FILM SCREENINGS

Essene

1972. USA. Directed by Frederick Wiseman. In Wiseman’s often hilarious look at a Benedictine monastery, monks who seek spiritual uplift are brought down by the trials of communal living, their faith tested by the hell of being cooped up with insufferable blow-hards and martinets. The filmmaker Errol Morris observes in MoMA’s new publication Frederick Wiseman that “when Wiseman turns to evangelical subjects, as in Aspen (1991) and Essene as well as Sinai Field Mission (1978), we characteristically feel the absence of God rather than his presence…. A monk pursues a fly unendingly with a fly swatter. This is the height of boredom as religious ecstasy.” 86 min.