The Way of Man Have you ever been unbearably hurt by doing everything wrong in your life? It hurts to despair, to the understanding that it will not be possible to change yourself until the end. At what age can this realization come, when we are often 25 and confident that everything is ahead of us? And what's behind, we carefully overlook. Catholic Maria, the main character of the “Cross Way”, painfully experiences her imperfection already at the age of 14, in the year of her confirmation.
The year of transition to adulthood sets an incredibly high bar for Catholics, likening them to apostles called to bring the light of Christianity into the world. The priest tells about this at the preparatory conversation for confirmation, opening the film, urging young people to take responsibility for their fate and the fate of their neighbors. In essence, this is consent to the Cross, conscious and voluntary. Convincing classmates of the sinfulness of youth magazines requires truly apostolic determination. The title of the picture in this sense very accurately conveys the path of Mary, who is simply more responsible than the others, reacted to the mystery that ends childhood.
Purpose is one of the basic concepts that convey the difference between adult life and childhood. Mary’s painful reflections on her destiny may seem unusual to many viewers. 14 years, live and rejoice. But it is obvious that these words in us speak changing fashion, recently blurred the age of childhood-youth almost to half of life.
Half a century ago, things were different. Even the Catholics were different. It is amazing how the atheist Dietrich Bruggemann in the film managed to convey the subtlest confessional differences. For example, the scene of a conversation in the library of two teenage Christians about Holy Communion and the peculiarities of the service is extremely interesting - Mary, a parishioner of the traditional Catholic community, and Christian - an "ordinary" Catholic. “Do you have a special community?” asks the young man, unaware that his community was the same before the Second Vatican Council, and after John Paul II excommunicated the traditionalists from the church. "We're just doing what the church has always done," Maria replies.
A special place in the film is occupied by the image of Mary’s mother, because of which many critics mistakenly labeled the film as anti-religious propaganda. A woman who actively defends the traditionalist position of her community, and, most importantly, is despotic in raising children, rather causes negativity. Her religiosity dominates her moral sense too much, turning the heroine into an inquisitor struggling with funk music that her daughter never thought she would listen to. And only in one of the final scenes (the director's favorite scene) of sobbing, the mother reveals a person in her.
Mary finds her destiny and follows the Way of the Cross to the very end. But the director sympathizes with the girl rather than approves of her chosen path. A visible marker of sympathy is the attitude toward the miracle. If the final scene of the movie “Lourde” is literally soaked in the brilliance in Christine’s eyes to the sounds of a song about happiness, then the ending of “The Way of the Cross” is a lead sky and the hum of an excavator. For Brugemann, religion is when people go to church on Sundays to support each other, sing psalms and play the organ. But when religion becomes a guide to action and, moreover, changes the world around it, atheists cease to approve of it.
8 out of 10
Original