The Nun (1966)

 Jacques Rivette's "The Nun"


After watching Jacques Rivette's 1966 film "The Nun," I am thoroughly convinced it is the greatest 'nun' film I've seen. The film stars Anna Karina as a young woman who is forced into becoming a nun against her wishes. While the specific subject matters centers on this religious specificity, the overall context could be broadened to view it as a criticism of society itself and its oppressive restrictiveness.

Karina's Suzanne, is forced to enter a convent to prevent her sisters from missing out on their inheritance. After her vows, her kind mother superior is replaced with a crueler woman who reduces Suzanne's possessions, restricts her diet, and locks her away in a barren room. After getting the courts involved, Suzanne is transferred to another church, under the supervision of the more light-hearted Mme de Chelles. After rebuffing sexual advances from her, Suzanne escapes the convent back into society.

What's most striking to me about "The Nun" isn't the external components that torment Suzanne. At first, that drove the engagement throughout most of the first half of the film. By the film's end, I was far more entranced by Suzanna herself. She begins the film rejecting her religious path and by the film's end, it becomes all she clings to. She faces far more tribulations and moral choices than any of her comrades, churning her soul into a stew of sacrificial purity - which shines far brighter as a religious beacon than the doting compatriots. 

Suzanne is so distressed by the corruption and hypocrisy surrounding her. These external forces that condemn and restrain her are thematically aligned with the concepts of society itself. There are clear hierarchies of power that issue prescriptions for the common citizen, who is represented by Suzanne in this case. Suzanna's liberty and pursuit of happiness is entirely contingent on whether she compliant to the conforms of authority. And those edicts of authority are entirely contingent on the individual whims of whom occupies them. 

That's all life is - warping yourself around the whims and edicts of others in authority over you. Regardless of where Suzanne went - from her original convent to the lighter one, to even escaping into the outside 'society' -  she is simply a subject whose autonomy is restricted. 

"The Nun" is able to both acts as a micro and macro of human suffering - through the complications of external trials to the internal moral struggle one feels through these tribulations. Regardless, Suzanne acts as our champion. Her adherence to moral purity is as fiery as her rebellion against corrupt domination. For that, her character is one of complexity - allowing us an invitation to understand her passion, while also admonish that which limits her spiritual conquests.



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