DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (1951)

 

DEFINING SELF THROUGH ELUSIVE POSITION:

DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (1951)

by Alain Leroy II

‘Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself.’

 - Jean Paul-Sartre

Robert Bresson’s 1951 film, Diary Of A Country Priest, was released the same year Jean Paul-Sarte ended his friendship with Albert Camus over conflicting party views on the Algerian war. Bresson, an adamant Sartre reader, took Georges Bernanos novel of the same title and adapted it for a post-war France, a country dealing with the viche reprimands of the Nazi reign which left the country full of discord, guilt, friction and therefore liable to create brilliant art. The film is staunch in construct and does not outright seem absurd but could be viewed as an existential thought experiment to the eminent French writers at the time.

If the young priest were to embody Sartre’s first law of existentialism, which is, “to make every man aware of what he is and to make the full responsibility of his existence rest on him,” it would force him divert himself from something he is not, a functioning addict. This is the sort of conflict Sarte would want a priest to contend with. Bresson questions what would happen if a young man, conflicted by faith and his surroundings is not able to effectively consummate the responsibility of his existence? 

 

Bresson would have considered Kierkegaard’s knight of infinite resignation, Heidegger’s “we are thrown into this world,” as our Country Parson has no past, no parentage and no history. Neither are we made privy as to how the young, nameless Priest acquires his new position as the priest of Ambricourt county, a demented small town, we just know our priest is meek, weak and vulnerable.

We’ll call our wanabe-protagonist YEP (Young Emotional Priest). In some strange prototype for David Bowie’s 1976 milk, red pepper, and cocaine diet, YEP lives on a diet of sugared wine and sweetbread, dipped in wine. Indeed, he loves his wine, soaked or straight. Later in the film he is ridiculed by one of the many powerful authoritative figures he is in conflict with when the Arch Priest reprehends YEP for drinking wine of such deplorable quality, (as he consumes some equivalent to wine moonshine) to which, faltering, YEP responds, “It’s all I have.”

An immaculate perpetual tumble of our faithless yet devoted Young, Emotional Priest desecrated by contemporary thought and suffering from the impossibility of being himself in a town of loathing, blaspheming trolls and spiteful, vindictive haters. YEP lives the life of an ascetic and his stomach ailment finishes him off, he delivers his final sermon “Who cares? All is good!” 

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 RATHER,

"What does it matter? All is grace."

My hagiographic cinematic tour of holy men attempting to exist in a corrupt world nearly ended here. The genre follows loosley a structure in which the "temptation of the innocent and chaste saintly monk” type, who will, "by the forces of evil becomes a "failed Christ".

Bresson’s film is a remarkable examination into the realms of faith, pride and suicide.

It follows an alcoholic dependent, anorexic priest, who has a revulsion toward prayer. Played magnificently by the young actor, Claude Laydu, the priest is somewhat a cross between the young saintly figures of Kolya in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Count Myshkin in The Idiot.
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BOTTOM LINE:

A chemically dependent minister of a priesthood with an inability to petition the lord, an introversion so immobilizing that it leads to him becoming outcast and ridiculed and on top of it all, suffering from stomach cancer and dying? A most triumphant priesthood reflection film.