LOURDES:
Jessica Hausner
The historical bases for the film:
The Pilgrimages
Following the reports that Our Lady of Lourdes had appeared to Bernadette Soubirous on a total of eighteen occasions, Lourdes has developed into a major place of Christian pilgrimage and of alleged miraculous healings. The 150th Jubilee of the first apparition took place on 11 February 2008 with an outdoor mass attended by approximately 45,000 pilgrims.
It is the joint seat of the diocese of Tarbes-et-Lourdes and is the largest pilgrimage site in France.
As much as some might want to think the activity depicted in the film is an event of the past, it is alive and well and flourishing in the midst of Lourdes, the site where wishes come to the fore and hope springs eternal.
The film
A cross between Thomas Mann's Book, The Magic Mountain and Bill Maher's film 'Religulous' brings the technical expertise of this noted film director into focus. It is slow moving, few words, bizarre behavior with great characters extremely well acted but in the end.......we learn what some of us already knew, there is no God and dessert is more important than the contemplation of the strange and mysterious ways God is reputed to act.
The scenery makes a trip to Lourdes inevitable given the means, the ways of the people seem understandable in context and weird, almost crazy in the light of logical assessment. It is a beautiful film, a little too long, but then aren't all traditional religious events, too long.
When you need to reconnect to the past, to simple extraordinary beauty, to a plot that brings us together to remember where we come from and why we are who we are, I recommend Jessica Hausner's Lourdes
Linda Z
Wbai Women's Collective
