Brother Sun, Sister Moon (1973)

Pretty Good

Absolutely the worst movie.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

My Anglican cum Lutheran grandfather was a projectionist when this movie came out and said he hated the movie, complained that St. Francis was a crazy hippie. I finally had a chance to see it last night, and while my grandfather wasn't exactly wrong, I don't think he knew much about Francis of Assisi, the 12th century Italian visionary. Zeffirelli's depiction of the life of St. Francis is touching and beautiful. The art direction and cinematography are stunning -- the colours of nature and of the Bishop's court are rich and vivid, unlike the clothing of the Poor Brothers of San Damiano and the poor they served. Donovan's soundtrack works perfectly, and Alec Guiness as Pope Innocent III is wonderful. Maybe Francis was a bit of a crazy hippie, but he was just what the Church needed. Inspiring movie!

Where do I begin? This film plays like a clumsy morality play, not a first-run film. The acting and direction is so ham-fisted, he even has Donovan singing what should be obvious about the story's message from watching the movie. It takes little account of church politics, only tipping the director's hand to this reality in the final scene that seems to so irritate lovers of this film. The fact is, Pope Innocent III would have to have been an idiot to miss the opportunity to absorb St. Francis' movement. Making a martyr of him would only have made things worse for the Church. (In real life the Pope was reluctant to sanction the Order but relented when he had a dream of St. Francis supporting the church. Which only proves my point.) Zefirelli plays into the Myth of the Righteous Poor, the 'dignity' of poverty and labour. In that sense the Franciscan Order truly is a godsend to the church hierarchy. They can sanction it as a kind of penitence for their own opulent lifestyle as a means of pointing to the actual message of Christ. And it keeps people enslaved to the existing economic-religious order, asking nor expecting nothing and certainly no threat to Catholic authority.Brother Sun, Sister Moon thus becomes little more than a propaganda piece for Christian theology and misses the most interesting aspects of St. Francis' life and message. For instance there is little acknowledgement of his attachment to Nature and animals. I would have preferred an honest story that told of the obstacles, struggles, pain and suffering the Franciscan Order would have to have undergone, and how they coped as a community. There are inevitable questions and difficulties arising from such a break with society, worthy a goal as it may be. How are these met? Brother Sun and Sister Moon never goes deeper than surface level. Instead we get dogma. The film is as some reviewers have noted, a product of its time, when many intentional communities ('communes') were breaking away from mainstream Western society to live a more Nature-centred, less materialistic way of life. But even this message is subsumed in the movie to the doctrinaire aspects of Christian theology. The only reason I give this 3 out of 10 is because the production values are first-rate, the costumes incredible, the locations magnificent. Thoroughly professional but ultimately, a misfire. Read a biography of St. Francis instead.

A narcissistic portrayal of St. Francis' enlightenment and fully equipped with a melancholiac rural beauty of the nature, the ramifications are generally benign, albeit for recreation only.Structurally this is a prequel of Rossellini's THE FLOWER OF ST. FRANCIS (Francesco, giullare di Dio 1950), divided rightly by the before/after of Francis' pilgrimage towards Rome, at once with radically opposed visual punches, a perfect set for a double-feature, color Vs. black and white, lavish versus austere.The nearly non-Italian cast (excludes Valentina Cortese) is dubbed with Italian in the version I watched yesterday, it inevitably thwarted the fluency of the film, which, as a matter of fact, could be mostly paid no heed to as the performances are ludicrously overblown, particularly Graham Faulkner's Francis, Zeffirelli's personal preference triumphs in this film in every respect, the unrealistic beauty of St. Francis and his apostles is to meet the eyes only! Alec Guiness did an unanticipated role as the Pope Innocent III in the rear part of the film, where the setting in Rome evokes the similar tableaux in the ever-famous Chinese Monkey King story when he encounter the emperor of all-gods in his palace (the west-east correlation is unbelievably tangible!).So, personally I cannot endure the over-dramatic enactment of this biographic film, however the narrative clings closely to the story itself, while the cinematography of the bucolic Assisi is captivating enough to engross me attentively, yet my deepest sympathy is that the epiphany which I expected had never arrived.

Good acting, some nice cinematography, all in all good considering it an old film but I must say it was way too spoonfeeding for my tastes and a lot of the life of St Francis was left out. This is the same director that shot Jesus of Nazareth, the Monthy Python boys could easily have spoofed this as they did with that due to this very spoonfeeding I am on about. I think I much preferred the movie "Francesco" with Mickey Rourke, although not even that made me feel as engulfed as the book I read about the man and saint, definitely one of my favorites. St Francis was a downright rebel, this is not documented well enough here and when they dare to I must say there are some cheesy and unconvincing moments. Another thing to point out and i am glad they don't do it anymore is when you get them Italian characters being played out in the cleanest English. Now don't get me wrong the man and his story are so great that even this version is worth a watch. There is a lovely part about the stones. Oh and the music to this film is truly special and adequately most poetic.