The Monk (2011)

The Monk (2011) is the film adaptation of the eponymous 18th Gothic novel by Mathew Lewis. I watched it a couple of years after reading the book, but some differences were still glaringly obvious. Worse, these changes were NOT for the best. Needless to say, there will be SPOILERS for both movie and novel.

First things first: adapting The Monk was never going to be easy. While the different storylines are interconnected, the novel contains material for two (maybe even more) stories. The main two are the one following the Capuchin monk Ambrosio’s fall into temptation and disgrace, and the one involving the Bleeding Nun, Agnes and Raymond. The movie adaptation chose Ambrosio, though it kept Agnes’s first appearance as a pregnant nun planning to flee with her lover whose plans are exposed by the monk. She dies in the convent’s dungeons, and her ghost later accuses him of killing her child and being a hypocrite because he also broke his vows of celibacy. The problem with the movie isn’t just that it ditched half the source material, something you could argue was necessary, but also that it fucked up the adaptation of the storyline it chose to focus on.

The movie is never scary or even creepy enough for a story that involves demons and magic. There’s a scene of Agnes yelling in the convent’s dungeons, but it’s just meh. Even her ghost is lame. There’s a short, silent scene of an exorcism that’s equally underwhelming. Even when a monk who found out about Ambrosio’s relationship with “Valerio” gets conveniently squashed by a gargoyle, the movie fails to create any sort of tension. Ambrosio’s lack of reaction to the mild weirdness surrounding him really doesn’t help.

The character we spend the most time with is Ambrosio, everybody else, including Antonia, is just there. It’s hard to care about her romance with Lorenzo because all we get are a couple of bland courting scenes. Since the real story is between her, her mother, and the monk, there was no need for it. It makes sense in the novel because Lorenzo is a much more active participant and antagonist to the monk. The movie left all of that out and Ambrosio is found out and arrested after he rapes Antonia in her room. I found this pretty confusing and disappointing because I remembered that the big confrontation between the monk and Lorenzo (and also the saving of Agnes by Raymond) happens in the convent’s dungeons, where Antonia dies. The movie did away with all that and kept her alive.

In the movie, Ambrosio comes across as relatively innocent and earnest. With no inner monologue or omniscient narrator, all we have to go by is what we see on screen and the progression from innocent to sinner and finally to rapist and murderer feels rushed. In the novel, his faults are there from the start and his interactions with both Antonia and Matilda/“Valerio” last longer. So, when he accepts the chance to magically enter Antonia’s bedroom, it makes sense for the character. In the movie, he only sees her a couple of times, touches her face, and is told to leave and never come back. Not even his dreams about the unreachable woman in red explain such a sudden change in behaviour. It doesn’t help that he seems hesitant and genuine in the scene with Antonia rather than entitled and calculating.

Ambrosio doesn’t seem to have much agency in his interactions with “Valerio” either. He’s still sick and feverish when they have sex for the first time and only realises what happened when ghost Agnes shows up to accuse him. Given his state at the time, this would probably be considered rape nowadays and oddly mirrors the scene in Antonia’s bedroom. I’m not sure if the movie did that on purpose because Ambrosio’s reaction to that revelation is to have more sex with “Valerio”. The first time he lets her perform a dark magic ritual is to save her life after she saved his. He does nothing to the snitching monk; he doesn’t even tell “Valerio” about it. This is part of what makes his decision to accept the magical flower to enter Antonia’s room just too sudden. There’s no build-up. Given the changes to the ending, it’s unclear what exactly we’re expected to think of Ambrosio.

In the end of the novel, Ambrosio himself summons Satan while awaiting his sentencing in his cell. Satan asks for his soul in return for getting him out of there. When he hears people outside the door, the monk's cowardice pushes him to accept the offer. Satan whisks him away to some isolated mountains where he proceeds to monologue at length about how he’s been messing with Ambrosio since forever. The key element here is the fact that he didn’t really make him do anything, he just presented opportunities that a truly virtuous man would’ve refused. Satan also reveals the horrible truth: that Ambrosio was Antonia’s long-lost brother and that he committed not only rape but also incest. He then leaves him there because, in typical Mephistophelean fashion, he only offered to get Ambrosio out of his cell, he said nothing about where he’d take him. Even better, the people outside the door weren’t going to take him to be executed, they were going to release him because he’d been pardoned. The monk dies alone after agonizing for six days while bugs and an eagle eat bits of him.

In the movie, it turns out Satan wanted revenge for Ambrosio saying he only had the power people wished to give him. The monk is waiting for his sentencing in his cell, in silence, in the dark. “Valerio” shows up, tells him he’s going to be executed, and that there’s someone who wants to talk to him. Does Ambrosio even have the chance to choose to accept anything? He’s taken to some deserted mountains where Satan offers him a deal: sell his soul and refuse salvation for an eternity by his side. Satan offers him power, but Ambrosio refuses and instead tells him he’ll sell his soul in exchange for him healing Antonia, who’s gone mad after what happened. The deal is made, and the monk dies alone, with birds eating his flesh.

The differences between the endings are just weird. Why leave out the reveal about the incest? We know he’s Antonia’s brother because of the birthmark, but does he? Her (their) mother says her son’s name after he stabs her, but that could mean anything. It’s unclear whether he understands the implications of that being her last word. And why show him as genuinely repenting and trying to fix all the evil he did by trading his soul for Antonia’s chance at future happiness? This is a complete change of the original character. Why do that?

My favourite part of the novel was always the one about the Bleeding Nun, Agnes, and Raymond. I didn’t find the monk sections of The Monk that interesting. The idea of a hypocritical holy man whose faults and crimes are exposed just isn’t particularly original. The presence of the supernatural helped make the story better, and so did the more dynamic behaviour of the characters. This movie adaptation muted everything and turned the story into your generic denunciation of religious hypocrisy that for some reason allowed its rapist murderer protagonist a final act of self-sacrifice. Adaptations usually try to add excitement to the source material. The Monk (2011) must be the only one that decided to tone it down to the point of dullness.

Upon its release in 1796, the novel The Monk was described as “provocative for the debauchee”. The only thing the 2011 movie The Monk could hope to provoke is boredom. At least it made me want to reread the book, so I guess that’s a positive.

By Danforth