Novitiate (2017)

“I don’t think it was a sin, I don’t think it was a sin. Because it didn’t feel like a sin. It felt like I’m supposed to feel.”

A common tale of religious doubtfulness and wavering spirituality. 
The gradual progression of the film’s narrative is something is to be adored. It presents the recurring idea of the ways in which religion adapts to the changing society and the consequences of such. This is not a discourse to criticise religion or religious people but rather a way to disregard absolutist thinking that holds religion for this case, Catholicism at a chokehold. Victims of change, the nuns are shown, through the lens in which are they are often put aside highlights womanhood through Catholicism.


“Not to mention it’s a slap in the face that the Sisters weren’t given any voice in the matter.”


“You honestly expected them to have their own voice, the Sisters?”


The entire point presented here by this dialogue is two sides of the same coin. In the sense that the Catholic church is adapting a more liberal mindset through Vatican II, one of ‘change, adaption of spiritual evolution’ yet still excludes women in the discussion.
It’s as though nun-hood is where the hold of heteronormativity is amplified and made far more difficult to abide by