The Last Movie You Watched

[Rev. Rye]

Most of the "children" we see look like Teens. In fact, looking up the IMDb pages for the actors in the film, Jenny Agutter was the youngest credited member of the cast. Her age? Well, she was born in December 1952, and, barring any concrete dates for filming, let's be conservative and say she was 15 when she filmed it. Possibly 16. That's how young these children are. The boys would most likely have been confirmed and the girls would likely have gone through menarche. Therefore, besides the heavily carnal nature of their confessions gives the lie to the "they are little children, most of them are prepubescent" approach. Seriously, did we watch the same fucking movie?

Whether or not a real monk would not have seen homosexuality as witchcraft, honestly, it feels far too facile a reading for the film. Most of the few other reviews I've managed to find take a similar tack to me.

And if you're still inclined to think it's just some sort of Catholic propaganda whitewashing the Children's Crusades and blaming it all on the gays, bear in mind, Jerzy Andrzejewski (who wrote the novel this film was based upon) was himself gay (or at least bisexual), and as for his religious beliefs, well, in his earlier period, he was Catholic. After his work in the Resistance, however, he lost his faith in God, and it doesn't look like he ever regained it. By this point in his career, if anything, he was a secular humanist. So, an irreligious Gay/Bi man writing a novel about how the Catholic Church didn't deserve blame for the Children's Crusade, but homosexuality does. Makes so much sense. And before you go around saying "That was the novel, the director could have changed so much about it for the film!" It turns out that from what I've been able to find about the original novel, its themes aren't really that different between the film and novel.

Seriously, this information is pretty readily available online and knowing the context in which it was created should be illuminating.