Title: Stations of the
Cross
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Original title: Kreuzweg
|
Directors: Dietrich
Brüggemann
|
Year: 2014
|
Country: Germany
|
Language: German
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★ ★ ★ ✬ ✩
|
Stations of the Cross is about a 14-year-old girl and her very
religious family. They are part of a very special parish: they are catholic,
but they think the actual Church is very permissive because of the changes
after the Second Vatican Council, so, according to them, everybody should live in a more
restrictive way. They think life is full of sins and temptations and they must
keep pure to get straight up to heaven. They compund the Society of Saint Paul.
This
different way of living is shown through Maria's eyes: she is a teenager and she must
deal with the usual problems like school, family and boys, but she must keep
faithful to her society’s principles, even when they are hard to understand or
apply. Pop music is satanic, but what should she do when it is played at school?
Boys are sinful, should she talk to them?
The film is
full of scenes that could be defined as common: a family walk, a car ride with
her mom, a study session in the library… but the reactions and the dialogues are not the ones you would expect. Sometimes, the protagonist behaves in a more-than-correct way, but it is
never enough: there is always something to feel guilty about or an impure
though to be ashamed of.
The movie is
based on the practices and doctrines of a real religious group named Society
of Saint Pius X and manages to transmit the agony of the situation to the viewers, who might end up overwhelmed by its dramatic story.
The film’s
structure is really original: it is split in 14 chapters and each one is named after a step of the Stations of the Cross. Furthermore, most of
the chapters are filmed with a static camera and they are all sequence-shots, which makes the visual atmosphere very interesting and intense.
The movie was
awarded at the Berlin International Film Festival for its script. Did you learn
anything from it?
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