The long-delayedBenedetta, the newest cinematic event from acclaimed directorPaul Verhoeven, is a period film that reaches new heights for the filmmaker. It is a story of religion, sex, and the failings of institutions all wrapped into one. It displays violence, eroticism, and death in a way that only Verhoeven can. It is a truly unique work in the director’s already eccentric filmography. One of the most remarkable things about it is that much of the film’s wild and chaotic story is drawn straight from the pages of history. It lifts from real events to create a portrait of the era and the true story of the iconic subject that gave the film its title.
The film starsVirginie EfiraasBenedettaCarlini, a 17th-century Italian nun who begins to experience increasingly vivid and disturbing visions. It is an open question about whether she is simply having a mental break or whether the visions are actually real. The potential significance of the visions sees Benedetta rise in stature, bringing more scrutiny to her personal relationships that then threaten to consume her.
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Before going any further, it should be noted that this piece will be taking a rather comprehensive look at the history that underpins Verhoeven’s story and the direction the film takes itself. It therefore must be warned that some details of the plot will be revealed from here forward.
SPOILER ALERTThe film is adapted from the 1986 non-fiction bookImmodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italyby author and Stanford historianJudith C. Brown. The book draws from archive documents to trace the life of Benedetta, an Abbess or female superior of a convent of nuns. According toa review of the book in the New York Times, Brown found the documents in the state archives of Florence.
These documents are largely transcripts of “inquests,” or official judicial inquiries, that looked into Benedetta’s life. The inquiries ended with her being charged for creating “fraudulent miracles (including self-inflicted ‘stigmata’) and having an “erotic love affair with another sister in the Theatine order.” Most significantly, Brown’s book represents one of the earliest documentation of lesbianism in modern Western history and is the focus of what the film most accurately portrays. As the most central part of the story, the relationship between Benedetta and Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) in the film closely aligns with Brown’s work and the history being told. Obviously, Verhoeven being Verhoeven, there are many creative liberties that are taken in the film that are not found in the documents from the time.
Chief among them is the use of a dildo carved out of a wooden Virgin Mary statue. It is a humorous device, meant to be a full cinematic embrace of the glorious blasphemy of Benedetta’s sexual liberation, though not something that can be seen in any research done into the time period. Of course, it is unlikely that such an item would ever be mentioned in the era’s recorded history. One can still hold out some hope that it may have in fact existed and gone unmentioned, though that it is regrettably highly unlikely.
Another key aspect is the plague wreaking havoc upon the world. In the film, Benedetta warns that such a plague is coming as punishment for sins. That is supported by historic records, though some of the sequencings of events are rearranged for the purpose of narrative drama. The immediacy with which the plague begins to take hold predates much of what the actual timeline was. Benedetta’s 1619 prediction did come true, though not for several years after she said it would happen. It was not until 1631 that the plague struck.
As for the investigations, that closely aligns with the truth (or, at least, therecordedtruth). Benedetta was indeed investigated multiple times for, among other things, having a relationship with another woman in the convent. It was that scrutiny that eventually led to her being severely punished, with historians believing that she spent thirty-five years in prison before dying of “fever and colic pains.” The conclusion of Verhoeven’s film plays out a little bit differently, with Benedetta choosing to return to the convent to face the consequences and forgoing the opportunity to escape.
The film creates a much more dramatic sequence of events in the lead-up to that eventual return. Benedetta is nearly burned to death for her actions and is only just barely saved before being completely consumed by the fire. She is only rescued because the whole town decides to rise up and disrupt the proceedings that would have ended in her demise. This element of the story is not what the documents tell us, instead existing to create an intense final act that places its main character in dire peril. It marks one of the many points where Verhoeven dials everything up far beyond what the grounded truth of the situation actually told us happened.
It all becomes part of the general trend of the film to loosely take aspects of reality and push them in new directions that suit its narrative purposes. The basics are true, Benedetta was a real person who did claim to have visions and later was believed to have a lesbian relationship. However, even as the story of the film is based on truth and takes many key elements from history, it still molds it into a story all its own that either exaggerates or completely severs itself from what the historical record actually is as we know it.
