gospel. It may look or appear "spiritual," but I think it's tragic.
from Rod:
But see, if not for his torment over his sin, Father Anatoly would not have lived a life of intensely ascetical penance, and he might not have developed the theosis that enabled him to be such a help to others. Notice that the people didn't come to the other monks for help; they came to the crazy old staretz. I believe that God used Anatoly's burden as a way to save others -- including Tikhon's daughter. And that is what Anatoly realized at the end. When his work had been done, it was time to die.
But those Elders whose works I have read (St. Silouan, Elder Sophrony, Elder Paisios, etc), though they spent a lifetime in true repentance, yet they knew the joy of Christ. All I'm saying is that Father Anatoly did not seem to reflect that joy - even at his death. I believe that is a flaw in the way the character was written/portrayed.
I'm not so sure the sacrifice of Isaac is so complicated. The issue, it seems to me, is about Abraham's willingness to give up his worldly career: his standing and his narcissism, retroactive annulment of his involvement in physical procreation, and giving his stake in worldly affairs in the form of his favored son. It's a Divine query of how far he is willing to go to a form of the ascetic ideal, in finality of and proactive and retroactive annulment of his pride and worldliness. (And yes, Rod, what probably bothers you about the story is that the God of the Hebrew Bible doesn't assign physical procreation much if any spiritual merit, and more or less opportunity for its opposite. Maybe that's why you're not posting about the FLDS story either?)
++++
As for Ostrov, there are two ways to look at its plot. Either it's an atonement/salvation story overreliant on a magical turn of events, which would be the preferred perspective of a movie. Or (more likely) as written it's a pretty sophisticated look at the classical European scheme of the great spiritual journey through an Eastern European lens- with its relatively fatalistic, suffering and contemplative, and anthropocentric emphases. Its assumption of a defined and definite metaphysical frame. With an ideal of peace as the attainable and idealized end state, exertion of creative power being some mix of out of reach, dangerous, and reserved for deity.
To contrast, the most successful recent Western European fictional rendition of the great spiritual journey is 'The Lord of the Rings'. Which reflects values, lessons learned, and perspective taken by Western European travels along the same road of a rather different kind. Creativity and creative transformative power are the things of highest value in its system, and they are valued precisely because as realities (though rare) they transcend mental frameworks or crutches.
As I look at it, this East/West contrast pretty much contain the analysis and critique to make of Larrison's perspective now at the top of the page. The contrast in perspectives is a bit like that of nineteenth century classical physics vs twentieth century relativistic physics. The first generally takes Man and his classical self centered imagination as measure, makes the Universe essentially mechanical and fixes it around Man, and the problems to that relationship are explained away with magical thinking. The other probes as best it can the Universe and its terms independent of Man, is interested in the way the Universe does not reflect the image of Man, and seeks not to frame one by the other. The implied relationship is one of interests and creative partnering of one with the other.
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