From the riddle of the Annunciation to the bloody sacrifice on Good Friday, the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church reverberate with two riveting forms of drama: the mystery play and the horror show. The complementary doctrines of faith and expiation set the tone for an ageold debate. To the faithful, the church is a magisterial edifice built on the miracle of mankind's redemption by a loving God made flesh. To the cynical atheist, it is a cult based on transcendental cannibalism: the belief that one can achieve salvation by literally consuming God in the form of the Eucharist. To the agnostic outsider, with neither grace nor grudges, the church is an elaborately carved door behind which lies the enigma of human existence.
It is the considerable strength and the ultimate limitation of Agnes of God that it gives nearly equal time to each point of view. The believer is Mother Miriam Ruth (Anne Bancroft), head of a convent of cloistered nuns, whose young charge Sister Agnes (Meg Tilly) has been accused of strangling with its umbilical cord a baby to whom she had secretly given birth. The troubled cynic is Martha Livingston (Jane Fonda), a lapsed-Catholic psychiatrist determined to discover if Agnes is mad or a murderer, a harlot or a modern saint. The outsider is the moviegoer, who can have a pretty grand time monitoring a tug of wills between the mother superior and the shrink, while contemplating the place of faith in a world that has given up on miracles.
In transferring his 1982 Broadway play to the screen, John Pielmeier has achieved a sort of Jane Fonda Workout of rewriting. He has stripped it of dialogue fat and added muscle and connective tissue. The piece, which took place on a bare stage, now roams through a handsome Quebec abbey and beyond. Within or outside the convent, however, Agnes would be a girlish anachronism. She is of another age--perhaps 13, perhaps the 13th century. She believes, like a medieval ascetic, that any seeker of sanctity should flagellate the sins out of her body, and she is convinced that the child she carries is a gift from the living God. The blood that pours from her body is a sign of both punishment and fulfillment. She will become Mary Magdalene or Mary the Mother of God.
On Broadway, Amanda Plummer gave a performance that was horrifying and inspiring in its hurtling physicality. Her Agnes was a voluptuary of angelic possession, and Plummer easily stole the show. Norman Jewison's direction goes for narrative suspense and coherence over emotional jolts, so now Agnes is merely first among equals. All three stars do smart, honorable work: Tilly, her childlike faith traumatized by the rude stirrings of womanhood; Fonda, the reluctant exorcist fiercely questioning her old God and, no less, herself; and Bancroft, a strict but up-to-date nun, with reserves of iron and irony.
Surprisingly, this trio of fine actresses is eclipsed by a bit player, Norma Dell'-Agnese, as a teenage novice on the day she is accepted into the order. An innocent ecstasy suffuses her face as she becomes a "bride of Christ"; she has found release in her surrender to the Saviour's discipline. Her radiance explains the deepest mysteries: God is love, and sisterhood is beautiful. --By Richard Corliss