One of the tales which makes up Flaubert’s Trois Contes is ‘La Légende de Saint-Julien l’Hospitalier’. Its message is poignant: in order to become a saint, one must first be a sinner. Flaubert focuses on the male rite of passage in his interpretation of the religious tale, suggesting that in order to pass from boyhood to manhood, one must succumb to the human instinct to fight, to victimise others, and to assert one’s power.
This notion resonates particularly strongly in Malgoska Szumowska’s In The Name Of (2013), a new wave Polish film occasionally evoking the religious pessimism of new wave Romanian films, such as Christian Mungiu’s Beyond The Hills (2012), but with an epiphanic twist.
Szumowska’s film tells the tale of a priest, helping troubled adolescent boys to find God and to find peace. However, the film is rife with unflinching images of man’s inhumanity to man; powerful scenes depict these adolescents fighting, competing, and battling for the upper hand. Religious speeches preaching purity are uncomfortably positioned adjacent to images of the most base human instincts: masturbating, bullying, mocking, attacking, and indulging.
Akin to Flaubert’s ‘Saint-Julien’, In The Name Of seems to ask of its audience: what constitutes sin? Does inhumanity reside where human instinct takes precedence? Can we condemn the fighters, the afraid, or the unfaithful? Or can we only offer love to heal the very human wounds of the human race? Despite the priest’s impurity by orthodox standards (appearing to occasionally lack faith, succumb to lust, indulge his male instinct, and ultimately admit his homosexuality), he allows every ‘sinner’ through his door and offers them forgiveness, a powerful healing gesture from man to man.
He is ultimately a teacher, particularly to one boy from a rural family. The boy offers a similar helping hand throughout the film – to the woman having a seizure, to the woman that the other young men verbally attack, and to the priest himself when the other adolescents in the group exchange abusive comments about him.
The film’s focus is directed upon the parallel paths of teacher and student, as one struggles to curb his self-loathing, and the other struggles to curb his anger.
Despite their respective imperfections, it is compassion that links the priest and the boy. And it is compassion that at once breeds the greatest comfort and the greatest misunderstanding in the film. Compassion binds these characters and the conflicting elements that make up human emotion. Both teacher and student are at once pure, human, and animalistic when, in one scene, the priest and his protege beat their chests, create animal roars, and race through the fields impersonating baboons. They are able to escape from the moral, sexual, and emotional confines of the human condition when they resort to their animal instincts.
This motif becomes entirely metaphorical of the film’s message: that in order to be human, one must also succumb to animal instinct; in order to be pure, one must first be punished; in order to teach, you must also be in a position to learn; and, as the story of Julien tells us, in order to become a saint, one must first be a sinner.
In the face of both religion and the male rite of passage, In The Name Of explores both the moral and emotional complications of sexuality, conflict, and compassion, suggesting, ultimately, that purity and humanity come not only from forgiveness from God, but from self-acceptance.
Director: Malgorzata Szumowska
Writers: Malgorzata Szumowska (screenplay), Michal Englert (screenplay)
Stars: Andrzej Chyra, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz, Lukasz Simlat
Runtime: 102 min
Country: Poland
Film Rating: 7 out of 10 stars
DVD Rating: 8 out of 10 stars
