Priests in Love

When we were young my brother and I stopped by a house on our way home and many minutes passed – hell, perhaps an hour or so passed - before our mother found us, thwacked us and hauled us home. What had drawn us to the window of a stranger’s house was a documentary on the Nullarbor Plain. Such bleakness, that too in B&W, appeared to have enthralled two under-10s enough for at least one of them to remember it as the first memory of Australia. Other films then came along, most notably Picnic at Hanging Rock and Walkabout. In retrospect it is surprising that Indian TV had Australian offerings, even if these were in odd time slots and few and far between.

Australian landscapes drew me in as nothing else did.

I had a dim memory of a film that I saw that involved a doctor coming from the Australian mainland to an island. A memory of the seas and an island with sandstone houses remained with me even though I remembered little of the film. Then serendipitously I came across the film – or more correctly telemovie - some time back. Shadows of the Heart (unfortunate title!) is a film so unknown that even in this age of the Internet barely any information on the film exists. This is perhaps not without reason given that its themes and treatment are slightly dated (nothing after all dates as much as a film made in one decade but set in another). In the film, a doctor – a woman - goes to an island armed with modern ideas of medicine and finds an island mired in religion and superstition. Doctor meets priest, predictably clashes with him. Then of course free love meets its repressed counterpart. Both settings and characters are rural picturesques. Lessons are learned on both sides. Duty prevails. You get the drift.

The reason the movie struck me this time around was in its treatment of the priest. These days Catholic priests as kiddie fiddlers are so embedded in the popular imagination that one forgets the moral dramas of the past where a man of the cloth would be torn between his duty to God and a grand passion for a woman. This conflict is not as laughable as it may seem in the present. Anything which demands moral purity of its adherents – think the freedom movement in India – is bound to create a tension between earthly desires and a call to duty. It can of course pervert the nature of earthly desires as with priests accused of pedophilia and this is of course the dominant narrative of our age but it need not be the sole narrative. The sentiment of duty above all too is old-fashioned (in the film both the priesthood and medicine are more akin to a calling). The other old fashioned theme the film sets up is that between modernity and tradition with the doctor and the priest representing these opposite poles in early twentieth century Australia. And of course it deals with the emancipation of women – a woman doctor in that time was sufficiently rare (the film appears to be based on a memoir in part). These themes belong so much to the past that viewing the film one gets the feeling that it is only the landscapes of Australia that remain somewhat intact.

Coincidentally a priest similarly torn also pops up in Lilies. This is on the ABC but I must admit that it is not exactly riveting and I watch it more as a backdrop to my evening chores. Back in India, when one saw so little of English drama one might have watched it but here I have seen one too many. Right now it is all repressed passion and suffering and I have no idea of how it will end but one presumes he remains a man of cloth.

PS: Priest is a modern take on this theme and more effective in being an undiluted examination of the church and celibacy.

Nullarbor picture from here.