Here’s a Detroit Free Press article highlighting new DVD releases out today. Schindler’s List is the big one, but also out today is
Far more tasteful is 1972’s “Brother Sun, Sister Moon” (TWO STARS out of four stars, Paramount, $14.99), from director Franco Zeffirelli. This is a flower-power biography of St. Francis of Assisi, the ascetic who riled up the Catholic church by contending that God was all about love, that materialism was bad, and Mother Nature was cool. That’s at least according to this version, which leaves out the part about his going to the Middle East to convert Muslims. The photography is soft-focus, and so is the soundtrack by Donovan, peace be with him.
I know, I know, this movie is totally lame, I guess, but it had a HUGE impact on me when I saw it in college. All of us who were involved in the campus ministry went to see it at the student center, and we came out, arm in arm, singing the Donovan song they sing after San Damiano has been complete, and everyone comes in with their livestock and their vegetables…
If you want your dream to be
Build it slow and surely.
Small beginnings, greater ends.
Heartfelt work grows purely.If you want to live life free,
Take your time, go slowly.
Do few things, but do them well.
Simple joys are holy.Day by day, stone by stone,
Build your secret slowly.
Day by day, you’ll grow, too,
You’ll know heaven’s glory.
And we were so inspired, so jazzed, so determined that we could live like that, too….
You know, there are actually some rather powerful scenes in that film. When Francis happens upon Clare tending to the lepers, “Brothers! Brothers!” she calls, and they emerge from the woods. His moment in the chapel when the eyes of Christ on the cross, formerly closed, open, and gaze at him fiercely. When Francis has started rebuilding San Damiano in the snow, and his friends slowly move from thinking he’s just whacked to throwing off their shoes and joining him as well.
You know, I take it back. It’s not totally lame. It’s sort of goofy, in its total effect now, I guess, and it’s not a tenth of what St. Francis was, but… Here I take my stand. I can do no other.
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