Culture Shock Hair

I had to think for a moment to recall Eye of the Needle, which I knocked about in a paragraph when I first conceived of this project, but Sutherland seems to simply roll in and roll out of his parts after this war thriller. I can't think of any film I know of after that where he is not playing Liberal Conscience With Boof Shag; this includes Kienzle's whodunit. It is not that I do not respond to him as an actor; he projects comfort, sometimes balanced compassion, and when he dons the diabolical psychopath, audiences involve their feelings because they see the humane within the menace, but somehow it doesn't quite carry him as a clerical sleuth, not that this doesn't have its own conceits in solving mysteries. Derek Jacobi seems tailor made for his medieval monk. Alec Guinness has Father Brown, which also served him in being George Smiley better than anyone else, but Sutherland doesn't quite carry the dichotomy of the humanist holy man about him, and this is the first problem with the film; it has a subtext that the movie doesn't quite flesh out in the fact that our protagonist is weary with obedience. I am not objecting to this weariness in and of itself, but it drags on the narrative that propels the movie, instead of serving it. Koesler's platonic relationship with the journalist Pat Lennon, which I fully understand is integrated with Kienzle's personal experience of breaking his vows, is a loose strand left to hang, rather than engaging the viewer.

Incest between father and daughter is the primary trigger for the serial killing spree that opens with a nun about to go secular. I am not quite clear how Koesler works out the killer's twisted logic towards the climax, but the killer, Javison, assigns blame for not being stopped, and this is the juxtaposition that interests me about the film. It handles nearly the same problem as Shanley's Doubt, about whether evil is subsumed in the very institution that tries to torture it out of our flesh, if possible, handles it poorly, with all the thud of Medea's deus ex machina; my sensibility is that of implicit seepage.

See the last section on good and evil acts on this Vatican Catechism page:

The issue of moral guilt is doled out like so many eucharist wafers. Of course Javison is a monster, much like my mother's second husband, (and I give credit here to my then parish in Chester for helping me survive Stuart Lone, who I hope is dead, or will die as painfully as he treated my family) but his daughter's school is guilty, for not believing the girl about the abuse. Durning's staunch pastor is guilty, even Koesler has to carry that balance between penitent and pain that simply decelerates into slaughter.

Medical models, creating their own apologia for the mechanisms of psychopathy, do not really resolve the capacity for human anguish, anymore than the silence of bishops, for the sake of preserving the institution. Sound familiar?

Mendacity In Canon Law

Perhaps Father William Saunders assisted the SWG with the script of The Rosary Murders, because his article sounds just like the debate between Koesler and Kileen in the film. I quote:

 
The sacramental seal is inviolable. Quoting Canon 983.1 of the Code of Canon Law, the Catechism states, "...It is a crime for a confessor in any way to betray a penitent by word or in any other manner or for any reason" (No. 2490). A priest, therefore, cannot break the seal to save his own life, to protect his good name, to refute a false accusation, to save the life of another, to aid the course of justice (like reporting a crime), or to avert a public calamity. He cannot be compelled by law to disclose a person's confession or be bound by any oath he takes, e.g. as a witness in a court trial. A priest cannot reveal the contents of a confession either directly, by repeating the substance of what has been said, or indirectly, by some sign, suggestion, or action. A Decree from the Holy Office (Nov. 18, 1682) mandated that confessors are forbidden, even where there would be no revelation direct or indirect, to make any use of the knowledge obtained in the confession that would "displease" the penitent or reveal his identity.

Roman Catholicism, throughout its history, seems to brace itself, and fails, as a bulwark against the failings of the human animal. What I miss about the Church is not its corporate and legal structure that enforces the foundation of faith, not its placement of Yahweh and the Christ, Mary, Apostles, saints, and a coup d'etat by Polish Communist Superstars. What I miss about it is the comfort of certainty, and my rebellion against it did not begin with Jerry as my new source of succor. I butt heads with Father Kelly when I was sixteen over some fine point about Scripture, when he was hearing my confession in the rectory.

"We're not going to discuss that," he said. So much for docility.

Fear & Trembling

I only have a portion of Kierkegaard's seminal work in translation from mobi, but the focus here concerns Wiki's summary of William X Kienzle seemingly renders the former priest's career with as much contention as I have experienced with various theocracies. I do not know his noir novels on which the film with Sutherland as the progressive cleric is based, and so made a note of this for future reference, in order to clarify things later if need be, but the film itself is not very good, and so I cannot defend The Rosary Murders as the studio translated it in 1987, but I can extrapolate from it, and we'll happily work our way backwards, starting with the omega, because starting with the conclusion is the best way I can enter into it.