The Superior of All is the Servant of All

Movie Review: Black Narcissus

I find I kind of have to steel myself a little when I watch older movies. What can I say? I'm a child of the nineties. Style and pacing in older movies sometimes call for a little extra patience, especially if you haven't seen that many. It does get easier with time, and it can be a very worthwhile investment. I had the opportunity to buy Black Narcissus, a 1947 film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, but decided against it, and my roommate Pamela picked it up instead. Which was lucky, because it was awesome.

Black Narcissus tells the story of a group of five nuns trying to establish a convent in a remote Himalayan palace. Donated by a local general, they discover that it played host to his former harem. The nuns are in a distant, foreign land, outsiders amongst the locals, and each has a story behind her. Memories that they had long forgotten begin to drift up to the surface until they can think of nothing else. There is a mysticism to the local community that gradually encroaches upon them. Slowly, the sisters begin to unravel, in particular its proud leader, Deborah Kerr's Sister Clodagh, and Sister Ruth played with a desperate insanity by Kathleen Byron, who was already ill, potentially with syphilis, when they arrived. The situation spirals out of control and climaxes at something of a surprising crescendo.

Story aside, the movie's fucking gorgeous. It was apparently considered a benchmark of technicolour cinematography, and it's very easy to see why. Though most of the vistas are matte paintings, they're magnificently detailed, and really benefit from the Criterion restoration we watched. The use of shadows, colours and lights are put to great effect, and some scenes are shot with such dramatic technique I wonder what else I'm missing from 1947.

Black Narcissus is also interesting to watch in context of its time because despite being from 1947, a time when India was still in the British Empire, it seems indifferent to the principles of Christianity as well as the (I guess Hindu) religion of the region. Neither is given much stock, and the story plays out with a certain observational apathy in that regard. Characters moralize every now and then, but it seems to be coming from a hollow and ultimately tragic place. Maybe it doesn't help to contextualize it like this, but that it came out so shortly before India gained independence may have some significance. If the movie has any moral at all, it's that just because your heart's in the right place and you think you're helping, you don't know what you're doing so far out of your element. Not only will you fuck things up, but they'll fuck you up, too.