At first I resisted this film. Don’t we always begin by resisting movies about those who are said to be saints? Be they religious figures or Great Philanthropic Heroes, we tend to wince when we see characters that films seem to be putting forward as great figures. It is with good reason that we wince, of course, because films that really think they have a SAINT on their hands are stuck in the mud before getting out of the stall. They are usually not very interested in casting the keen, questioning, or curious eye on the character that good art requires.
So that is how I began with The Flowers of St. Francis. I saw Francis’s followers enamored by Francis’s words and presence in the opening scenes. I saw that and dreaded the film in which I would be asked to be enamored in the same way for 90 minutes just because everyone else in the film was feeling that way.
Then, as the film, progressed, two interesting and vital things happened :
-The film becomes as much or more about Francis’s followers than it is about Francis himself. This is essential, not only because it keeps us from being stuck in the rut with the Faultless Saint but because the followers themselves are wildly human. They are human, yes, and we even laugh when we discover they are a little crazy. This craziness itself, instead of throwing us off into the land of the senseless, actually draws us in. It is the kind of crazy that defies bullying and dictatorship with a smile as we see Brother Ginepro do in the most spectacularly cinematic scene in the film.
-Maybe even more importantly, the film gives us the scene with Francis and a leper passing by him in the forest. This scene at once makes Francis recognizably, desperately human AND gives us a moment in which he seems to touch holiness. Francis’s holy moment comes not by his eloquent speeches or prayers but by his simple presence with and closeness to the leper. In the way he is willing to make simple physical contact with a person no one else wanted to be near, he helps us remember the Jesus to whom his life is meant to point.
The film, finally, escapes the slow death of Saint Cinema and enters the rich life of Human Cinema.
