Merton - A Film Biography
by Paul Wilkes, Audrey Glynn
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DVD details
Actor: Alexander ScourbyDirector: Audrey Glynn, Paul Wilkes
Brand: First RUN Features
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 57 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
DVD Reviews of Merton - A Film Biography
DVD Review: "Christianity rebels against the alienated life..."
Summary: 4 Stars
So said Thomas Merton in the last talk he ever gave, the famous Bangkok lecture delivered the morning of his death. The talk didn't go over very well. Some thought that Merton had drawn too intimate a comparison between monasticism and Marxism; others felt that his closing insistence that "from now on, everyone must stand on his own feet" was too harsh a criticism of religious institutionalism.
The ambivalence that greeted Merton's speech was something he'd gotten used to during his life, and director and writer Paul Wilkes does a good job in a short amount of time of sketching that life in "Merton: A Film Biography." Merton's confused childhood and youth, his conversion and entry into Gethsemane monastery, his early penetrating but sometimes frustratingly orthodox spiritual writings, his later realization that the contemplative life was inseparable from social and moral responsibility and his consequent advocacy of nonviolence, civil rights, disarmament, and the end of the Viet Nam conflict, his immersion in eastern spirituality; his own personal battles to integrate contemplation and activism, as well as to reconcile his deep need for community and his deeper need for solitude: at each stage of his spiritual journey, Merton surprised people, inspired those who were looking for their own path, and saddened and even infuriated those who thought he was betraying theirs.
In everything he did and wrote, though, he was rebelling against the alienated life. In one of his earliest books, he wrote that "we're at liberty to be real or unreal; but we can't make the choiced with impunity. Choices have consequences," and this is very much in the spirit of his final words about alienation. One of the forms of alienation that he personally fought against was his own fame, as the film makes clear. He intensely desired "not to be turned into a Catholic myth."
Other reviewers have criticized the film for what they see as its simplistic handling of a complex subject. While I appreciate their concerns, they seem to me to miss the fact that Wilkes' "Merton" intends to be an overview rather than an exhaustive study. I think it succeeds in that admirably. The photographs are intriguing, it's fantastic to see clips of Merton's final lecture, and the people interviewed--for example, Jim Forest, Robert Lax, John Eudes Bamberger, Robert Giroux, Naomi Burton Stone (Merton's agent), James Laughlin (Merton's New Directions publisher), Ernesto Cardenal, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh--all shed light on his work and personality.
For newcomers to Merton, this is a good introduction. For those who've read and loved Merton for years, this is an opportunity to see some pictures of an old friend and to hear his pals share stories about him. He truly did change the face of monasticism and spirituality. Like his Buddhist fellow-monk Thich Nhat Hanh, he helped all of us realize that social responsibility wasn't antithetical to contemplation. Social responsibility, if entered into properly, IS a form of contemplation.
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