Despite its racy and sensational subject matter Murmur of the Heart is a shockingly sensitive, remarkably tender, and tellingly melancholic film that ranks with Malle’s finest work.ġ5-year-old Laurent Chevalier, played brilliantly by Benoît Ferreux, is in many ways an avatar for Malle –– both suffered from heart murmurs and both opposed the First Indochina War, for starters –– and is often compared favorably to François Truffaut’s likewise autobiographical film, The 400 Blows.Īn affectionate and nostalgic tale, full of affection and warmth for its characters and it somehow manages to be virtuous even when it is taboo, Murmur of the Heart beats resolutely. Scott writing for The New York Times puts it, “both spellbinding and heartbreaking, a delicate chamber piece with the large, troubled heart of an opera.”įrench New Wave luminary Louis Malle’s controversial coming-of-age story embraces accidental incest in the town of Dijon. There’s something histrionic about the emotional insecurity that Birth boldly emblazons, and it makes for something of a malefic love letter, a lamentable billet-doux from a gifted director. Nicole Kidman is Anna, a Manhattan widow who slowly comes to believe the claims of a ten-year-old boy named Sean, who repeatedly tells her that he is the reincarnation of her late husband, also named Sean, who died suddenly ten years hence. Even if the thorns of the rose pierce your soul, offer God pure, perfumed flowers of a heart that belongs to him.Jonathan Glazer’s criminally misunderstood second feature Birth combines a sedated surrealism with a powerful meditation on belief and its connection to love and the result is a confrontational and compelling pièce de résistance. However, it’s a beautiful gift that you give to God, because the more difficult it is for you to do God’s will, the happier he is when you do it it is more meritorious for you. The harder it is to say “No!” to a forbidden passion, the more that decision pleases God and frees you from danger. The only escape from a forbidden passion is to run away, as we would from any other danger.Īt this point you are probably saying, “but that’s very difficult!” Yes, I’d say, it’s almost impossible without God’s grace, without prayer and heroism. No more conversations, letters, forbidden emails, and light caresses… What is out of sight, out of earshot, and out of reach, is out of mind. So then, the solution, even if it makes us cry, is to flee pray, beg God for the grace to cut off the relationship at its root. It’s true that the best view is the one which we see from the “limit of the abyss”, but one false step can ruin everything. Many go to the depths of the abyss only to try to get back out it’s a huge risk. If a passion is forbidden, it is poisonous we must run from poison. Jesus gave us the cure: “Watch and pray,” because the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Of course, it isn’t easy to uproot a forbidden passion, because to do so is a rational decision that the heart doesn’t share it continues to cry like a cat abandonned on the roof by its partner. The weed cannot be allowed to grow, or else it will kill the good tree. If a passion is forbidden, it must be torn up by the roots, as much as it may hurt us. What’s the solution? There is only one: to mercilessly uproot the evil desire, without mercy for the cries of the heart. What is the solution? Certainly, many people throw reason out the window and and hurl themselves into the abyss of their hearts… and it causes terrible damage. What now? What can he do? He told me that he can’t get her out of his head, even when he’s embracing his own wife. She is “lovesick.”Ī young man wrote me saying that he loves his wife, with whom he has two beautiful children, but now he has fallen deeply in love with a colleague at work. Nonetheless, her passion for him stubbornly continues, and it pains her heart. She is a catechist at his parish, and she knows that she cannot be in a relationship with him, much less marry him. Long ago, the philosopher Blaise Pascal said that “the heart has its reasons that reason doesn’t understand.” How can we rationally explain that a married woman’s heart has become inflamed with passion for a co-worker, or vice-versa? Certainly, there are reasons for it, but our mind gets confused it doesn’t understand that “logic.”Ī young woman wrote to me saying that she has been in love with a priest for a long time. Sometimes I receive emails from people who experience a “forbidden passion” that is to say, they’re infatuated, or have fallen in love, with a person they will never be able to marry. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak
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