The wonderful film that shows what the Catholic Church does best

The film The Hidden Life is coming out today in England. After ten years of correspondence, Michael Whyte was given unprecedented access to the monastery of the Most Holy Trinity, in Londons Notting Hill. The monastery, which was founded in 1878, is home to the Discalced Order of Carmelite Nuns. The nuns lead a cloistered life dedicated to prayer and contemplation, rarely leaving the monastery except to visit a doctor or dentist. Silence is maintained throughout the day with the exception of two periods of recreation.

No Greater Love gives a unique insight into this closed world where the modern worlds materialism is rejected; they have no television, radio or newspapers. The film interweaves a year in the life of the monastery with the daily rhythms of Divine Office and work. Centred in Holy Week, it follows a year in which a novice is professed and one of the senior nuns dies. Though mainly an observational film there are several interviews, which offer insights into their life, faith, moments of doubt and their belief in the power of prayer in the heart of the community.

The following is a review from the Telegraph:

Hidden behind seven metre-high walls in north Kensington, a short walk from the boutiques and restaurants of fashionable Notting Hill, there is a busy monastery of Carmelite nuns. The purpose-built Victorian compound is set in a couple of acres of grounds, with lawns, a kitchen garden and a cemetery where the nuns are buried. The sisters are silent through the day – except for two periods of recreation. And they seldom leave except to go to the dentist or the doctor.

Michael Whyte, a filmmaker who is more used to making glossy television mini-series, has made a fine documentary film, No Greater Love, that follows a year in the life of these remarkable women. (I review it in full in Friday’s Catholic Herald.)

Whyte’s technique is simple: he parks his cameras at the ends of corridors or in the gardens and records what happens. You see how the silence lends a kind of sanctity to the nuns’ chores. And he intersperses shots of housekeeping duties with the recitation of the Daily Office and the rituals of the sacred liturgy during Holy Week.

The silence is not absolute, obviously: it’s an absence of chit-chat. Which tends to amplify the mechanical sounds that remain, like the rotovator you see a nun operating to turn the soil in the vegetable patch. In the kitchens they manufacture Communion wafers. They pour batter onto a circular hotplate to produce a flat disc of bread, bigger than a dinner plate; then another machine stamps out the hosts.

The nuns appear serene. But the religious life does not sound like an easy option. They describe struggling for years and years with doubts. Whyte asks the Prioress whether she fears death. She says: “Well, there’s always the thought that maybe the atheists are quite right and there’s just a void at the other side.”

In fact, she went through 18 years of feeling that she was not good enough. The religious life starts well, she says, but “pretty soon… that goes” and you’re left with “darkness, boredom, dryness” and it’s as though “you’re sitting there talking to yourself on your knees”.

The nice thing about the film is that it shows the nuns relaxing too, as when they switch on a tape player and dance to Scottish reels. There is plenty of joy in the monastery. All in all, No Greater Love is a useful reminder that the Church is made up mostly of good and humble people who have not committed awful crimes. Instead they lead lives of quiet and holy devotion – praying for the rest of us.

It’s showing at the Gate Cinema in Notting Hill from Friday, and other cities.