{"id":3751,"date":"2024-08-29T21:50:25","date_gmt":"2024-08-29T21:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=3751"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:45:27","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T22:45:27","slug":"novitiate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/29\/novitiate\/","title":{"rendered":"Novitiate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Novitiate<\/strong> (2017)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sony Pictures Classics\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 123 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, some sexuality, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Margaret Betts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Margaret Betts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Christopher Stark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Kat Westergaard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 10, 2017 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Margaret Qualley, Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, Morgan Saylor, Maddie Hasson, Liana Liberato, Ashley Bell, Melissa Leo, Rebecca Dayan, Eline Powell, Chelsea Lopez, Denis O\u2019Hare, Chris Zylka.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hollywood used to have a great relationship with Catholicism with movies like Going My Way, The Bells of St. Mary\u2019s, The Nun\u2019s Story, The Sound of Music, The Trouble with Angels and Sister Act. That all changed when stories of sexual abuse within the church got out. In recent years, movies like The Magdalene Sisters, Doubt, Philomena, Calvary and Spotlight (which won Best Picture in 2015) have portrayed Catholicism as a tangled web of secrets, lies and cover-ups. It\u2019s not a religion, it\u2019s a conspiracy in which nobody is held accountable for their sins. It\u2019s refreshing to see a film like Novitiate<\/strong> that doesn\u2019t demonize Catholicism by dwelling on the abuse that (allegedly) takes place within the walls of the schools, confessionals and convents. At the same time, it doesn\u2019t canonize it either. Being Catholic isn\u2019t easy. Choosing to live life as a bride of Christ is even harder.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Ever since she was introduced to Catholicism by her agnostic mother (Nicholson, L&O: CI), Cathleen finds comfort in it. At 17, she (Qualley, The Nice Guys) announces her intention to enter a convent and devote her entire life to God. Why? Because she\u2019s in love with Him. At least that\u2019s what she says. One can\u2019t help but wonder if it\u2019s an act of rebellion against her profane, chain-smoking mother and the unstructured home life she\u2019s always known.<\/p>\n

\u00a0It works like this. The girls start out as postulants, a position they hold for six months to see if they\u2019re cut out for the rigorous life of a nun. If they make the cut, they become novitiates (basically, nuns in training) for about eighteen months. If they make it through that, then they take their final vows.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Novitiate<\/strong> follows Cathleen and a few other girls- Sister Evelyn (Saylor, Homeland), Sister Emily (Liberato, To the Bone), Sister Margaret (Bell, The Last Exorcism Part II) and Sister Candace (Powell, Quartet)- as they undergo training under the stern eye of Reverend Mother (Leo, The Fighter) who informs them right away that in this convent, she is \u201cthe voice of God\u201d. She\u2019s going through a crisis of faith herself. What I haven\u2019t mentioned is that Novitiate<\/strong> takes place in the 60s, a time of change and reform in the Catholic Church initiated by Vatican II, an ecumenical council convened by Pope John XXIII to address relations between the Church and the modern world. Reverend Mother thinks the Church is perfect the way it is and refuses to put them into effect. It\u2019s her convent and she prefers to run things the way she always has. The idea of change terrifies her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0While the stuff about Vatican II is interesting, Novitiate<\/strong> is at its best when it focuses on the girls\u2019 efforts to adapt to a life of denial, deprivation, self-discipline, poverty and chastity. That last one is difficult given the teenage girls\u2019 natural sexual urges. None of them have ever been with a man and wonder what they\u2019re missing out on. For Cathleen, probably the most devoted of all the novitiates, her sexual curiosity manifests itself in a way that leaves her so wracked with guilt, it affects her mental and physical health.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Qualley turns in a star-making performance as Cathleen. She has an open, expressive face that tells you more than any amount of expository dialogue. As her sin takes its toll on her body and soul, Qualley always keeps her character within the realm of believability. Saylor is also very good as Sister Evelyn. She has this one scene where Reverend Mother forces her to take an inventory of all her faults in front of her fellow novitiates. It\u2019s absolutely heart-wrenching. She may be old enough to join the sisterhood but she\u2019s still a child. Dianna Agron (Glee) is very good as Sister Mary Grace, the trainer who provides the only source of warmth and kindness for the girls. She likes the changes \u201csuggested\u201d by Vatican II, an opinion that puts her at odds with Reverend Mother.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Oscar winner Leo turns in a bold and chilling performance as the manipulative and sometimes sadistic Reverend Mother who terrorizes the girls in her charge with a sweet\/deceitful smile. When one girl breaks Great Silence by bidding her a good morning, she loudly berates her before making her crawl around on all fours while reciting her penance. She\u2019s kind of like R. Lee Ermey\u2019s drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket minus all the bad language.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I learned a lot from Novitiate<\/strong>. I\u2019m not Catholic so I approached it from an outsider\u2019s POV. This is the first time since Dogma that I didn\u2019t leave a Catholic-themed movie angry. It doesn\u2019t dwell on the things that make so many people hate Catholicism. It does, however, show some of the cruelty that went on in the convents (but nowhere near the level of 2003\u2019s Magdalene Sisters). By setting it in the past, it provides a sense of removal. That\u2019s what went on then but it\u2019s different now. I like how it shows the effect piety and living up to impossible standards of holiness has on some people. The movie seems to be saying that a nun\u2019s life is in direct contrast with human nature. I found Novitiate<\/strong> to be absorbing. It\u2019s interesting to see what life is like inside a convent. I don\u2019t know how realistic it is, but I\u2019ll say it is based solely on the absence of Whoopi Goldberg.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Novitiate (2017)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sony Pictures Classics\/Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 123 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (language, some sexuality, nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Margaret Betts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Margaret Betts\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Christopher Stark\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Kat Westergaard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 10, 2017 (Philadelphia, PA)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Margaret Qualley, Julianne Nicholson, Dianna Agron, Morgan Saylor, Maddie Hasson, Liana Liberato, Ashley Bell, Melissa Leo, Rebecca Dayan, Eline Powell, Chelsea […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dramas"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Novitiate-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3751"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5153,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3751\/revisions\/5153"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}