Thoughts on Agnes of God

 

via IMDB

"What you do suppose today's saints are smoking?"

"There are no saints today. Good people, yes, but extraordinarily good people? Those, I'm afraid, we are sorely lacking."

I'm especially proud of my decision to read Agnes of God alongside seeing its movie adaptation. Most surprises didn't come from following the plot a second time. In fact, there was only one story element which caught me off guard. I'll get to it shortly. Playwright John Pielmeier, fresh from Norman Jewison's production, gave invaluable insight into the stage to screen exchange, for better or for worse.

Sister Agnes (Meg Tilly) gave birth to a baby* subsequently found dead in her bedroom's wastebasket by Mother Miriam Ruth (Anne Bancroft). Dr. Martha Livingston (Jane Fonda), the court-appointed psychiatrist, seeks to find out if Agnes committed the killing, why she did it, are there grounds to have Agnes not stand trial and who's the daddy. Along the way, Martha lights up a lot**, Miriam wages a one-woman battle against science, seemingly in defense of the church and we find out Agnes, at least in her present state of mind, should never, ever be responsible for another living creature. Being sheltered from the outside world and abused by her mother left Agnes with a mentality just slightly higher than a child's. I'm not entirely sure how the cow she was milking ended up unscathed.

*A girl, according to the climax. 

**David Denby: "It appears to be an epic about Jane Fonda smoking a cigarette." She is seen with 15 cigarettes total in the 98-minute movie, including three in her first four minutes on screen, plus one Martha ends up not smoking. Two full ashtrays are also seen for good measure. If Agnes didn't set a record, it must have come close. Thank goodness AlienJesus let me know Jane wasn't actually smoking tobacco. Pielmeier, in fact, said a speech of Martha's about trying to quit smoking was the first material he wrote for the play.

Both movie and play are hindered by the character of Agnes, who I can't see as anything other than a tremendous burden on poor Miriam. I know times were different -- and I do feel oogy about being so hard on an abused girl with no agency -- but surely a group home and social workers would have been a better place and people to interact for Agnes than a rural convent and its nuns. That said, those gals knew how to have fun. I smiled at the bit where they're ice skating and was slightly moved when Sister Geneviève (Norma Dell'Agnese) took her final vows. And, of course, Miriam probably had plenty of the old school "No, really, it's okay" attitude toward her faux noble mission. As Miriam admits to Martha, she already struck out as a wife and mother.

"You think they ever existed?"
"... Yes, I do."
"... You wanna become one?"
"To become? One is born a saint."

"Well, you can try. Can't you, to be good?"

"Yes. But goodness has very little to do with it."

Of the actresses, I'm giving my crown to Bancroft, who has the most developed character to play. Tilly's hemmed in by her one-note role and Fonda's functioning as straight woman. I suppose Tilly's performance would work if it was on an actual stage, but she just too much for a movie. On the other hand, since I'm not that fond of Agnes, perhaps Pielmeier and Jewison should have gone in that direction. Can you imagine it? The long-awaited screen reunion of Faye Dunaway and Bette Davis.

Agnes played at the Music Box Theatre from spring 1982-summer 1983, ending its run without a sale of the film rights. Paramount invested in the play but went no further***. Jewison, on the other hand, was interested from before the Broadway opening, initially just as a producer. According to AFI, Bancroft also was interested. Jewison suggested the movie be set in Montreal. Pielmeier agreed, saying Catholicism in Quebec was like his nuns, "caught in the gears of progress."

***She'd have been all wrong for Agnes, but I'm now imagining the studio signing Debra Winger, who would have just completed An Officer and a Gentleman.

"Not all the saints were good, in fact some were a little crazy. ... But, they were still attached to God. Left in His hands at birth. No more. We're born, we live, we die. No room for miracles. But oh, my dear, how I miss the miracles."

Reintroduced for the movie was Sister Paul (Agnes Middleton), who dies on the night Agnes conceives her child. Her death is included in the play, but it's throwaway dialogue. Anyway, Agnes claims Sister Paul showed her how she could reach the barn from inside the convent. Roger Ebert disliked the movie's mystery elements. "It considers, or pretends to consider, some of the most basic questions of human morality and treats them on the level of 'Nancy Drew and the Secret of the Old Convent,'" he wrote. It is groan-worthy, seeing Fonda searching through files to come up with the obvious (that Miriam is Agnes' aunt), not to mention her later travel though a passage from the convent to its barn. Having Martha be pressured by Agnes' diocese to wrap things up pales in comparison to a similar self-serving conspiracy in The Verdict, as Paul Attanasio appeared to allude to.

Important facts from Martha's monologues on stage had to be kept for the movie, Pielmeier wrote. Movie audiences know she had a sister who became a nun and died, as well as the details of a bad Catholic school experience. Really, Sister Mary Cletus, claiming an innocent child was run over by a cement truck because she didn't say her morning prayers? We also get to meet Martha's dementia-afflicted mother (Anne Pitoniak, who played Miriam in the play's pre-Broadway production at the Actors Theatre of Louisville, Kentucky). What they don't know is that Martha's marriage ended because she had an abortion. In all honesty, I'm glad that detail didn't make it to the movie. It feels like something to goad the audience into considering/noticing/overinflating a bond between Martha and Agnes, or insurance if the actresses aren't that good at selling the connection themselves.

