Sister Wives of Jesus

VISION

Directed by Margarethe von Trotta

[At Film Forum] Oct. 13-26

Runtime: 110 min. I’LL BE THE first woman,” says the 12th-century Benedictine nun Hildegard von Bingen in Vision. She’s proclaiming her right to preach the gospel despite the gender restrictions of the Order. As the role is played by Barbara Suwoka, she’s also speaking director Margarethe von Trotta’s assertion of female will and independence. Vision revives von Trotta’s old-school feminism but with a purer focus than some of her earlier films: the tendentious Rosa Luxemburg (1986) and the sentimental Marianne and Julianne (1981) and Sisters, Or the Balance of Happiness (1979). In Vision, von Trotta achieves a non-preachy coolness that suggests wisdom. Her politics are clear, but they submerge in fascination for von Bingen’s rule-breaking, pioneering faithfulness. Vision isn’t exactly a spiritual movie, so it doesn’t achieve the aesthetic, mystical power of such intellectualized films about women in the cloistered life such as Black Narcissus or The Nun’s Story or the great The Bells of St. Mary’s. But neither does von Trotta cater to today’s fashionable anti-Christian view. Her bias is to spotlight Bingen’s innovative holistic approach to medicine. Von Trotta’s sophisticated enough not to deny the spiritual side of Bingen’s study (“First the soul must heal, then the body will follow.”) Unafraid of her subject’s complexity, von Trotta shows Bingen’s weaknesses as part of her humanity, as in her attachment to novice Richardis von Stade (Hannah Herzsprung), who rouses the other, narcissistic side of Bingen’s will.

Von Trotta examines feminist pride, egotism and sorority that is spiritual, intellectual and erotic. Heroizing Bingen as mystical and iconoclastic, von Trotta recalls the complexity of the Father Grandier figure in Ken Russell’s underrated 1971 The Devils. This is similarly serious political history: Von Trotta clearly intends Bingen’s prophecies—which risked excommunication and gave her the reputation of a seer—to establish her as an icon with contemporary relevance.

Von Trotta fights her own ambition by attempting to de-romanticize her story by making it visually dark—not rejoicing in the beauty of life that Bingen dares in her exultation of nature and of art, as when Bingen stages a holiday ritualized drama that emphases the physical attractiveness of the nuns’ play-acting. This hair-flowing scene helps define the depth of Sukowa’s performance; she’s gained strength since playing Fassbinder’s Lola in 1982 and she joins the Ingrid Bergman/Audrey Hepburn tradition of chaste beauty in a wimple—a good contrast to scenes of wily intelligence and anger.