Frederick Wiseman's ESSENE (1972): The Duality of Mary and Martha

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The intentional community of the monastery in Essene consists on the surface of a group of like-minded individuals, guided by a common purpose, living a self-sufficient and independent existence outside the norms of nuclear family and the socio-economic, cultural and political obligations of state.
In choosing a monastic order as a system worthy of documentation, Wiseman in this, his sixth film, moved away from the more turbulent terrains of his previous works: a correctional institute for criminals and the mentally 'insane' in Like other social systems, coenobitic monasticism is guided by a set of rules and regulations that guide its values, practices and internal hierarchies. "The bureaucracy in a monastery," Wiseman remarked, "is quite similar to that in a high school or a hospital." 5 Wiseman's cinema of surfaces refuses de rigeur to enter inner states by employing the usual empathetic documentary techniques of the interview or the voice-over. It is precisely for this reason that Wiseman's films become "voyages of discovery" 6 for the viewer who must make sense of them, discerning meaning on her own. A film that to me appeared baffling and fragmented on an initial viewing reveals its architecture and inner cohesion upon deeper engagement.
Working with the film is similar to the monk's lectio in Essene, it slowly opens up to divination. 7 In a sermon on Mary and Martha (Luke 10: [38][39][40][41][42], placed by Wiseman at the film's conclusion, the Abbot vaunts 'the Mary quality' as "...when you see the inter-connection, the harmony, the one thing behind the many, then you gain the wisdom." Such is the task laid forth for an 'ideal' viewer of Essene. 8 The film's opening establishes the playing ground of the film in three brief shots. The opening shot features a bespectacled and muscular man wearing briefs who rakes leaves off a freshly mown lawn. The second is a wide two-shot of robed brothers kneeling in prayer before a candle-lit mantel decorated with a simple wooden cross affixed to the wall. The third is a high angle shot of a monk, lounging in an armchair, reading a book. The economy of the opening lays out the essential principles of Benedictine monastic life: Labora, Ora et Studium: Work, Prayer and Study. We are also introduced to Wiseman's formalism. Hardly fitting the "fly on the wall" trope 9 that unfairly come to saddle Observational Cinema, Wiseman's films, while deliberately loose in their exploratory dimension, are always rigorously crafted.
The first scene is a read aloud from the Rule of Benedict: The life of a monk ought to be at all times Lentian in its character but since few have the strength for that, we therefore urge that in these days of Lent the brethren should lead lives of great purity and should also in this sacred season expiate the negligences of other times. This will be readily done if we refrain from all sin and empower ourselves to prayer with tears to reading, to compunction of heart, and to abstinence. That each one, over and above the measure prescribed for him, offer God something of his own free will and the joy of the Holy Spirit. That each one tell his Abbot what he is offering and it to be done with his consent and blessing because what is done without the permission of the spiritual father shall be prescribed to presumption and vainglory, and not reckoned meritorious. Everything therefore has to be done with the approval of the Abbot.
The reading from the original text is lightly edited over reaction shots of the brothers' faces listening attentively. At the outset, the core values of a Benedictine way of life are made explicit alongside its expectations of its brethren and the power Shot 1 Shot 2 Shot 3 hierarchies within. Next follows a surprising interpretation from the monk in shot 3, who turns out to be the Abbot: I'm interested in that last sentence, "everything done with the Abbot's approval." If it is true today that authority is more of a shared responsibility, then this Abbot's approval becomes more and more a community awareness of what we are doing, not secret and private matters of each person… this brings us into a higher level of corporate consciousness, and finally, a corporate approval of our life.
The camera tilts down from its hold on the Abbot's face, past the cross on his chest and comes to rest on his hands holding the scripture, his own notebook nestled in its pages, a pen in his hand. The image reinforces the individual hand that interprets religious text. Under two minutes into the film and we have shifted away from any preconceived notion of the commune's orthodoxy. The Abbot voluntarily relinquishes his authority in favor of community awareness and a higher form of "corporate consciousness." The institution is recast as a progressive one with an egalitarian and participatory body politic.
Later in the film, the Abbot draws a distinction between Pharisaic law and their own attempt at the monastery to stretch the letter of the law for "an interpretation of the spirit." This is where a great deal of conflict comes from in human living… how to deal with man as he is and bring him to the spirit. The Pharisaical answer is you don't really deal with man, you simply impose a Sabbath or a system or a letter upon him.
The Abbot adds that Pharisaic law is not applicable to the monastery, as "We don't have a definition of how we are going to pray, or what we are going to study, or what exactly our work should be," a predicament that can lead to "tension in community." The looser the doctrine, therefore, the more difficult the rule.
Indeed, this is the central theme of Essene: a pursuit of the sublime, alongside a management of the mundane. Under its serene, stark and austere veneer, and the punctiliously followed routines of prayer, study and work are teeming, searching, restless minds.