The insanity defense saves Agnes in both the play and movie. In the play, Martha removes herself from the case after Agnes reveals she killed her daughter after being traumatized by her existence (her mother wasn't shy about revealing it was an unwanted pregnancy) and the baby's conception, which she insists was the result of being raped by God. At one point, Pielmeier wrote Agnes fatally throwing herself from the bell tower. In the final play, she's institutionalized and dies after refusing to eat. In the movie, she remains with the nuns, apparently lost for good in an illusion.

For the movie, Pielmeier wrote a final scene between Martha and Miriam. "A very subtle all-is-forgiven scene." I don't think it was included, unless he's meaning the two women making sad faces after Agnes cracks up in court. There's a considerably harsher button in the play.

"You were right. She remembered. And all this time I thought she was some unconscious innocent. Thank you, Doctor. We need people like you to destroy all those lies that ignorant folk like myself pretend to believe. ... But I'll never forgive you for what you've taken away. ... You should have died. Not your sister. You."

Recommended with reservations.

Thoughts:
-- "Well, what do you think? Is she totally bananas or merely slightly off center? Or maybe she's perfectly sane and just a very good liar?"

-- Box Office: Grossing $25.6 million on a $7.5 million budget, this opened wide at No. 2 and came in at No. 34 for 1985. 

-- Critic's Corner, the play and film: I haven't read such harsh reviews of a Broadway transfer since Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. Attanasio: "(It's) nothing better than a bargain basement Equus." "The material itself, thoroughly unsurprising, is if anything even more so on the screen," Janet Maslin wrote. Ebert: "The movie uses each half of its story (legal drama and supernatural thriller) to avoid dealing with the other." People agreed with me that more was needed. "As a movie, it lacks what is necessary for this kind of drama: a smokescreen of bravura acting."

-- Critic's Corner, the women: Fonda "never invests the shrink role with any of the intensity it demands," the magazine continued. Variety felt Bancroft gave "a generally highly engaging performance," which isn't exactly pull quote material. "(Tilly's) trying to play both God's child and a fruitcake, and the result is simply vague," Attanasio wrote.

-- This was the second of two movies Jewison made that were adaptations of 1981-82 productions. The first was A Soldier's Story. It makes you wonder if he had any interest in Mass Appeal, The Dresser or Crimes of the Heart.

-- Awards Watch: As with the Broadway run, it was the actresses who played Miriam and Agnes who received nominations. Bancroft and Tilly were both nominated for the Golden Globe and the Oscar, with Tilly winning the former. In 1982, Geraldine Page and Amanda Plummer were Tony nominees (over Elizabeth Ashley as Martha), with the latter winning.

-- What Could Have Been: Both Page and Plummer were reportedly originally slated to reprise their stage roles, with Bancroft under consideration for Martha. Besides Fonda, Shirley MacLaine was another candidate. Page, of course, ended up making The Trip to Bountiful, beating Bancroft for the Oscar in the process. Of course, 23 years earlier, Bancroft won the Oscar for The Miracle Worker over Page for Sweet Bird of Youth ... hmm, perhaps Ryan Murphy made Feud about the wrong pair?

-- God bless AFI for keeping such extensive records ... Fonda's casting as Martha and Jewison's role as director were confirmed in September 1984. Prior to it, Francis Ford Coppola showed interest, but was rebuffed when he asked for a $3 million salary, which was then marked down to $1.5 million****. By October 1984, Bancroft was confirmed as Miriam, last-minute hire (but early-bird campaigner) Tilly was confirmed as Agnes and shooting began just before Halloween, completing in mid-January 1985.

****Attanasio lamented that David Cronenberg didn't direct, as he'd "drag it down to its B-movie roots."

-- Pielmeier's acknowledgements, dated May 1985, include the names of most of the actresses who played Agnes, Martha and Miriam to date. Among them: Lee Remick (who played Martha during the pre-Broadway tryout in Boston, which he called somewhat disastrous), Diahann Carroll (who replaced Ashley on Broadway), Carrie Fisher (who briefly replaced Plummer on Broadway*****) and Valerie Harper (who played Martha for the first national tour).

*****At the same time Debbie Reynolds did Woman of the Year.

-- "I don't know the meaning behind the song she sang. Perhaps it was a song of seduction and the father was a field hand. Perhaps the song was simply a lullaby she remembered from many years ago. And the father was hope, and love, and desire. And a belief in miracles. I want to believe that she was blessed. And I do miss her. And I hope she's left something, some little part of herself with me. That would be miracle enough, wouldn't it?"

-- Next: The Journey of Natty Gann. On deck: Commando, Jagged Edge. Coming soon: After Hours, Silver Bullet, Re-Animator and Dreamchild.