A film easy to admire but not easy to like : Julia is an elusive personality, ,and it's impossible to feel empathy for her ,which the excellent actress ,Maria Mamona, does nothing to rectify ; her childhood was not a happy one,nobody loved me she said ,but she had nonetheless the opportunity to study in La Sorbonne where she met christian philosopher Jacques Maritain (died 1973). A very educated woman ,she weighed up the pros and cons and refused Pascal's wager ;she became a criminal in the Staline years and tortured the prisoners with cruelty and sadicism :only a very small portion is given over to torture scenes ,anyway suggestion is always stronger; the best scene is perhaps the bedridden dying victim ,refusing to denounce his hangman , and oddly using the third person .In his "pensées" ,Pascal wrote that the martyrs were a positive proof of the existence of God.
The gist of the movie is the visit to the Institute for the blind , where the forty-nine -old woman ,where she wants to see the Primate of Poland to ask him his forgiveness ; she's afraid of death,of damnation , and she feels guilt : although the nun tells her they have no enemy , although she helps her with her young blind pupils ,she is blinder than them ; the Primate keeps her waiting ,and "she's not used to it" ; according to the film ,she has to spend a night on the place where flashbacks of her unthinkable past comes back to haunt her ; the interview with the Primate is the actress ' highlight : her harrowed face , in close shot,reflects agonies of remorse .
Faith is not a matter of culture ;Kant wrote :"I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith."Only the gospel according to Saint Matthews gives eyesight to the blind, in this metaphoric institute.
