OVP: Corpus Christi (2019)

Film: Corpus Christi (2019)
Stars: Bartosz Bielenia, Aleksandra Konieczna, Eliza Rycembel, Lukasz Simlat
Director: Jan Komasa
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best International Feature Film-Poland)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Part of me wants to sit on this review as long as humanly possible, but alas, that doesn't feel like a wise decision.  Corpus Christi is the final film that I was able to see in theaters before the coronavirus quarantines started, and we weren't allowed to go to a movie theater safely (or at all).  The film was also the last of the 2019 movies that I needed to see for the OVP, so we now have a third year that I can start getting through on OVP ballots (we need to make it past 2016 and 2005, though, as I'm doing them in the order I finished the years).  Thus, a lot of significance here for me in terms of its place in my movie-viewing, but sadly the film itself doesn't really hold up, especially compared to some of the other movies that competed against it at the 2019 Oscars.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Daniel (Bielenia), a young man who is serving a sentence for second-degree murder but has a spiritual awakening while it happens, and he finds he wants to be a priest.  Of course, with his criminal record he can't become one, but when he escapes the youth detention center, he has a priest outfit, and goes to a small town where he assumes the identity of a priest, and when the sitting father has to leave (to go to alcohol treatment, though the congregation doesn't know this), Daniel becomes the officiant for the community.  The town has been struggling with the deaths of a number of young people rom a automobile accident, and blame the widow of a local man who was driving the other car that they were in (who also died) for their grief by ostracizing her from the church.  The film unfolds therefore with multiple different stories, both of Daniel trying to live his dream of being a member of the clergy, one that we know as the audience cannot possibly last, and the town understanding what happened in that car accident.

The thing is, the film doesn't have enough focus to address these stories with great care.  Daniel is a compelling lead, and Bielenia is excellent in this part-he's someone to watch in the future.  With his bulbous eyes and intense stare, he brings an anguish to Daniel that oftentimes reaches beyond the tepidly drawn script.  But an actor can only carry a movie so far.  The film's ending, in particular, is poorly drawn.  We leave with Daniel's girlfriend Marta randomly leaving (with no indication of where she's going), Daniel getting into a fight where he likely killed a man who was bullying him (and then running away again), and the woman welcomed back into the parish, but with no indication of what will happen next for this still grieving community.

Ambiguity can be a powerful tool for a director, but this many loose ends makes me think that rather than trying to give us some sort of "assumptions about the future" they just didn't know how to end the film.  Marta's journey has been so basic (girl hates mother, has sex with local guy that sees her for who she is...this isn't new stuff at the cinema, or in life), that to give us some sort of question mark over the ending feel absurd.  And Daniel running away again...what are we supposed to get from that?  He'll surely be caught, and then likely tried for another second-degree murder...is there a lesson here?  The film has mood and some solid acting & cinematography, but it lacks a perspective, and for a film about the challenges of faith, that's sorely needed.