When we first meet Jana, the protagonist of Maja Prettner’s Woman of God, she is giving a sermon to a packed house and seems invincible. The evangelical pastor clearly has a good relationship with the members of her parish smiling and shaking hands, she seems entirely at ease with her job which is also her life. Playing this year as part of Hot Docs’ The Changing Face of Europe program, the documentary simply follows its main character through what appears to be about a year in her life, giving her plenty of opportunities to speak but seemingly never asking her to account for herself more than she wants to.
So it’s hard to know whether Jana’s subsequent loss of faith is caused by the presence of the camera at all or if it was just lucky enough to be in the right place when wait for it the woman whose story they’ve chosen happened upon one helluva crisis. Regardless, it’s fascinating watching what Jana thinks about living change so dramatically over time while nothing much about her situation seems any different to us. It’s almost entirely an interior trip, and though it would appear that nothing changes for Jana outwardly, only for now does she reflect on not just what is happening around her but also what has already occurred.
Coming from a family full of ministers, Jana initially looks like someone who would fit very well into a world she knows so intimately. It might even be seen as an enviable position: Jana also appears to have a close relationship with her mother. Yet his happiness did not come without struggle indeed quite the opposite; all throughout those early shots establishing warm familial ties there plays Jana’s voiceover insisting again and again upon its hard-won nature after everything they went through together (and apart).
For instance: The past years when Mama didn’t talk to us because we were born outstay wedlock or that time Daddy got caught huffing paint thinner behind church during revival week were humbling. By this I mean they taught me patience, forgiveness, and resilience.
All of this only serves to make the subsequent ruptures in what had once appeared a stable life for such an otherwise discerning woman seem all the more shocking and terrifying. One issue is that fewer and fewer people are showing up at her church as the film wears on and her discomfort grows, Jana opens herself up to the crew more and more, sharing a long-held frustration with how little she feels her overseers have let her try to do to reach out to believers. At one point during her lowest period yet, she says she’s tired of always being given small parishes in the countryside that other pastors don’t want “I’m tired of eating scraps.”
She never usually says so, or anything else but as the film rolls on, Jana becomes more and more aware of how she always keeps everything to herself. But at first she seems almost proud of it: in one shocking act of self-revelation, she casually tells the filmmaker that she was abused by a family friend when she was a child, but also mentions that she forgave her abuser very soon afterward. She explains that she got better because the guy who hurt her must have been very sad. And again, being a pastor and seemingly incredibly mature, she is very convincing.
But eventually, Jana changes her tune on this point too. Did she really get over it so fast? Did it even happen? And what other resentments or traumas has she secretly buried over the years, believing they would never come back to haunt her? Woman of God is about a crisis of faith within one pastor’s life which is also an identity crisis; we only know about it through what this person says on camera.
While it may seem like a story about someone breaking away from their beliefs and (religious) habits that no longer work for them anymore, above all else it explores different ways people define themselves at various times throughout life as well as how these inner changes can show themselves outwardly.
For More Movies Visit Putlocker.