The Monastery: Mr Vig and the nun is a Danish documentary (by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, 2006) about a man who wants to donate his "castle" to russian orthodox nuns. Mr Vig is a man in his eighties, but all the same he is shuffling around the castle, doing repair work for the nuns. When the nuns finally appear, there is quite a few disputes between Vig and sister Ambrosija, who has her own ideas as to the quality of the building and what has yet to be done. These dispute tend to end with Vig's not very self-conscious ideas about the reasons to his & Ambrosija's disagreements: "Well, women are a mystery to me." "I don't like people. I liked my father, but nobody else."
This is basically a film about eccentric and strong-willed people. Some scenes are stranger than words can tell. In one scene, Sister Ambrosija is seen hunched down in prayer, chanting solemnly. Then her cell phone suddenly rings, and the ringtone is "Have a merry Christmas". She barks: "YES??" Cut!
By having investigated religion as an ordinary, down-to-earth practice, films like this one, and Gröning's die grosse Stille, have changed my perception about what religious lives may look like (or should I say: have made me aware of some of my own preconceptions). Vig himself has interestingly little to say about religion. We hear him talk about other things. The same goes for Sister Ambrosija, who is portrayed as a pragmatic manager type with endless engineering skills - certainly something that goes against the grain of my ideas about "russian orthodox nun".
The film seems to have gained some attention, as it is reviewed in places such as the New York Times, in which the reviewer laments the lack of cultural history about the role of the Orthodox church in Denmark - I disagree, if that were the project, it would become an altogether different film.
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