Stations of the Cross

Maria is fourteen. Her family belongs to a traditional branch of the Catholic Church; the mass is in Latin, the rules are hard and modern life counts as sin. Maria attends her confirmation class. The priest tells the young that they must be soldiers who fight, that every day is a test. Maria takes it literally. She does not go to music at school, makes no friends and refuses food. Her small brother does not speak, and Maria makes a decision: if she offers herself, he will speak. She stops eating altogether. Dietrich Brüggemann directs; he wrote the screenplay with his sister Anna Brüggemann. Lea van Acken plays Maria; Franziska Weisz is in the cast. It is a German production. The film is in fourteen sections corresponding to the stations of the cross. Each section was shot in a single fixed take; the camera does not move in any of the fourteen but two. It won the Silver Bear for best screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival. Its target is a particular community; the film does not name it but refers openly to a traditionalist Catholic movement. The mother is its hardest passage; the pressure comes directly from inside the family. The narrative comments nowhere; the camera stands still and the viewer draws the conclusion. Its limit is form; the fixed takes are demanding and the narrative deliberately cold. Who it is for: viewers who like formal experiment and drama built on faith. Who it is not for: it is slow, the subject heavy, and the ending hard to bear.