In Memory Of Me

Over the last two or so decades, the cloistered asceticism and all-male spiritualism of monastic life have inspired Jean-Jacques Annaud's cracking murder mystery The Name Of The Rose (1986) and Philip Gröning's contemplative documentary Into Great Silence (2005) - and now, falling somewhere between the two, is Saverio (Private) Costanza's In Memory of Myself, adapted by the director from Furio Monicelli's novel The Perfect Jesuit. For here, as Andrea (Christo Jivkov) enters the novitiate seeking a truer kind of freedom than he had been able to find in his previous secular life, he discovers a world of mystery and intrigue where devotion and ego are in constant conflict.

In the Venetian Jesuit monastery, ruled over by the Father Superior (André Hennicke) and guided by the Father Master (Marco Baliani), the novices are encouraged to keep a close eye on each other and to denounce any shortcomings they find in others. Andrea's curiosity is concentrated on Fausto (Fausto Russo Alesi) and Zanna (Filippo Timi), two fellow novices who both come to doubt the values of the Order - and as his own faith is tested, he must make a choice that reaches to the very core of who he is, who he will be, and who he always has been.

In a hermetically sealed community where silence is the norm, and every movement is bound by rule and ritual, for Andrea and the viewer alike the tiniest of details begin to take on the greatest of import. With characters moving furtively about at night, priests concocting convenient lies, and a shadowy figure residing in the infirmary, something like a mystery begins to take form out of the stillness and shadows - but as in Lucile Hadzihalilovic's Innocence (2004), also set in a closed unisex institution, the mystery's solution turns out to be both less, and more, than what one might expect.

For it is the ultimate simplicity of In Memory Of Myself from which its profundity derives, and the film's real subject in the end concerns less the details of who is doing what, to whom, when and why, but rather more broadly the mysterious heart of man (as well as "the terrifying mystery of a weak God"). It is the mystery that underlies any human choice – and both Zanna and Andrea, though in the end reaching opposite conclusions, must make the same leap of faith to get there.

Like the sequestered lives that it portrays, Constanza's film is stripped down to its bare essentials. The characters' merest glances and gestures carry with them a remarkably focused intensity, as do their occasional words, delivered in hushed tones but always feeling (rather than actually sounding) as though they are being shouted. The silence with which speech is often met in the film can be as devastating as any vocal riposte, and Andrea's conversations with Zanna seem merely to reflect conflicts that already exist internally in both men as they struggle to find a fundamental truth beyond all the vanities of life.

Andrea is always watching others, but he too is always being watched, and as the film's rhythms begin to establish their own meditative pace, viewers too feel themselves being scrutinised and interrogated by the images flickering before their eyes - images that create a tension between the unruffled calm of the narrative and the human desire for sensation, intrigue, and action. If the film fails to leave you feeling satisfied, the fault may, it is suggested, lie in you. "Who are you? Why have you come here?", as the Father Superior asks Andrea (and as Andrea keeps asking himself).

Two types of shot dominate In Memory Of Myself. The first is of each novice's facial response (whether at the dining table, in the chapel, or at the homily sessions), shown in medium close-up, but also in montage, as though both to suggest and to dissolve the men's individuality. The second is of the vast corridor that links the novices' rooms, shown in wide shot, with the distant figures of novices, often in silhouette, seemingly engulfed by their environment. It is hauntingly beautiful, but it also encapsulates one of the film's central themes: that in order to find who you really are, you also must forget who you are. On paper this may just sound like sub-Yoda waffle, but for the two hours that Costanza's hauntingly earnest film lasts, and perhaps beyond, it is all too easy to lose yourself.