nov 26 - dec 2 | vision | vifc

Soul Food friend Graham Peat (AKA "Mr Videomatica") alerts us to this one, which looks like a Soul Food Must-See. Thanks, GP! I'm especially intrigued by one tiny element in the Hildegard story, mentioned in this New York Times review: "She was a playwright whose lyrical drama Ordo Virtutum is excerpted in a scene in which the nuns, as they were allowed to do on certain holidays, frolic in silk gowns and jewels." Check out that link: the music is gorgeous beyond belief.

VISION (Germany, 2009, 110 mins)
Vancity Theatre
Fri Nov 26 | 8:15
Sat Nov 27 | 8:15
Sun Nov 28 | 3:30 + 8:30
Mon Nov 29 | 6:30
Tue Nov 30 | 8:15
Wed Dec 1 | 6:30
Thu Dec 2 | 8:15

The 12th-century Benedictine nun, Hildegard von Bingen–today a cult figure–is luminously portrayed by Barbara Sukowa in her 5th collaboration with director Margarethe von Trotta. Hildegard, a polymath by any century's definition, was a composer of Gregorian chants, a playwright, poet, and scientific pioneer in the fields of healing, herbal medicine and botany. As an iconoclastic religious figure who insisted on separate and independent abbies for nuns, she ran up against the church's authoritarian and patriarchal hierarchy; as a mystic and visionary, she insisted on her right to preach and interpret the Gospels. Sukowa infuses Hildegard with the will of a modern feminist, but one tethered to a medieval universe. Von Trotta makes that world believable and lush, and at times as scary and alluring as a 900-year-old fairy tale.

"The film exalts in the diverse accomplishments of the 12th century Benedictine nun. Sukowa embodies her character's imposition of will with complete conviction, just as she does Hildegard's imposing intellect and bottomless devotion."–Todd McCarthy, Variety

"The sympathy of von Trotta's Vision lays in joy... Despite its title, far from showing us the exterior manifestation of Godliness of Hildegard von Bingen's life, von Trotta's film, in its contained but generous sense of the emotional tenor of each individual scene, seems to be exploring the nuances of love on this earth."–Daniel Kasman, MUBI