Sister Mary Explains It All

Christopher Durang's daring play SISTER MARY IGNATIUS EXPLAINS IT ALL TO YOU has finally been made into a film by Showtime. And, while watching, I asked myself a seemingly appropriate question: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

The movie takes place at Sister Mary Ignatius' 25th annual Christmas Eve Mass. While Sister Mary gives her usual sermons, four friends who were in Sister Mary's Sunday school class reunite to (if you'll pardon the pun) raise Hell at the Mass, by restaging their Nativity play as a farce of Sister Mary's lectures.

This part of the movie is very funny. The lighthearted pokes at Catholicism will have many rolling with laughter, and the Nativity play had me in stitches.

Unfortunately, the movie takes a dark, disparaging turn that entirely ruins the movie. While the same shocking turn was played up for laughs in Durang's play, here, it is played up for full shock value. By the end of the movie, you'll have forgotten nearly all that is good about it and only focus on the last 20 disturbing minutes.

In short, SISTER MARY is, for the most part, a good movie. However, do NOT watch it in its entirety, or the experience will be ruined for you.

For a Christian , ignoring the confession , it has high potential to be pure blasphemy. For a not Christian, I suppose, it can be bizarre and absurd. I saw in the last scenes not as a film/play about Christianity and its message, not as a film about bigotism but as a story about teaching as refuge against life. Diane Keaton gives a splendid portrait of profound loneliness, need of power in absolute forms, about isolation in herself of a sister- obvious, Mary ignatius is a sister, not a nun and a precise indictment against sins, cruel mistakes of Romano - Catholic Church. It is not a black comedy, but good occasion to reflection. About soulless faith , about refuges and real meaning of education. A not comfortable film about forms of moral blindness .

I am a former Catholic, so parts of this movie that I found funny were mysterious to the person I watched it with (who knew very little about the Catholic church). For example, most of the parroted, rote-style question-and-answer bits ("Who made you?" "God made me.") were from the Baltimore Catechism, which was used extensively in Catholic schools during the "golden age" of Catholic education in the 1940s and 1950s. But this movie was set in 1984, if my math is still good, and I don't know of any parish schools affiliated with the Church of Rome who could have gotten away with using it by then.

Ditto with some of the doctrinal "humor." To people who aren't Catholics, it just isn't funny. It's confusing and will probably do more to *alienate* Catholics from the faithful of other beliefs, which definitely isn't needed.

Finally, the ending was upsetting and needlessly tragic. It was not worth the emotional investment in the characters.

Oh, and a note to the person below who said a nun would not take a male name under any circumstances (meaning Ignatius) -- that simply isn't true. I have known many women religious who took male names. In many orders, the common practice up until Vatican II was to use the first name of Mary for every sister, and then add a second name -- a male saint's name, such as Patrick, Charles, Aloysius, or -- yes -- Ignatius -- to make Sister Mary Patrick, Sister Mary Charles, etc. In fact, I have a good friend who was a sister in the 1970s whose name in religion was Sister Mary Matthew.

What *is* incorrect, in this context, is to call such a person a nun. A nun is a member of a cloistered religious order. Such religious are bound by "solemn" vows and lead lives of contemplative prayer, away from the outside world. Female religious who serve their order in schools, hospitals, or other visible venues are not nuns. They are sisters, and they are bound by "simple" vows.

While I do not wish to flaunt my familiarity with the Catholic church, I do want to point out that because of it, I was able to recognize that this movie simply does not work as a "humorous" film when shown to a non-Catholic audience. There are too many "inside" jokes.

Finally Chris Durang's controversial 1981 one-act play SISTER MARY IGNATIUS EXPLAINS IT ALL FOR YOU has been brought to the screen - the small screen - by the boundary-pushing SHOWTIME, appropriately enough. Durang himself penned the screenplay and effectively opens up what is inherently part lecture, part stand-up, and part vaudeville. The major problem faced is how to deal with the "audience" that the theatre provided in the form of ticket buyers each evening.

Durang re-sets the action of his "Nun's Story" at Christmas, the eve of Sister Mary's 25th Annual lecture, and works in a variety of wayward Catholic parishoners attending Sister's obligatory holiday talk-fest. Among them are a pair of teens who have been having pre-marital sex, a nearly deaf devotee of Sister's who just likes to see people smile, a bitter divorcee (producer Victoria Tennent), as well as a dysfunctional couple (Martin Mull is the hubby, and his expressions during Sister's rants are priceless) who'd rather be shopping. Primary among Sister's guests are four students from her 1959 class, who have decided to re-enact their Nativity pageant in order to embarrass the strict nun. This quartet consists of a variety of folk Sister now classifies as "going to burn in hell" and are led by the particularly bitter Angela DiMarco (a stunning turn by Laura San Giacomo), whose name has been changed from the play from Diane Symonds, one of the few text changes made. Once they arrive, Sister's best laid plans go awry and the lecture reels wildly out of control.

Marshall Brickman's precise direction (including some nifty flashbacks to sepia-toned 1959) keep Durang's humor intact, but it is the "star turn" of Diane Keaton as Sister Mary who single-handedly destroys the tone of Durang's greatest work. The role is a demanding one, no doubt, but Keaton's approach is erratic, random, and leans toward humor where pathos is required. The delicate balance of SISTER MARY relies upon how "real" Sister seems to us. Keaton treats the character as a stand-up comedian, we never see a glimpse of her soul. Sister Mary really is a frightened and insecure woman whose reality and way of life is slipping quickly away. Half grandmother, half dictator, the habit's original owner Elizabeth Franz was one of the few to hit the exact right notes and she's sorely missed here. While I'm glad to see the piece finally lensed, I'll have to be happy with my memories of the stage production for the "real" Sister Mary Ignatius.

Christopher Durang must have been taught by a memorably awful nun, because he just can't let go of the concept. The play, "Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All For You," was presented -- at least in Hollywood -- in precisely the same tone as Diane Keaton's lecture scenes here. Sister Mary was an exaggeration, a lampoon, a bitter satire of a serenely confident, doctrinaire and highly judgmental nun -- and as played by Lynn Redgrave, she was hilarious. But the movie insists that we take this exaggeration absolutely seriously -- while, as mentioned, maintaining the same tone in the "explains it all" scenes. The two approaches clash headlong and in the last twenty minutes, the movie goes off the track, plunges into the gorge, and explodes. There are no survivors. It could have worked, if the tone of the scenes with the four former students, and their encounter with Sister Mary, been pitched the same as the Sister Mary scenes. Or if the Sister Mary scenes been presented more realistically. This way simply doesn't work at all.