La vocation suspendue (1978) Online

This is a beautiful and challenging film. It is ambitious, sincere, but also intellectually playful. It is based on Pierre Klossowski's novel of the same name, a book easily classified as "unfilmable" - although nobody would ever contemplate filming it in the first place, except the fact that Ruiz did so. I must admit that I had difficulties understanding both the movie and the book, but the kind of difficulty was the same in both instances, so the adaptation seems adequate. And why expect to understand an ambitious movie from first viewing? Anyway: The central theme of the book, and even more of the movie, seems to be doubt. A young seminarist, a future priest, gets caught in a theological dogma war that ultimately leads to him bailing out. The conflict divides the church into various "zones", each of them trying to subvert the others - a little like the division of Nazi-occupied France at the time Klossowski himself was a seminarist. So is the church war a metaphor for the Second World War? Or is it a metaphor for the divided soul of the young seminarist? To add to the complication, the book appears not as straightforward narrative, but as summary and comment on an anonymous text circulating in the church. Ruiz replicates this formal twist in the structure of the film: A text scroll informs us that the film was initially shot in the 1940s, only to be completed, in a rather reverse manner, much later. Or was it? The off-commentary accompanying the text scroll tells a different story how the two versions of the movie came about. In any case, we have black-and-white scenes resembling a 1940s French movie, and color scenes with different actors set closer to the present. Confusing? Sure, but the confusion unfolds systematically, giving form and meaning to the doubt and tension of values in the story. I found it intriguing and won't take offence if you don't. One thing, though, is indisputable: This is a gorgeously shot film.

When I first saw 'Suspended Vocation,' 30 years ago, I immediately found it dizzying--& very, very funny. A great satire--one, as Ruiz himself put it, about institutions, especially the "mega-institution" of the Church--or (as a friend said after seeing it), perhaps the Party, too? (And maybe the self-imposed institution of cinephilia--several of the actors playing priests are film critics.)Anyway, making fun of the incestuousness of any self-absorbed movement ...

The two styles the film's shot in, whether color or black & white, are satiric of an amateur Expressionistic style & early cinema verite, each supposed to represent something of the contrary political views of the different parties who supposedly made either version of the film at different points in history, later spliced together by a third party to show "unity"--often hilariously doubling or even contradicting each other--as laid out in the "explanatory" introductory text.

Neither the review right above nor the one below mentions its humor ... How anyone could watch Edith Scob's "epiphany" in an unearthly light, the discovery of the two-headed cross under the pillow, or the "libertinage" session led by Gelin, much less the constant vague signalings & conspiratorial high signs, & not see that the film's at least tongue-in- cheek, is beyond me.

To call it pretentious, after saying it was "incomprehensible" to the viewer: as an old teacher of mine used to say, If it's pretentious, what's it pretending to be?

I found "La Vocation suspendue"/Suspended Vocation (1978), the earliest feature from Raoul Ruiz that I've seen thus far, very, very difficult and at times completely incomprehensible -- I really think one has to have some background in or knowledge of Catholicism to fully appreciate it, and clearly though the visual aspects of the film are important, the religious themes are at the heart of it; it is unquestionably a film about something, a film that is dealing intellectually with a subject, but in an oblique enough way that if you start out more or less at ground zero (as I did) it will be hard to take anything away. The black and white photography elements (courtesy of one of the world's greatest cinematographers, Sacha Vierny, in his first collaboration with Ruiz) were quite striking though, and at times it gave off a very Bressonian feel.

This was Ruiz' second French feature and the first of two films based on novels by Pierre Klossowski, the other being "Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting." Probably worth a 6/10 for interest, and I suspect that I'll get more out of it on a second viewing after doing some homework. It appears on an indispensable Blaq Out 2-disc set with the much more accessible and entertaining "Hypothesis" and "Three Crowns of the Sailor." DVD rental

I liked Ruiz' Three Crowns of the Sailor enough so I checked this one out. I only watched The Suspended Vocation (and only glanced at the other film after being disappointed with this one). There was really nothing to interest me here. It's a bit like Bresson but with nothing of note visually. The entire movie is just an abstract discussion of religion. The alternation of actors and color/b&w (somewhat like a Bunuel film) meant nothing to me - perhaps there was a deeper meaning to it but I really didn't care. Another film this reminded me somewhat of was The Trial due to the endless soporific dialogue (none of the imagery though - oh no, none of that). Yes, I'd call this one pretentious.