Indeed the brothers' verbal offerings proffered "of (their) own free will and the joy of the Holy Spirit" are an odd mixture of personal remembrance and exhortation, not what one might expect from liturgical prayer. For example, a brother suggests that it's easy to warm to a stranger who comes to the door, "as love is easily shared among Christians," but to love someone you know requires work.
…there is the individual, the person that God created, this is the one we have difficulty in. His voice lifts in emphasis, "I also ask you to remember all those innocents of Hiroshima (pause) who died." Eight minutes into the film, and we are aware of individual quirks and obsessions and the vastly divergent inner worlds of the commune's members. In each man there is a struggle in the moment, the attempt to reconcile the self, its history and trajectory, with the intentional commitment to seek the "Spirit," however nebulously that is defined.
The Abbot uses a language that would suit a cognitive therapist: ... so the little problems like in our chapter business should ideally be the workshop of learning to listen to the Spirit. When opinions vary considerably or oppose violently, then what is the Spirit saying in each person, and how does that possibly fit together? Unless we learn that, we just continue to shift the ego battles from one question to another.
Freudian ego psychology laces the subtext in many an interaction. 11 The handsome and amiable Abbot is today's HR manager. 12 Smiling expansively so as not to give offence, he emphasizes the importance of listening and integration, lest the ego simply shift the battleground, in his words, from "what we (are) going to eat," to "whether or not we will drink beer on Sunday." Evidently, consummate managerial skills are essential qualifications for the institutional head of a monastery, not simply scholarship of scripture, or heightened devotionality.
Apart from readings from scripture and scenes of liturgical prayer that make up the bulk of the film, there are interactions captured amongst the monks, and brief interludes of engagement in domestic tasks: a young pony-tailed postulant (who, in another scene, is shown smoking languidly while discussing with brother Anthony the apparent improvements in his attitude towards discipline) is shown cleaning up the lounge area, picking up coffee cups, dusting off furniture and photo frames. A brother in plainclothes harvests potatoes outdoors; the brother in briefs from the first shot is seen again mowing the lawn.
The film returns indoors for a conference between the Abbot and a monk whose name we learn is Wilfred. This entire session revolves around the use of nomenclature and serves as an example of the kind of ego battle to which the Abbot Brother Richard offers prayers for brother Anthony: "Healing that will make him whole." The hand-held camera creates a choreography of moving bodies and clasped hands: "Heal him, Jesus!" The harmonic singing overtakes the cry of the cicadas outside. The séance is an intense one, performance integral to the ritual.
As voices sing in unison, "Make him whole," we witness a theology-based psychiatry at work.
All of a sudden the fervor and intimacy break. We are outdoors, following a man who walks down an urban street and enters a store. For the first time we are outside the monastery's grounds. The man asks a woman at the store where the "picnic types of things might be" and is directed to the correct aisle. In my first viewing of the film, I did not pick up that the man whom the camera follows is no other than brother Wilfred, so transformed is he in appearance, wearing civilian clothes, sporting a straw hat, and without the glasses from the previous scene.
Besides, his comportment is entirely unlike his previous appearance. Ease in comprehension is not something Wiseman caters to, so in the absence of a simple identifying title, the viewer undergoes a period of confusion wondering who this person is, or why we have left the confines of the monastery. In fact, the scene deliberately makes the viewer think this is not Wilfred since he is repeatedly called "Herb" by a store manager who appears to know him, and with whom Wilfred engages in friendly banter. The curmudgeonly monk who faced off the Abbot in the earlier scene is jaunty and sociable here, presenting his everyday self, 16 chatting over trivialities-potato peelers that work and won't peel away the hand. He clearly enjoys the camera's attention now that he has it on his terms, outside the communal institution, where, to quote him, familiarity breeds contempt. Richard's baritone lifts the acapella to soaring heights. In an alternative universe, Richard would make a commanding King Lear or Othello on stage.
A nun with a compassionate Julie Andrews countenance takes a stroll on the monastery's grounds in Richard's company. The shot of the man raking grass precedes the scene with a layover of sound to establish proximity. Richard appears overwrought, and the nun reassures him thus, "When you get down to the fine grain of things, it is going to hurt. Don't worry if it hurts." To this, Richard responds, The worrying went away a long time ago. The only thing we worry about is the effect it has on the other people around us, but I shouldn't do that either as the Holy Spirit takes care of that too… Again, we have no idea of the context. Gently, the nun says, Here you really begin to know each other … when you live so close together, you reveal yourself and others reveal themselves to you, and sometimes, not intentionally, we touch the tender spots in people.

Richard speaks of his raw wounds:
It's like ripping off the old skin and new skin appears and it's fresh wounds in which salt is sprinkled.
