ScreenFish

where faith and film are intertwined

Kent Jones

Diane – Broken Saintliness

?When you serve me?, I feel sanctified.?

In Diane, from writer/director Kent Jones, we watch the title character (Mary Kay Place) spend her days selflessly trying to help others. Diane is constantly in motion, driving between visits to her dying cousin Donna (Deidre O?Connell), trying to help her drug addicted son Brian (Jake Lacy), and working at her church to serve dinner to the homeless.

It may seem that this is a saint, quietly doing what she can for others, but as the film progresses, we discover a brokenness within her. The first inkling may be that we almost never see her smile. But soon we see cracks begin to appear in her image. And we learn about a past sin?one that haunts her, that she has never quite forgiven herself for.

The mood for the film is set by the winter landscape. Trees are bare. There are always patches of snow on the ground. Characters are encompassed with layers of clothing. Although this is actually more the result of the filming schedule than design, the grayness and coldness fit perfectly with this story and impact the way viewers may experience it.

This is a film that is permeated with spirituality, usually unspoken, but at times it is openly religious. It is the more muted spiritual tones that are more meaningful and touching. When the film ventures into overtly religious scenes, the religion portrayed is a bit extreme and off-putting. But even those scenes feed Diane?s underlying spiritual journey.

One of the key spiritual issues Diane must deal with is forgiveness. We learn about half way through the story of an event that touched her life, her son?s life, and her cousin?s life. Even though Donna has told Diane she has forgiven her for what she did, Donna still brings it up from time to time. It is not so much that Donna has not forgiven Diane as much as Diane has failed to forgive herself. She carries her guilt and shame with her each day. It shapes her self-image. It holds her in a place that is as cold and gray as the world around her.

So it is something of a shock to her when one of the clients she serves in her church?s basement says that he feels ?sanctified? when Diane serves him. It is such a contrast to the way Diane feels within her own soul.

Often when we think of saints, we picture those with extreme virtue?Mother Teresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, Jr. But even these great souls often had places within themselves of brokenness, shame, or doubt. In reality, the saints I have gotten to know through the years are much more like Diane. They give themselves to others, but they also have their own torments and spiritual struggles. They are people who do their little bits to sanctify the world even when traveling through the winter landscapes of life.

Photos courtesy of IFC Films

Sanctification and Forgiveness – Conversation with Diane Filmmakers

I recently had the chance to take part in a small group conversation with Diane writer/director Kent Jones and the film?s lead, Mary Kay Place. This represents some of the topic we discussed.

I noted that one of my favorite lines in the film was when the character Tom, one of the people Diane served at a church feeding of the homeless, says to her, ?When you serve me, Diane, I feel sanctified.?

Kent Jones: We talked a lot about that word. It was very important to me that that word was used because I felt like I wanted to find language from someone else to her that would cut through the miasma.

Mary Kay Place: I love that word anyway. It used to be used a lot years ago, but you rarely ever hear it. Maybe in your community you hear it, but I don?t hear it in the general culture. And I said, ?Oh, that?s the best word to use.? It jumps out because we?re not used to hearing it, where in the 30s and 40s people said ?sanctify? as part of the common language. It was more common I think.

Kent Jones: It?s also very moving because the actor Charles [Weldon] actually passed away in December. That was the last scene that was shot. He was a great actor. He ran the Negro Ensemble Company for the last few years of his life. And he?d been through it with his own son who passed away from a heroin overdose, I think. He was really very connected to the script, and he was very nervous on the last night that we took our time and we got it ready to play. That was a great experience.

Mary Kay Place: Yeah. He was a very soulful man.

Kent Jones: Yes.

Mary Kay Place: And had been through a lot, and I think had been addicted himself.

Kent Jones: Yes, he had.

Mary Kay Place: So he was at a point in his life. I don?t know if he knew that he had cancer at this point.

Kent Jones: I don?t think he did.

Mary Kay Place: But he was open and vulnerable as a human being. I get emotional just thinking about him. It was such a beautiful experience to get to meet him and work with him.

I mentioned that religion permeates the movie, but then it brings in some more extreme religion with charismatic Christianity.

Kent Jones: My mom was a lay eucharistic minister in the Episcopal church. We shot it in an Episcopal church. That kind of relationship to the church was very important to the film, between the character Diane and her church. My friend who went through addiction?the character of Brian was based on the experience that he had?did not become born again, but certainly the addiction carried on from drugs to other things. I will say that in the script, as I wrote it and as we were planning on doing it when we shot that scene, Diane?s character was going to be disdainful of what she was seeing?the slain in the spirit stuff. Then a lot of the people in the scene were charismatics. Mary Kay and I took a moment and she said to me, ?I have to say I?m very moved by these people.? And I said, ?So am I, so we?re changing the emotional dynamic of the scene.?

Mary Kay Place: I didn?t want her to go into this church and be disdainful of people. She was a guest and they were worshiping God in the way they wanted to. I wanted her to have enough decency to let everybody do what they need to do in worshiping God, and not to come in and be judgmental.

