Fried Adelphi is a Carthusian monk who has spent the last 25 years in a Swiss monastery under a vow of silence. His life is simple: work, pray and meditate. So what is he doing in a New York City church, pouring out his "sins" to a Catholic priest?
That is the mystery "Broken Silence" slowly unravels through the confession of Adelphi to Father Mulligan (Michael Moriarty), a priest and religious academician whose star is rising fast in the Church. Through the confession, we discover that Adelphi was chosen to leave his solitude and take off across the world to Java to negotiate a new lease on the monastery with its elderly, reclusive landlady. Having never flown before, he is petrified on the plane. Sitting next to him is a 20-year-old African-American woman who tries to comfort him, but also manages to steal his wallet and credit cards. She gets off in New Delhi, India, and he follows, unable to stomach the rest of the flight.
This is where the journey of realization begins for Adelphi, the woman and, in flashbacks to the confessional, Fr. Mulligan. The monk, without money or any idea of how to complete his trip, agrees to accompany the woman to the east coast of India so he can take a boat to his destination. During the weeks that follow, Adelphi is introduced to the world he left behind when he entered the monastery, and is literally "stripped" of his monastic ways in the process. In one scene, the woman enters the bathroom where Adelphi is in the tub. He is naked, she is bare-chested. After he pleads for her to leave, she picks up the heavy woolen undershirt and the socks he has been wearing for "penance" in the searing Indian heat, and throws them away. This scene, and several that follow, underscore the main difference between the two travelers: hers is an intensely practical and physical world, while his is one of philosophy and introspection where the body is subordinate to the soul.
By the time they reach their destination, Adelphi and the woman have come to understand and appreciate their differences. The monk has also discovered the reason for the woman's trip - she is afraid she is dying of a genetic abnormality that took her mother's life at the age of 20. Her dream is to spend her last days on a tropical beach and she has a last and, to him, "sinful" request of Adelphi .
Throughout the story, Fr. Mulligan sits in judgment over the monk, reciting chapter and verse the Church doctrines that apply to Adelphi's indiscretions. All of the New York scenes are shot in the confessional where Fr. Mulligan sits in the half light while the image of the monk is obscured by the screen between them. We find out very little about the priest's life directly. Only that he was a studious university man who had little, if any, experience with women and was written off by his college peers as a too-serious bookworm who got his sexual thrills vicariously from the girlie magazines he kept hidden in his room. Indirectly we can see that he's been wrapped up in playing the political game to advance his career. His knowledge of Canon Law has impressed his superiors but at the same time it seems to have distanced him from the human side of the Church. As a result, he just goes through the motions in his dealings with people, not actually caring about the penitents who pour out their most personal mistakes to him. In confession he hurries his parishioners along, slugs down liquor from a small bottle he keeps in his pocket and interrupts his absolutions to take calls from the Cardinal on his cell phone.
After the monk is finished with his story, Fr. Mulligan realizes that perhaps Adelphi hasn't sinned by breaking many of his monastic vows during his journey, but that he (Mulligan) has sinned by following and applying Church laws without much regard for human fallibility. Fr. Mulligan concedes this in the final exchange in the film where he tells the monk, "tomorrow you can hear MY confession."
The movie was shot mostly in India where the crowded streets of New Delhi, Bombay and Jakarta immediately thrust the monk into a sea of humanity and forced him to come face-to-face with the beauty and the harshness of life outside the monastery walls. The sights of the temples and of people washing in the sacred River Ganges, along with an intrusion in the prayers of a Tibetan man in Java, underscored the religiosity of people no matter where they lived, what their station in life or which god they chose to worship.
The film was beautifully photographed and the acting was superb. Shabana Azmi won a Golden Hugo award at the Chicago Film Festival for lead actress, and Michael Moriarty won for supporting actor. Aside from the three main characters in the film, most of the other actors were locals from India and Malaysia, including the Indian Director of Immigration who played himself in a rather large speaking role.
Thank you for this excellent summary of Broken Silence.
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