You wouldn’t normally expect a film about Mother Teresa to feature heavy-metal music, nuns dancing in white nightgowns in the middle of the night, abortion as a prominent story line or “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” star Noomi Rapace as the sainted Albanian-Indian missionary who died in 1997. But you get all of those and more in “Mother,” a drama from Macedonian director Teona Strugar Mitevska that opened the Orizzonti section of the Venice International Film Festival on Wednesday.
“Mother,” part of a familial Venice lineup that also includes films titled “Father” and “Father Mother Sister Brother,” has its roots in the documentary series “Teresa and I,” which aired on Macedonian TV in 2015. But for a director whose films have often depicted women fighting against the patriarchy, “Mother” quite deliberately takes a small slice of a large life and treats it in ways that are both contemplative and assaultive.
That much is evident from the opening scenes, which take an overhead shot of Mother Teresa’s hands forming balls of bread to give to the poor and set it to the kind of bold, guitar-heavy music that will give much of the film a metallic and punky aura. This take on the Catholic nun doesn’t ignore that she devoted her life to helping “the poorest of the poor,” but it plays up the boldness of that decision, and the fact that a woman in the male-run church in 1948 had to be a little crazy to push for it the way she did.
As the film opens, she’s been waiting for the Pope to respond to her request to leave her order, the Sisters of Loreto, and form a new order that would focus on helping (and proselytizing to) the poorest communities in Calcutta. Huge letters that take up most of the screen spell out that this is DAY 7, beginning a countdown that will continue through the rest of the film — and will impose something of an artificial framework on this fictionalized incident from her life.
The Sisters of Loreto spend most of their time sequestered behind thick walls, running a school but rarely venturing into the community. That doesn’t sit well with Mother Teresa, who has very rigid ways of doing things: Convinced that people can get too easily attached to places and objects, she insists on regularly rearranging the furniture in the room she shares with a fellow nun, Sister Agnieszka (Sylvia Hoeks). As she waits for a response from the Pope, she also fine tunes the list of strict rules she’s come up with for her new order, which will include always using the cheapest mode of transportation, saying the rosary while traveling and only seeing one’s family once a year.
(When Sister Agnieszka asks what will happen in the case of emergencies like deaths in the family, the answer is succinct: “No exceptions.”)
Tired of running a convent behind walls, she tells her local priest that it all seems pointless, and contrasts her plight with his. “You’re a man,” she says. “I can’t do anything. I’m trapped in here.”
“Mother” takes advantage of Rapace’s face, which can be drawn and severe, especially when it’s framed by her nun’s habit. The music by Magali Gruselle and Flemming Nordkrog is used sparingly but effectively, regularly dropping in to insist that things are serious and dark. And the drama lives up to the music when Sister Agnieszka drops a bombshell and tells Mother Teresa that she’s pregnant, sending her superior into an apoplectic fit of anger.
Sister Agnieszka wants to talk to a local doctor about an abortion, but Mother Teresa won’t hear of it, despite Sister Agnieszka’s rose-colored vision of what will happen if she terminates the pregnancy and everybody keeps quiet: “I will run the convent and you will go on to inspire others and save millions and millions of lives.”
This isn’t a trade-off Mother Teresa is ready to endorse; when she suggests to the doctor that he and his wife take in Sister Agnieszka, he snaps, “So you can get rid of her? How is that less of a sin?”
Of course, questions of faith can lead to questions of sanity, and the film’s looming countdown clock — by now we’re on DAY 3 — cranks up the tension. So Mother Teresa has a full-fledged heavy metal fantasy, hallucinating a young boy in the kitchen while nuns in nightgowns dance in darkened halls and writhe on the floor. It’s enough to make a devout nun wonder if God is sending the devil to tempt and torment her because of her vanity in thinking she could save so many people.
Mitevska doesn’t reach Ken Russell or “The Exorcist” territory here, but her and Rapace’s Mother Teresa is pretty tormented before the Pontiff’s letter finally arrives. (You didn’t think the movie was going to set up that countdown and not deliver an answer, did you?) There’s still time for some more heavy-metal guitar, but also for an affecting scene of Mother Teresa simply dismantling the nun’s wimple that has obscured her hair for most of the film.
It makes for an odd, contradictory portrait, but also an intriguing one. And when you’re making a movie about somebody who is quite literally a saint, a few of those odd contradictions can go a long way.
