Essene looks at first like a surprise, given the five films which precede it. A small monastery is just not what you’d expect after basic training, a hospital, and the rest. But this should be a good thing - Wiseman’s films are far from cookie cutter exercises or just a simple repetitious kind of institutional examination. Over his lifetime, there is a remarkable range, while, as with any great artist, returns to certain subjects and some consistencies of style and method. I hope it helps to look at both: the continuities and the unique moments.
One interest in these films is really striking me as important, even this early on: what happens to misfits or rebels or people who just don’t get with the program, for whatever reason. Essene is probably the film where we stop saying Wiseman is interested in institutions, one of the cliches of those looking at his work. Better terms would probably be communities, organizations, neighborhoods, governmental structures, and hopefully I’ll think of some more before we’re done. In all these structures, needs of individuals versus larger social forces will often come into play, and this tension sets up many of the encounters. It may be how a person who is sick or has committed a crime is treated, or it can be more voluntary, as is the case in Essene. In all of these films, at least so far, there will be either authority figures or institutional employees, and we’re going to watch how they deal with those they’re charged with serving. In the process, both people may express ideas that go beyond the basics of their interaction - Wiseman is especially sensitive to that. How these situations reflect on the places where they are filmed and what they say about both the people themselves and the world outside depends so much on Wiseman’s clear talent for understanding when these are rich encounters - rich in human drama or political content or humor or strangeness or all the qualities we hope for in looking at a movie. He’s found a way to do this that works with a range of unlikely subjects.
Back to that misfit thing, it’s a special test of a community or institution when a person doesn’t function as expected. We might say that Titicut Follies is a film full of misfits - an extreme case. In other films it may be that there are expectations the employee has that they will force on those they “serve” - whether it’s a cop choking a prostitute, a teacher disciplining a student, or a drill sergeant getting a recruit to march in step. Their job, as they see it, is to get the rough edges off, to get them to play by the rules and customs. It may look like teaching sometimes, it may look like coercion as well. The rules themselves, coming perhaps from public norms or personal prejudices or human foibles, are endlessly fascinating if chosen for their complexity and for what it tells us, not just about the individual encounter, but the world at large. Seeing people forced to conform, or complaining about having to, or even watching an institution run well, can be great cinema, as Wiseman figured out very early on. It would have been possible to make very boring movies about any of these subjects. Instead they are elevated by smart selection, a direct style, and thoughtful editing (about which we’ll have to talk more later, at least a few times).
Sticking to Essene, on one level it’s an extraordinary religious film, about a small group trying to dedicate themselves to faith and a pure simple life. If we think of it in the context of his other films, we do see issues of community addressed quite directly. Right from the start, questions are expressly raised by the monks themselves regarding the role of authority versus the individual, whether a group can govern itself or must there be some human authority, in their case an abbot, a rather benign but frequently criticized leader who figures prominently. There are fewer scenes in Essene, meaning the ones we have go on much longer, and Wiseman singles out a few people for repeated attention more than he generally does. Living close together, the members deal with issues that sound more secular than religious, like the need to “accept the little egocentric habits of a person which bug us all" because "it is a part of them". The only alternative, as one puts it, would be to opt out of the community. Otherwise, he acknowledges, "loneliness is one of the worst things a person can be in”. We see deeply spiritual people wanting love, but recognizing that it’s no simple matter for a community to come together without conflict and differences.
It’s hard to imagine any of this being humorous, but one of our misfits is a real character, one who can go on at length about not wishing to be called by his first name and the travails of having two fellows living there who are both named David. And if you didn’t think a trip to town to purchase a potato peeler (our one excursion outside in the film) could play like a comedy routine, then think again. Naturally the guy is called by the wrong first name by his hardware salesman, and takes it all in good humor. Later we hear about how this monk has been a pain in the ass to everyone for decades, that it’s known he doesn’t like anyone. When the abbot (the fellow in charge) asks for specifics, another brother gets as angry as we see any of them get when he snaps back "You've been saying the same thing for 18 years”. The problems here can fester for long periods of time, as we learn that an older man named Brother Joseph has been there for 25 years, yet 16 years had a serious breakdown. You need patience and endurance to come to terms with your problems in Essene.
