A story of religion, devotion and radical faith, and a fourteen year old girl, part of a fundamentalist Catholic community you would feel would hardly be a subject for a film.
Yet Stations of the Cross, Winner of the Silver Berlin Bear for Best Script and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin Film Festival 2014, grips the senses like nothing else you will see this year.
Maria, preparing for her confirmation in a church, whose radicalness leaves no space at all for individual growth and fulfilment is torn between the teachings of the Church and the modern twenty first century.
The former tells her to prepare for battle and protect the human race from the influence of the Devil in all his forms while on the outside she yearns to the temptations of being a teenager.
Her family is governed by rules that are as strict as those of the Church: the domineering mother continuously dressing down her eldest daughter since she is afraid that Maria might elude her grasp as puberty begins… The father who hardly says a word since he, too, is dominated by the mother.
At the school library, Maria gets to know a fellow student, Christian, from the parallel class. They chat about math homework and Christian invites Maria to accompany him sometime to a choir rehearsal in his church community.
Maria has pangs of conscience about telling her mother that she would like to sing in the choir of a modern church community – and at the invitation of a boy! Yet she does tell her mother about this, but replaces “Christian” with an invented girlfriend. Even with this feint, the mother is beside herself with anger.
However she has a deeper secret, the desire to sacrifice herself to God, and dreams of her soul ascending to heaven to save her younger autistic brother, Maria goes through fourteen stations, just like Jesus did on his path to Golgath.
Stations of the Cross is showing at the Cornerhouse from Today