The camera moves from a two shot to a slow zoom into Richard's face. He continues, Every little thing hurts. And you want to love so bad. They give it all to you and you want to give it right back… We see the physical manifestation of brother Richard's despair without understanding its cause. The events that Richard refers to are not on camera, adding to our sense of intrigue or displacement as we actively scour the film for meaning.
The mystical body is so present here, so I can do it here, but it's so hard on the outside… you get all hung up when the ego takes over, like this, like it's doing to me right now ... it's so much easier to play the Bardos … in the Tibetan Book of the Dead you go through all the Bardos of development, all the strange illusions and Maya… it's so easy to play those games but you can't do that here.
-You can't do that here.
-No, you can't do that here… that's why there's no depression.
There's unhappiness sometimes, but there's no depression. There's a river of joy underneath, but you can't always express that to people around you. Richard, the proverbial seeker, will likely find in the monastery only a temporary home. His search for 'campground' is far from over. 24 In the Eucharist that follows, to which nuns as well as lay visitors are The overpowering feeling is that the hold of the "Spirit" is a tenuous one amongst these teeming, disparate minds. The Abbot alone seems in control of the ship pulled by competing tides. Ritual is its steady mast. The consecrated wine of the Eucharist is poured accompanied by the singing of hymns ("My cup is overflowing.") The Abbot makes the rounds with the thurible, releasing incense and bestowing blessings upon the congregation. A prayer of peace is passed from person to person as he breaks bread, "Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord." Filmed in long takes, unusual for Wiseman, the camera lingers in its witnessing of solemnity and ardor. As has been noted, there are fewer sequences in Essene than in any Wiseman film of the period. 27 The prayer concludes, and the congregation sits for the evening meal. The visitors sit at one It is as commonplace an institutional problem as bullying. Brother Anthony adds that anyone he introduces to the Abbey similarly meets with brother Wilfrid's disapproval. He despairs of Wilfred's "beating up" of initiates (a term, I hope, he uses figuratively!) and is of the opinion that resolution cannot occur privately, such conflicts need to be openly addressed in chapter sessions. The Abbot, diplomatic as ever, requests that "specific cases" be referred to him "in the future," to which brother Antony retorts that the Abbot has been "saying this for 18 years and I have been giving you tons of specifics and not a damn thing happens." The camera holds unerringly on Anthony's face, firm in its tension and disapproval.
There are a few in the family who have to get with it… the solution is to start loving the brothers, that's all there is to it.
Brotherly love, it would seem, is no easy task. By contrast, the evocation of divine love is omnipresent and powerful, erupting in full theatrical effulgence an hour into the film during the Eucharist when brother Richard takes the stage to perform an uninterrupted 7 minute soliloquy. The unsuspecting viewer of Essene has now entered the most bewildering section of the film.
"I want to tell you a story about a man and his beloved," brother Richard begins. The esoteric and contorted tale involves the visit of a man to the town of his 'beloved,' where he is introduced to the old townsmen, "who dance with stately step," and to the town's younger population who dance with "merry step" and "sparkle." The man eventually appears to lose his foothold as each group becomes self-enclosed, dancing its own dance. "Make them all dance the same dance," the man cries out, says Richard, eventually tearing off the vestment, and in the process, "crippling his beloved," finally retreating to a tower from which he proceeds to throw himself off. Brother Richard's histrionics and hyperbole are met with matterof-fact acceptance by the rest of the group. "How shall he be healed?" Richard moans. In a state of passionate delirium, he opens his eyes and rises to his feet, Do you know anyone like that here? Well if you don't know someone like that, then you're looking at someone like that right now.
Following the scattered clues in the film, I interpret Richard's performance as a cry for unity within the church and his own uneasy existence within the monastery, straddled as he is between an older and a younger generation with divergent allegiances. Continuing to apply Goffman's dramaturgical framework to the social institution of the monastery, brother Richard superbly conducts his "impression management" 29 through his performance. In what Goffman has termed the "information game" namely, "a cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation and rediscovery," 30 a "working consensus" is arrived at by the audience, who are also, participant-actors. The brothers gather around Richard, hands reach for his head, neck and torso, arms intertwine around him. "Heal him!" the litany rises.
As a self-appointed 'ideal' viewer of the film, and one who does not claim her interpretations are in any way intended by Wiseman, I read in brother Richard's performative, a sublimation of his own disappointment with the church (the "raw wounds") alongside his perceived inadequacy to love God and his spiritual brethren in the manner prescribed. Brother Richard initially presents himself as the storyteller of the narrative, one who stands in the wings as it were, both onstage and off. Then, in a surprise reveal, the 3rd person 'visitor' to the land of the 'beloved' becomes no other than Richard himself, full-blown and pressingly onstage. "I am very crippled!" he declares. The performance of the confessional provides Richard with a frame-work that both restores his self-esteem and envelopes him within community through compassion and forgiveness. Both Jourard and Schlenker write about the strategic value of self-disclosure in fostering intimacy. "A person who won't disclose is pictured as isolated, unknown, and therefore unloved," 31 brother Wilfred being a classic case in point, whereas brother Richard is the very opposite.
