The divide between Christian film and films that deal with issues of faith on a spiritual level is very easy to spot. Where one often stoops to a proselytizing form of propaganda, the other contemplates earnestly, often not presenting an easy answer. Carl Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, and Robert Bresson each made films that can be associated with the latter and while Dreyer and Bergman were more directly influenced by Lutheranism, Bresson was a Roman Catholic. His films deal with spirituality in the same vein as Dreyer and Bergman and Diary of a Country Priest is widely considered his most transparently religious film.

Diary of a Country Priest was adapted by Bresson from a novel of the same title written by George Bernanos. The main narrative device of the film is the journal of the young priest of Ambricourt whose name is never revealed — a technique which makes him all the more sympathetic and relatable as a character. Upon arrival at his new parish in Ambricourt, the priest is immediately greeted by illicit activity: Ambricourt’s count embracing a mistress. This image is a precursor for what will become the priest’s feelings throughout the rest of the film: he has been sent to a place where religion is something ritual, where immorality flourishes, and where his parishioners are apathetic to the things of God. Coupled with his mounting health problems, the priest’s life in Ambricourt is not happy or satisfying. The silence of God proves deafening for him as he questions his calling and seeks to help the people of Ambricourt.

It is hard to talk about acting performances in a Bresson film because it is well known that Bresson was very rigid in the direction of actors, dictating their every movement even the shifting of eyes from one place to another. Even so. Claude Laydu’s performance as the priest of Ambricourt makes viewers very compassionate. When he speaks in voiceover about his spiritual struggles, we feel for him and immediately identify. Although set in the mid 1900s, the black and white cinematography gives the film a timeless quality. The tone of the film is not sharp, but very soft. Diary of a Country Priest is very easy on the eyes, making Bresson’s imagery easier to take in. Bresson’s films boil cinema down to its most basic elements in order to communicate the reality of a story truthfully. Hence, it is easy to say that Bresson was not influenced greatly by any other directors. He created his own style which proved to be very influential for future directors of serious cinema (including Andrei Tarkovsky who cited Diary of a Country Priest as his favorite film).

After my first viewing of the film, I was annoyed because I viewed the priest of Ambricourt as a spiritual weakling. Good things rarely happened for him and watching him sulk around his parish for long minutes while talking about the silence of God became very tiring. It was only when I took a step back and realized that he had no other human beings to go to for encouragement that I began to respect him more. Indeed, he is “upheld” in his community as a beacon of wisdom, but where does the source of wisdom go when they are in need of encouragement themselves?

The priest of Ambricourt views the priest of the neighboring town of Torcy as a mentor. When he goes to ask him for advice and encouragement, the older priest gives a startling reply:

Besides exterminating the devil, your other dream is to be loved for who you are. A true priest is never loved. The church doesn’t care a whit whether you’re loved, my son. Be respected, obeyed. Keep order all day long knowing full well disorder will win out tomorrow, because in this sorry world, the night undoes the work of the day.

There is obviously a difference between them. The young priest of Ambricourt is an extremely sensitive man who desperately wants to follow the will of God in leading his parish, whereas the other priest has become hardened to the things of God from many years of fruitless ministry. Because of his sensitivity, the priest of Ambricourt feels things that would never ever become a problem for the other priest. Indeed, it is odd that he would respect him enough to develop a meaningful relationship.

On a second viewing I realized that even though God seems silent in much of the film, the moments where He speaks are very blatant and proof that God has not removed Himself from the young priest. For example: there is a moment in the film when the priest is blessed with sudden knowledge of a consequential letter in a young woman’s pocket. Because of the priest’s reaction and the way Bresson films the event, an agnostic interpretation would seem very far-fetched.

Just as the moments when God intervenes are refreshing, so the brief hopeful moments in the movie are quite stirring. The best example is after the priest is injured and decides he must go to a neighboring town to see a doctor. He packs his bags and begins walking to the train station when he is approached by a young man on a motorcycle asking if he needs a ride. The priest accepts and what follows proves to be quite an epiphany for him. For a man who had spent the last few months of his life alone and constrained by unappreciative parishioners, this fast ride through God’s creation opens the door for the renewal that will be so prominent at the end of the film.

Having grown up in the midst of modern evangelical Christianity, a struggle I had while watching Diary of a Country Priest (and Au Hasard Balthazar earlier this year) was that it dealt so seriously with Catholicism. Many sects of Christianity aim criticisms at “errors and heresies” in the Catholic faith — some founded, some unfounded. In Walking On Water, her book of reflections on faith and art, Christian writer Madeline L’engle recalls a time when she was overseas and was approached by a student from Zimbabwe who came from a different Christian frame of reference than herself. The student had been moved tremendously by her writings and told L’engle that her art had shown him God. She concludes her story like this:

For that moment, at least, all our doors and windows were wide open; we were not carefully shutting out God’s purifying light, in order to feel safe and secure; we were bathed in the same light that burned and yet did not consume the [burning] bush. We walked barefoot on holy ground.

I may not believe in the same fashion as the young Priest of Ambricourt, but I cannot say that the two of us serve a different God. Though our methodologies may be different, we are reaching for the same image of the eternal. God forbid that I would close my eyes and miss realizing that, truly, all is grace.