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Black Narcissus


BLACK NARCISSUS
(1947, Powell & Pressburger)
A film from the Criterion Collection whose number includes the #9 (#93)



"I remember things before I joined our Order. Things I wanted to forget. I never thought of them until now. I’ve been 21 years in the Order and now they come back to me. I think you can see too far."

Set sometime after World War I, Black Narcissus follows a group of Anglican nuns sent to set up a school and a hospital in the Himalayas on behalf of an Indian General. Led by young and ambitious Sister Clodagh (Deborah Kerr), the group is expected to take over an abandoned "palace" set on a high cliff where one of the former rulers kept his harem.

But their stay there is not without hardship, as evidenced by the above quote from Sister Philippa (Flora Robson). All the other sisters seem to be suffering in some way from their stay there. Most notably, Clodagh spends nights remembering a failed relationship from before she joined the order, and Sister Ruth (Kathleen Byron) seems to be infatuated with Mr. Dean (David Farrar), the intermediary agent between the nuns and the Indian General, while also losing her grip on reality.

Through all the film, directors and co-writers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger make a point of emphasizing the impact and effect of the altitude. From the difficulties to reach the palace to its inherent isolation. Most of the more iconic shots of the film feature the nuns standing on cliffs, looking into the vast horizon, perhaps farther than they're willing to look. But their current situation has somehow forced them to look beyond their current life and work, and face things and desires they all had tried to keep repressed, hidden, and under wraps.

As the sisters slowly realize, the toll is physical, emotional, and psychological. Like Philippa, they all had things to forget; things that now come back to them. They can see too far into the past, and the past is coming back to haunt them. All of the cast excellently portrays that anxiety and uneasiness, but special praise goes to Kerr and Byron, who have the meatier roles. Kerr successfully conveys how Clodagh uses her stoicism to hide her own weaknesses, while Byron is great showing Ruth's desperation, obsession, and mental decay.

After Philippa's confession, Clodagh's advice to her was to "work hard" until she's too tired to think of anything else. I know it's a weird parallelism, but it reminded me of The Simpsons, and Marge's kinda awful advice to Lisa to take all her bad feelings and "push them down... until you're almost walking on them". It's a call for repression, instead of actually dealing with the issues at hand, which is probably what they've all been doing all their lives. But as we can see in the film, as much as you try to hide your true nature, when the chance comes to see far enough, things will undoubtedly come back to you.

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