The Monastery: Mr Vig & the Nun.

"Despite some pretty seasonal photography and evocative scenes of the nuns' rigorous daily rituals, which involve many hours of prayer, The Monastery: Mr Vig & the Nun is a flighty, disorganized film with a blurry timeline and a wandering attention span," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "The movie only snaps into focus when Mr Vig, who bought [Hesbjerg Castle] 50 years earlier, intending eventually to turn it into a monastery, reminisces about his life."

"When the renovations of his castle begin and a group of nuns arrive to oversee the conversion of the building, Sister Amvrosya's loving but commanding presence provides a clashing force for Mr Vig's set-in-stone attitudes and general naiveties, their bantering recalling Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart's chemistry in John Huston's The African Queen," writes Rob Humanick at Slant.

Updated through 8/31.

"Unlike far too many human-interest docs today, director Pernille Rose Grønkjær's fantastic little character portrait doesn't rest on the strength of its personality," writes Aaron Hillis in the Voice.

Updates, 8/30: "This isn't a movie about God or spirituality or monastic life, except in passing," notes Salon' Andrew O'Hehir. "Instead, The Monastery is an oddly graceful combination of fairy tale and romantic comedy, set in a forgotten corner of the world. If you took Beauty and the Beast and The Honeymooners, blended them and planted the result in overgrown Danish swampland, I guess this is what you'd get."

"Grønkjaer is also the sole photographer for The Monastery," notes Michelle Orange at the Reeler, "recalling in technique (and a few other things, including the masterful use of natural light and a steady, hypnotic eye for the quotidian) the one-man crew of the other monastery documentary from earlier this year, Into Great Silence. Though she can be heard off screen occasionally, prodding the naturally withdrawn but hardly reticent Vig with questions, and steps into the frame once or twice when the old man requests her help, Grønkjaer's camera is a patient, sometimes wry, sometimes tense and tactful observer, recording the touching decline and reinvigoration of the castle, Vig and his mysterious guests with an equalizing curiosity."

Update, 8/31: "The Monastery is one of the few documentaries that might've gotten closer to the reality of its time, place, and people had it been refashioned as a feature film," proposes Noel Murray at the AV Club, adding that it's "like the opposite of Into Great Silence."

Posted by dwhudson at August 29, 2007 8:34 AM