Kent Jones: They were very moving. And the woman in the front row, she?s a minister. She said the music we were playing for people to get in the right frame of mind, she said this is not what we would be listening to.. And you know, you can tell the difference when someone is faking it. But in terms of the question of the whole film where spirituality fits in the film?At the end of the movie she?s grasping for something. ?What did I forget? What did I forget?? I think that?s kind of where the spiritual hub of the movie sits, in the sense that you?re always looking for what is the final answer, how do I put it all together, but then it?s always ?there?.

The question was raised over whether Diane?s cousin actually forgave her for what she had done years before.

Kent Jones: It?s one of those things where someone says?

Mary Kay Place: ?I forgave you, but I didn?t forget.? But you know what? In my imagination the minute I left the room and she felt bad about saying that. I think she did forgive me before she died. That?s just me, but I do think she did, because we were so close, and we constantly fought anyway. We were always picking at each other. But she says in other scenes, ?You?re not alone.? We told each other the truth about what we thought, which makes people really close, if you?re able to really say, ?You?re wrong about this.? ?Well, I hear you saying that, but I don?t think so and so.? I think those are the closest relationships people can have when they can each tell their own truth. And I believe that we were at peace with each other when she died. Even though I felt guilt about that. She died and I had a big argument. We had a deep relationship in spite of these little spats that I think transcended petty ?Yes, you did. No, you didn?t? She was dying and I was upset about my son. We were both just an emotional place where we were projecting and lashing out. But we were used to that and forgave each other each and every time.

Hitchcock/Truffaut

French New Wave director Fran?ois Truffaut wrote the book on Alfred Hitchcock?literally. In 1962 he did a series of interviews (through a translator) with Hitchcock over six days with twenty seven hours of tapes discussing each of Hitchcock?s films. He later put gleanings from those interviews into one of the definitive books on filmmaking. In Hitchcock/Truffaut,?filmmaker and critic Kent Jones weave together bits of the tapes, clips from many of the films, and comments by current filmmakers, including Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Richard Fincher, Peter Bogdanovich, and others, all of whom view that book as a key part of their own careers.

Truffaut at that time had only made three films; Hitchcock was finishing work on his forty-eighth feature, The Birds. So in a sense this represents a young filmmaker learning from a master late in his career (Hitchcock only made three more films after this.) But Truffaut had for many years written in Cahiers du cin?ma, where he and others of the French New Wave evolved the auteur theory, championing such filmmakers as Hitchcock, John Ford, Akira Kurosawa, Howard Hawke, and several others. The idea behind auteur theory is that a film?s director is the key artistic vision (the true author) of a film. And for Truffaut, Hitchcock was one of the great artists of 20th Century cinema.

Many people may not think of Alfred Hitchcock as a great artist. Sure, he made lots of wonderful films, but weren?t they just thrillers that pulled in big audiences? He made so many films, should he be considered in such high regard? (Actually, in America at that time Hitchcock was considered just an entertainment filmmaker, not of critical concern. A main reason Truffaut wanted to do the book was to show otherwise.) Consider some of the great films Hitchcock directed: Psycho, Vertigo (named by Sight & Sound as the Greatest Film of All Time in 2012), North by Northwest, Rear Window, The Man Who Knew Too Much (twice), The 39 Steps, and those are just a few of the top films. Hitchcock had a very visual sense of storytelling and knew exactly what he wanted a scene to look like.

Truffaut.Hitchcock_Photo.by.Philippe.Halsman.Courtesyof.CohenMediaGroup.3

In the interviews that we get to hear in the film, Truffaut and Hitchcock discuss all the aspects of his style. Truffaut sets out going through each of the films to learn what Hitchcock was doing in each and sometimes even breaking things down scene by scene, and once even cut by cut within a scene. There are also some moments on the tape that raise some interesting questions. I?m especially fond of when Truffaut asks Hitchcock if he would consider himself a Catholic director. Hitchcock?s response was a firm, ?Turn off the recorder.? The possibilities of the discussion between these two filmmaking icons on that subject (that was lost to the rest of the world) make my mouth water. Sometimes the things that we miss are perhaps the most important.

Hitchcock films often focused on the dark fears that fill the world. But that darkness did not arise from the supernatural world, but from the flaws and perhaps even fallen character of humankind. These are films about the evil that people do and the consequences of those acts on others. Even though he didn?t want to talk (at least on the record) about being a Catholic filmmaker, there is a focus on sin and the fight against the powers of sin that fills his work.

Certainly this is a film that film nerds (that includes me) will love, but what of others? This is a film that in some ways can open the eyes of viewers to new ways of seeing and understanding films. It points out the ways film serves as an art form. For those who dismiss Hitchcock as mere entertainment, this film will provide new perspective and may well encourage you to watch or revisit some of his top films.

Photos courtesy Cohen Media Group