Divine talent in director’s 1st feature
“Novitiate” presents us with life inside a strict convent in 1964. It portrays a small and particular world and renders it in detail, with a respect rarely accorded religious subjects by contemporary Hollywood. Yet for all its specificity, this same world connects with struggles and emotions that are timeless: the tensions between mothers and daughters, the hardships of women within a patriarchal structure, the challenge of changing times, and the desire for spiritual transcendence.
It’s the first feature film by Margaret Betts — and also the first great film by Margaret Betts. Expect more. As a director, she somehow persuaded an entire ensemble to give performances it will be remembered for, and this includes some in minor roles. As the screenplay’s author, Betts also created scenes that lift out and make you think about them, hours and days later. And she didn’t do this just once or twice in “Novitiate.” She did it at least a half- dozen times.
At the center of most of these memorable scenes is Melissa Leo in a remarkable performance as the mother superior — except that, no, “remarkable” just doesn’t cut it. More like jaw- dropping. More like inspiring of bugeyed amazement. More like every time she shows up — it’s a supporting role — viewers brace themselves to be floored. You could watch half of “Novitiate” and know you’ve seen one of 2017’ s best performances.
Then you see the second half and realize Leo was just getting warmed up.
The complexity, richness and fullness of what Leo does here is acting at its most illuminating and useful. She gives us the portrait of a terrifying monster and of a wise and impressive woman, a study in religious devotion and moral confusion, a charmer and a tyrant, and someone entirely sympathetic and vulnerable. But these are just words. This is work that must be seen, not described.
The novitiate, or nun in training, is Cathleen ( Margaret Qualley), who grew up with a single mother who was loving and down- to- earth, but who had a way of bringing home a lot of “uncles.” Despite being an agnostic, mom enrolls Cathleen in Catholic school, and something about the church speaks to the girl’s unfulfilled longings. By the time she is 17, she not only wants to become a nun, but wants to join an especially severe and cloistered order.
For those of us who’ve never tried to become a nun, “Novitiate” introduces a new way of life and thought. We might know, for example, that nuns are called brides of Christ and yet still be surprised that these young women actually talk about Jesus as though he were their boyfriend, and that the graduation service has the women wearing wedding dresses.
As Cathleen, Qualley gives a carefully controlled performance, in the sense that she never indulges what must have been a temptation to reveal herself to the audience. Her motivations stay closed to us, to the point that we begin to suspect that they’re also closed to the character. Is this someone who should be a nun or someone in the grip of a delusion? We don’t know, but in a certain way it almost doesn’t matter. We’re seeing something admirable in either case.
“Novitiate” is the female parallel to those many movies about a young man going through basic training. We don’t have to believe that the kid should join the Marines to respect the rigor and discipline that it takes to become a Marine. Meanwhile, this is all set during the watershed year of 1964, in which the church instituted a series of reforms under the name Vatican II. These reforms would transform Catholicism and the place of nuns within it.
It says everything about the effective subtlety of Betts’ writing and of the performances it inspired that much of what we know of the characters is rarely if ever stated. Throughout, we feel that we know all about the personal history of Sister Emanuel ( Rebecca Dayan), and the secret spiritual convictions of Sister Mary Grace ( Dianna Agron), and the hell of loneliness and guilt that Cathleen’s mother ( Julianne Nicholson) is living through. But we get most or all of that information through scenes of private turmoil and through close- ups that only the camera witnesses. Dayan, Agron and especially Nicholson would be the highlight of any other film, the person audiences would go home talking about. Here they’re part of the ensemble.
Long ago it used to be that, to achieve autonomy within their own sphere, women had to become nuns. In today’s American movie business, making or appearing in a movie about nuns may turn out to be our modern- day equivalent. In any case, almost in passing, “Novitiate” is the great actress vehicle of 2017.