The desire to be loved by the community is part of an extended crisis for one of the brothers, who talks it out with one of the few Sisters in the group early in the movie, and later tells an extended parable about not being loved before saying he’s been the subject of his own story. As he tells the group at a service that “I am very crippled”, they all lay hands on him in a circle. The camera is at first close-up on the hands, and then moves back as if this is almost too intimate, too close. It’s a deeply emotional moment, and one of those Wiseman scenes that requires considerable length to unfold and which requires a certain amount of sorting out by the viewer at the same time we can feel quite moved.
Essene can feel very close to a Bresson film, in its persistent close-ups and in the day to day acquiring of transcendence. It’s Diary of a Country in part brought to Michigan, simple people of faith struggling to live a daily life of love and spiritual meaning. While the film smartly resonates into secular concerns, it still feels like it takes its religion seriously. We’ve had religious services already in other Wiseman films, notably at the end of Hospital and an extended sermon and service even in Basic Training, but Essene, besides showing us a good deal of prayer and religious service, takes its observance without possible irony, which wasn’t the case in the other films, where the chaplains or ministers were rather less impressive and sometimes a bit comic. Not so here.
And my other big surprise, besides the attention to misfits, is Wiseman’s attention to and inclusion of large amounts of music, here of course in the form of hymns, although that trip for the potato peeler even had “On the Street Where You Live” playing in the background at the hardware store. During religious services, when a hymn starts, you can guarantee that Wiseman will show it in its entirety, as he does at least half a dozen times. The brother with the love crisis has an extraordinary presentation of a hymn that begins “Deep River”, and the camera stays on him in a halo of light as he sings the entire hymn while accompanying himself on the piano. It’s another of the deeply felt moments in the film, entirely, I think, shown very directly and simply. I still don’t have my head around why I’m noticing so much music in Wiseman films. Partly, they give us a chance just to observe, without feeling like we have to process meaning through following any discussion. It makes the films less documentary like, or that we have to do anything but appreciate what we’re hearing and seeing, just like in any movie. It’s also probably here too for the very simple reason that the community takes its hymns and observances seriously.
The film was released in 1972, so if the place was around for at least 25 years, as is suggested in some of their discussions, that would date to at least the late 1940’s. Another of the tensions in the community that’s apparent is between an older generation that goes back to then and some of the more recently joined. This comes out most clearly when during religious observances they go around the group for specific prayers to be voiced, whether for individuals or groups. The elders will lean toward prayers “for all the lonely” or will refer to someone who was important to them when they were young or to deceased members of the community. It looks like the younger men will be more topical and political in their choices, asking to “Remember the innocents of Hiroshima, who died" or another asking for prayers for the Berrigan brothers, priests well known at the time for their anti-Viet Nam protests. Essene is a fairly insular film for Wiseman, but the outside world does show itself a bit, even here.
The rigor of Essene can be found in its visual style, its repeated return to religious observance, and its concern for community. Its parts dealing with misfits and disagreements and its one outside-the-monastery humorous trip to town are just added dimensions to the overall attention to the spiritual concerns of the group. I find it remarkable that the film sticks so closely to this religious dimension. To have made it more episodic and perhaps included an array of prosaic daily activities would have greatly cheapened it. Wiseman honors his subject by trying to film the seemingly unfilmable - people striving for a sincerely religious life.
Essene does conclude with a strongly recognizable Wiseman element - the summary speech, examples of which so far have been the principal in High School and the valedictory speech in Basic Training. Here, the abbot, the leader who is charged with being the highest human authority in their community, delivers a sermon about the tension between "frenetic activism" and "controlled, quiet wisdom”, told in parable form again, as the difference between the two sisters Martha and Mary in the New Testament. This tension describes their community very well, and in Wiseman fashion, this gets more complex, as he says “they are both in us”. Wiseman films him intently, in an unmoving angle up that requires attention. The abbot concludes with a repeated “will you listen”, and its repetition speaks directly to us as audience members. We might think that documentaries are more geared toward “frenetic activism”. That “controlled, quiet wisdom” might also be needed is a challenging notion. Essene is that rare film which has us thinking about how we might respond to it. It is also Wiseman expanding his approach and marking an unpredictability which will surely be further in evidence.