Saint Maud (2019)

directed by Rose Glass

UK

84 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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I'm not sure what year to put as the release date for this, because it's been circulating festivals and highly limited theater releases since 2019, but then got caught up in the covid turmoil that scrambled many other films' releases until it finally dropped near Valentine's Day 2021 so that we may all enjoy it with our sweethearts since it is such a fitting date night movie. I'm joking about that. Probably don't watch this with your date unless you know them really well.

More than anything else, this movie is tremendously good as a character study; specifically it's excellent at establishing backstory with a minimum of context. We don't revisit the opening shot of the main character having just either witnessed or committed something horrible in a medical setting, but this sets up basically her entire motivation for the rest of the film- obviously that traumatic experience triggered her into becoming intensely religious, and her religion is the centerpiece of the film. But the viewers' knowledge of it is contained basically in that ten-second cold open and maybe two or three other small references. Morfydd Clark does such an incredible job bringing this character to life that I thought surely she must be one of those actresses who is debuting for the first time and knocking it out of the park, because her entire persona felt so unfamiliar that I was sure I'd never seen her before until she was Maud. But I was surprised to look her up and see that not only does she have an acting career, she's been in big movies: stuff like Pride & Prejudice & Zombies, Crawl, and The Personal History of David Copperfield. She inhabits Maud so thoroughly that I found it hard to imagine her not being Maud.

I'm going to add my usual disclaimer and say that I was probably coming at this movie from a slightly different angle than may have been intended, because I'm a horror fan through and through, and my interpretation of films like this where there might be an ongoing supernatural event but there also might be something off about the main character's mental state will always be, first and foremost, that the supernatural event is real. When it is left ambiguous, I tend to fill in the blanks to make it true rather than an illusion. Saint Maud, to me, feels like it's leaning more towards being a straightforward horror film, as in something where there is genuine otherworldly activity going on, but you can never be certain because the sole witness to all of this is Maud, who has a deep personal investment in the veracity of God and divinity. I think this movie explores a little bit of what faith is and how people can be driven to it for the wrong reasons. When looking for an avenue that will allow them to avoid dealing with a trauma that they perceive as their fault, people can turn their attention towards the divine and become convinced that salvation from an outside entity is possible through trials, because this is easier than simply forgiving themselves.

It is interesting to see that a lot of reviews describe this as a scary movie- interesting because it lacks almost every single hallmark of a horror film aside from general ambiance. At no point was I afraid that something was going to jump out at me, which is usually what I feel when I watch a movie that I consider scary. I'm not mentioning the popular perception of this as creepy because I disagree with it; while I wasn't personally frightened by this movie, I think the fact that so many other people were is proof that this is a really distinct and masterful new direction in horror, because the horror of it comes from such a multitude of things that it transcends genre boundaries. It's unnerving because you're never sure what Maud is capable of, and it's unnerving because you're never sure if some external force is acting upon her and what that force might be. Is it a dark, demonic entity masquerading as a holy one? Or is this just what God is like, which is a far more horrifying possibility?

For a debut feature this is just stunning. There's so much depth in this for such a relatively short film that feels so small and self-contained. The William Blake motif is also very interesting because I am a fan of- though by no means an expert on- his art, and the way Maud applies it to herself and draws inspiration from it is fitting but unusual. When I look at a Blake painting I get the impression of a hallucinatory, mystic religion, a complete abandonment of narrative and a casting away of the personal in order to perceive the divine. This is not quite what Maud does: again, her need for faith comes more out of a need for outside validation that she didn't do the wrong thing. Her perception of God is a 1:1 conversation. She asks what to do and is told it, she doesn't really interpret signs or have visions that are opaque to her in their meaning.

I also just really like the idea that God speaks Welsh.