Continuing her obsession with strong, feminist characters, writer-director Margarethe von Trotta's Vision is a fairly sterile, unremarkable film about a remarkable woman, the 12th Century Benedictine nun Hildegard von Bingen.
The film portrays Hildergard as a complex character who frequently defied the church hierarchy, claimed to have numerous visions from God, and embraced herbal medicine, music, morality plays, science and literature.
But the episodic narrative lacks momentum, offering only brief moments of drama and emotion, despite stellar performances by Barbara Sukowa as Hildegard and Hannah Herzsprung as her young protégé Richardis.
Although several Popes later referred to her as a saint, she could be wily and manipulative, feigning near-death at least twice to achieve her objectives, and selfish and domineering in her over-protective relationship with Richardis.
The prologue shows her as a young girl being handed to the Benedictine order’s
Disibodenberg cloister by her mother as a 'gift to God." Thirty years later, she is elected by her fellow nuns as their 'magistra," or leader, after the moving death of her mentor, despite initially protesting that 'I am unworthy."
When she declares that she receives messages from God, she’s warned she could be branded as a heretic, and only after an appeal to an influential cleric who consulted the Pope was she allowed to publish these revelations.
The dramatic stakes are finally raised after a young nun breaks her vows of chastity, falls pregnant, and is told to leave the order, with devastating consequences. This prompts Hildegard to establish her own cloister so her nuns can live away from male contact, enraging one monk who hisses, 'The Devil take you," and causing a split in the ranks of her charges.
When Richardis is offered a post to another town far away, that sparks heated confrontations between Hildegard, the young nun and her mother, the film’s most affecting and impactful scenes.
In her fifth collaboration with the director, Sukowa eloquently conveys her character’s courage, intellect, strong-willed determination and compassion, mixed with her less noble instincts.
Herzsprung’s beauty and intensity shine through as a girl whose devotion to Hildegard bordered on hero-worship, and Heino Ferch artfully plays a pivotal role as her lifelong supporter among the monks.
As much of the handsome-looking film is set in the confines of the cloisters, it tends to be somewhat static, despite the frequent use of a moving camera and zoom lens.
Von Trotta has said she first discovered Hildegard in the 1980s when newly liberated women were looking for female role models 'in a history that had been largely written for and by men." She wrote the opening scenes but decided to shelve the project, reasoning that audiences at the time wanted films that were political and set in the present.
She says she revisited the project because of a renewed focus on the connection between the soul and body, and the theme that nature and the elements are turning against us if they’re abused. Perhaps, but the inspirational Hildegard von Bingen deserved a more stirring and inspiring film.
