Ostrov (The Island, 2006)

This afternoon and evening I watched the film Ostrov (The Island), a Russian movie that is often described as being about a Russian Orthodox monk. Many of my friends have recommended it to me, but I never made an attempt to watch it. I don't care for religious movies that I think are propaganda to encourage conversion, or to glorify the history of Orthodoxy, or even of Christianity in general. Without researching it, I foolishly dismissed Ostrov as a film about Russian monasticism, to glorify it so as to encourage men to become monks.
I think I got that impression from hearing of one or two men who did exactly that, having been so moved by the film. How shallow I am!
I couldn't have been more wrong in my opinion!

The setting of Ostrov is a poor, small Russian monastery on some abandoned isles in the Russian far north, but that is incidental to the story. The film is not, as I thought, about monasticism. The story unfolds within the context of this tiny outpost of Russian monks, but the main character is not even a monk but lives among them, at their fringes, as a sort of tolerated lay lunatic. Actually, he must be a lay brother of the settlement, because he is officially under the authority of the abbot. The problem is, he doesn't listen to him at all. “You must judge whether in God's eyes it is right to listen to you and not to God” (Acts 4:19), the response of holy apostle Peter to the Sanhedrin, forms the ground of tension between ‘Father Anatoly’ and the abbot and other monks on the island.

This film is about Orthodox Christianity in its deepest and yet most honest and universal aspect, showing how it is the most merciful expression of Christian faith, revealing its latent faults and shortcomings, and the sins of its members, while at the same time demonstrating how without doubt it is the successor of the biblical faith of the Old Testament as well as of the New. Without trying to convince anyone on a polemical level of the truth of Orthodoxy, it simply shows itself in the shame of our sinful humanity, and it shows God in His miraculous and loving response to us sinners, when we live in constant remembrance of the Word of God, calling upon the name of Jesus our Savior, “for of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved” (Acts 4:12).

The main character of the film, Fr Anatoly, thinks he killed a man and has been living in abject repentance for his entire life. He works at menial tasks, lives alone in a shed that functions as a boiler room, sleeps on a pile of coal, and constantly prays, recites the Jesus prayer and the psalms from memory, and plays what people call pranks on those who come to see him. What most of them don't understand is that his pranks are signs given to him by God to warn people of the consequences of their actions.

Like holy prophet Ezekiel who revealed by signs the will of the Lord (cf. Ezekiel, chapter 4), and like the other prophets, Fr Anatoly often reveals the secrets of people's hearts not in words but by signs. To a young woman who was pregnant out of wedlock (but was not showing yet), he revealed her sin to her by appearing before her with something concealed under his vest that made his belly protrude like that of a 9 months' pregnant woman. When she confessed to him, he reasoned with her to not have an abortion. Then he prophesied that she would have a ‘golden boy’. She believed and went away happy.

The monks in the monastery were annoyed that people were coming to see the ‘holy man’ and not paying much respect to them, and there was some envy, but the film shows how even monks who think they have renounced all to follow Jesus have just as many sins and weaknesses as others. It also shows how Christ works among people who are willing to live together no matter what, who are willing to love their neighbors even when they are wronged by them, and how forgiveness and love heals and even delivers people from what sicknesses hide in their hearts.

A woman came to see Fr Anatoly with her lame son. He prayed for him, and asked the boy to also pray for himself. Everything was done informally in the boiler room. The only ikon, one of Jesus, was propped up on a windowsill, and they prayed before it. The boy was made to stand on an upturned chunk of wood. After the prayer, Fr Anatoly told him to start walking. The boy and his mother were overjoyed to find that the boy could walk. He went for his crutches, but Fr Anatoly took them away.

Then he told the woman she must stay overnight at the guest house and in the morning have her son go to confession and receive the Holy Mysteries, and that would complete and seal his healing. The woman refused, saying she had to work, and left. As they were rowing away in the boat, Fr Anatoly ran after them into the water and grabbed the boy and took him ashore. He insisted to the mother, “What is more important, your son or your job?” and he made them stay. This is just one of the many incidents that showed the power of faith, and the resistance even pious people put up against it.

One other incident moved me. There was a Russian admiral whose daughter was acting strangely, but no doctors could cure her. He brought her to the monastery because he heard they had a ‘holy man.’ He didn't realise that Fr Anatoly was that man. When he saw the girl he confidently said, she is demon possessed. “How do you know that?” asked the skeptical father. “Because I know the demon she has personally,” he responded. The father at that point mumbled that he'd had enough of this superstition, and started to leave, but his daughter followed after Fr Anatoly like a child following the Pied Piper. He led her to a nearby island and there he prayed, and she was delivered from the demon. There was nothing of ceremonial or sensationalism in the exorcism, just a humble calling on God for deliverance. It reminded me of the accounts in the gospels where Christ drove out demons, and of stories I have read in the Desert Fathers. The devil was driven out. The girl went away restored.

This post is already too long, but I only want to say, I cannot praise this film enough for its simplicity, lack of worldly glory and embellishment, its faithfulness to the truth of Orthodoxy, not the public image of this faith, but what really happens within its depths. Watching it was for me an unraveling of my own life, and once again the truth of the Way (as the faith was called in the book of Acts) was revealed, the mystical Body of Christ as it is, this is what I have joined myself to in joining myself to Christ, this is the faith of the martyrs, of the holy and God-bearing fathers, of the holy apostles. This is the faith that holds up the universe. It cannot be disputed. It can only be lived. I never thought it could be captured on film, but in Ostrov, I believe it has.