The Nuns Lose Again

There's a play called Agnes of God, which I have never read, but I was thinking about reading it. Why bother, when I can watch it on tv?

The reason I might have read it is that it is a play with three characters; I have found, in my experience, that fewer actors in a play=fewer simultaneous headaches during rehearsal. That is some math I can get behind, right there.

Now, I do not know what the performing arts community, as a whole, seems to have against nuns. On rare occasions, I will see nun in a movie who is NOT some weird kind of sadist, satanist, or secret sex fiend. Agnes of God is not that nun.
So Agnes is, I think, slightly mentally retarded. This may or may not be as a result of her mother burning her hoo-ha with cigarettes; the movie is very unclear as to why Agnes is the way she is (or even what is meant by "the way she is"). Maybe it's spelled out in the play. At any rate, Agnes has a twisted view of God, which may or may not be a result of her childhood traumas. It's all very weird and one of the (many) reasons I was dissatisfied with this film is that it doesn't answer any questions: I LIKE ANSWERS.

So Agnes gets pregnant, but she hides her pregnancy beneath her giant nun clothes, and when she actually does have the baby, she kills it. Thankfully, there is no footage of that happening; the film starts with the immediate aftermath, and I for one am fine with that.

Jane Fonda plays a psychiatrist whose one and only job is to declare Agnes insane so that the Church can avoid a scandal and Agnes won't have to go to jail. (She can just stay at the convent and sing to birds, I guess). Only, Jane Fonda doesn't just roll over for the Church, because she has a grudge against them on account of her mother loved her sister (who became a nun) best and she blames Catholicism. Also, she smokes a lot.

Jane Fonda hypnotizes Agnes and finds out that Agnes thinks she had sex with God and got pregnant, which: even Mary didn't do that, so I am wondering if Agnes ever listens in church.

It's all very mysterious and I guess Jane Fonda is supposed to be questioning her faith or questioning why she doesn't have faith, and people spend a bunch of time telling her that the only reason she is doing all this investigating is that she hates the baby Jesus. Which she denies, of course. Except that all the religious people she talks to LIE to her, so why would she want to find her way back to God?

In the end, it turns out Agnes did kill the baby, because it was too beautiful to live (or something). And she is declared insane and thus acquitted of all charges, and she goes back to singing to the birds at the convent.

I personally think she was sane enough to know she was killing that baby, so she should have gone to jail, nun or not. I do not have sympathy for people who kill babies; I don't care whether they wear nuns' habits or leather miniskirts.

Also, Jane Fonda keeps on being an atheist. And smoking.

I did not care for this film at all. It was all full of twists and turns, and you'd think that one of those twists or turns would lead to a DEFINITIVE ANSWER, but ... no. And you'd think that there would be at least one person in the cast who actually enjoyed her relationship with God (who was not crazy), but ... no.

Oh, and apparently it's based on a true story.

I am setting myself a goal: Watch at least ONE post-1950 nun movie--not featuring Julie Andrews or someone running from the mob--in which the nuns are GOOD.

That may take a while.