Theatre, psycho-therapy, trance-possession, liturgical prayer meet in the moment. The performative speech act has had its desired perlocutionary effect. 32 Expressions of drunken joy fill the room. A range of personalities are on display here, some rejoice in making themselves physically available, others are more cautious. Brother Wilfred is never seen in embrace. The Benedictine experience in Wiseman's Essene is a theater of the sublime. Never are the brothers more conjoined in spirit than through music, song, oratory, story-telling, gesture, touch. Brayne's cinematography is at its finest in this film, capturing in extreme close-ups, and unhurried moving shots, the dance of We are not very well put together… Martha has to go to the Lord and ask him to speak to Mary. Why doesn't she speak to Mary directly? They are not communicating very well.
With theatrical flourish, the Abbot describes Martha as "searching relentlessly, aggressively, possessively to deal with all the things of creation," whereas Mary looks through it all, "contemplating you might say, the one thing behind all the many things." The Abbot locates 'Egoism' in the Martha quality: It is overwhelmed by the disconnection of things...she is fretting about all these things to get the meal on the table...The ego is possessing and as soon as the ego runs into another ego, there is war.
Gesture is an inextricable part of his speech. The Abbot curls his hands into fists and head-butts them, a move unerringly caught by Brayne's camera. "Who left the rake out overnight?" he adds by way of example, producing an audible chuckle.
Wiseman's repetition of the shot of the monk raking grass has, of course, been no accident.
But in the Mary quality, the ego subsides… It knows it is fruitless to manage, to possess, to acquire, to desire things, even if for the good of other people.
Ultimately it would seem that the problem with monastic living is no different from any lay enterprise, it has to do with the clash of personalities and the difficulty of getting along. Egos must be smoothed over, and passions contained.
Brother Richard's angst over the Catholic church's rejection of Teilhardian cosmogenesis will never be adequately addressed within the system, but his turmoil will find release through affective role-playing. The sonorous repetition of the prayer "Make him whole" bears a distinctly psychological subtext. Can small groups in the parish be allowed to explore various kinds of spirituality? Classical Western, Eastern, Alcoholics Anonymous, holistic health, journaling, meditation, exercise and diet, Biblical, Sacramental, environmental well-being, justice for the poor, inner transformation programs, healing of memories, world peace and many more? If a particular way of spirituality promotes health and growth, then Christ and the Spirit must surely be there even if not named directly. Bringing all of this spirituality to the Eucharist could make it a celebration and feast of extraordinary richness. 38 A re-calibration of the expanding Spirit blurring the very boundaries of the commune's expressed intentionality is certainly an extraordinary departure on the part of its spiritual head, a re-envisioning that would have greatly appealed to a seeker such as brother Richard had it occurred during his time. Perhaps the soon to retire Abbot was in a better position to make such a declaration, given that the everyday running of the monastery was no longer his responsibility. Weighing on him too was a rapidly changing world to which he refers frequently in the book, and which he sees becoming increasingly resistant to organized religion. 39 Interestingly, the monastery upon the Abbot's return a year later, 40 had whittled down to half its original strength and consisted of ten senior and one junior monk. "The Abbott is doing pots and pans occasionally," Reid adds dryly. 41 A true testament to his openness and human resource skills is Reid's success in keeping together that motley group as long as he did. Predictably, it was the younger monks who decamped during his sabbatical. While Reid professes, outwardly at least, his belief that the lord's beloved friends Mary and Martha can co-exist, there is little evidence of such success. The writer, Judson Jerome, who lived in, and co-founded a commune while researching other communes, points to the most plebian of problems as being the root of great disaffection. "If you figure out who is going to carry out the garbage everything else will be simple," he writes. 42 Fifty years after the making of Essene, all manner of communes continue to proliferate in the United States, the popularity of eco-villages and co-housing projects predominating among intentional communities. Despite the documented increase in populations that prefer to remain religiously unaffiliated, 43 Miller is of the opinion that "communities based in every conceivable religion from traditional Christianity to belief in flying saucers to wicca are alive and well." 44 Of far greater weight, however, are the collective identities that thrive in the nether realms of cyber space, offering community and communal action without the requirement of cohabitation. As one might expect, the duality of Mary and Martha are far better accommodated online. Without delving into the social psychology of virtual communities, a subject that lies outside the scope of this paper, suffice it to say that half a century after the making of Essene, the communitarian in virtual space is free to profess, opine, denounce, divine, embrace and embattle without having to contend with the irritation of who left out the rake overnight.