The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun

The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun (Director: Pernille Rose Grønkjær, Denmark, 2006): Mr. Vig is an eld­erly bach­elor living in a broken-down castle. For years, he has dreamed of estab­lishing a mon­as­tery there, “to create some­thing enduring,” and so, sensing he doesn’t have long to live, he invites the Russian Orthodox church to use his prop­erty. They send a small group of nuns to check the place out, including the shrewd Sister Amvrosya. They leave and then return in a few months, and Mr. Vig spends time trying to clean and fix the place up. Once the nuns are more estab­lished, he finds him­self but­ting heads with Sister Amvrosya over the renov­a­tions and the future plans for the mon­as­tery. But for the first time in his life, he seems to have entered a domestic rela­tion­ship with a woman, and finds the con­tent­ment that seems to have eluded him in his long life.

This film was unbe­liev­ably touching and beau­tiful, from the 35mm cine­ma­to­graphy (which is becoming rarer all the time in the world of doc­u­mentary film­making) to the soundtrack to the very low-key dir­ec­tion. There are many small grace notes throughout the film, like shots of Sister Amvrosya and Mr. Vig walking in the garden, or her pre­paring food for him. Everything is unspoken, but there is a very real bond between these two.

Throughout the film, Mr. Vig laments that he just isn’t like other people, that he doesn’t know any­thing about love, that when it comes to emo­tions, he’s “deformed” or “a cripple.” And yet, he invites people into his house, invites God into his house, and it somehow becomes a home.

The meta­phor seems obvious but it’s true. The house is the man. Ramshackle, run down, a little dirty, per­haps, but full of inter­esting things and stories, and ulti­mately beau­tiful. This quietly powerful film will stay with me for a long time.

Official site for the film

(9/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs07, christianity, denmark, Documentaries, Hot Docs