Julian of Norwich was a religious mystic and anchoress in the Middle Ages. After a grave illness during which she experienced visions of Christ on the cross, Julian lived out her days in a cell at the St. Julian’s Church, where she received visitors and pilgrims, as well as writing a spiritual text that detailed her Christianity and divinely inspired hallucinations. The book, Revelations of Divine Love, is the earliest surviving text in the English language to have been written by a woman.
Many feminist theologians over the years have turned to Julian’s text in order to get an all-too-rare picture of the life of an otherwise ordinary woman in the Middle Ages. In her remarkable new film, Caroline Golum stages the life and visions of Julian (Tessa Strain), depicting her life as an anchoress. With its slow pace and the deliberate diction of her performers, Golum has produced a film of classical rigor and a not inconsiderable didactic impulse. In visual style, Revelations echoes the Brechtian approach of Manoel de Oliveira, with his clear signifiers of the period coexisting with a haunted, atmospheric modernity. But probably the most apposite points of comparison are the late educational films of Roberto Rossellini. In works like The Age of the Medici (1972) and Cartesius (1974), Rossellini created a space on Italian television for an examination of history and discourse. And like Golum’s film, the Rossellini works demonstrate the styles and mores of the period, rather than attempting to convince the viewer of their cinematic reality.
Julian’s illness and initial visions can be seen as a sort of prologue, wherein the young woman is seen in the context of her home and family – in particular the domestic activity of her mother (Mary Jo Mecca), sisters, and cousin/servant/best friend Sarah (Isabel Pask). Against this bounded feminine life, Julian’s visions are lush, sensual, and violent. As has been the case through the centuries, “madness” affords a woman the freedom of bold, untethered experiences, permitting a kind of travel of the mind. The irony of Julian’s situation has not been lost on critics and commentators over the years. By allowing herself to be permanently walled into the single room of the church, Julian takes the only available avenue for departing the domestic sphere and having social engagement, however limited.
Being an anchoress also permits Julian to be a writer. We only know of her existence because of the surviving text, and Golum depicts the thoughtful if demure Julian as a conscientious thinker and observer of the world around her. Her meditative pursuits are supported by her confessor, Father Ambrose (Theodore Bouloukos), with a compassionate paternal care. However, this is the time of the Black Plague, and while Julian’s anchorage keeps her protected from the disease for quite some time, it also renders her a passive spectator to the horrors of her era. Revelations depicts the anguish that Julian feels regarding the life she witnesses beyond her four walls.
Various townspeople come to her window to seek her counsel. One young woman confesses to Julian that she has committed the sin of envy, because she wishes she had died of the plague along with her children. Another young man describes rampant labor exploitation in his village and, in precisely coded language, informs him that God permits the oppressed to overthrow their oppressors, even violently if necessary. While Golum doesn’t suggest that Julian was the first liberation theologian, her film demonstrates that many problems of our time, as well as the possible solutions, have haunted society from its earliest days. And despite the structural marginalization of women, their desire for a full life has also been a constant, and is not (as some contemporary conservatives would have it) a cultural invention borne from feminism itself.
Throughout the film, Golum returns us to an establishing shot of St. Julian’s Church and the candlelit window where the anchoress resides. This shot does not mean to convince us of its verisimilitude; it is quite clearly a miniature model. (Art director Grant Stoops deserves particular mention for the meticulously crafted look of the film.) But this is part of Golum’s unique cinematic style. In its patient manner, this film means to show us a model of a “small life,” one confined to a six-by-six room which she would only exit upon death. (The film implies that Julian may have been permitted to leave by the Church, an option she spurned.) Throughout the film, the simple, solid-colored clothing and roughly thatched rooves openly display the modesty of Golum’s production. But at various points, Julian’s world is saturated with holy light. Golum and DP Gabe Elder bathe Strain and her surroundings in a glow worthy of Vermeer or Rembrandt. The message seems clear. There is no necessary correlation between an individual’s material circumstances and the power of their illumination.
Published as part of FIDMarseille 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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