In a Polish convent just after World War II, nuns endure the effects of a nightmare. These sisters have more reasons than usual to want to remain isolated, but their situation demands assistance from the outside. They reach out, tentatively, to Mathilde, a French doctor with the Red Cross. The story that unfolds in Anne Fontaine’s The Innocents (2016), based on true events, brings Mathilde’s skepticism and uncertainty into conversation with the nuns’ faithful seeking as each person finds her way through this dark labyrinth.
Mathilde slowly gains the trust of the nuns and becomes a confidante especially of one of them, Maria. In one conversation, Mathilde asks her about the nuns: “But none have lost their faith?” “You know, faith . . .” Maria replies,
At first, you’re like a child, holding your father’s hand, feeling safe. Then a time comes—and I think it always comes—when your father lets go. You’re lost, alone in the dark. You cry out, but no one answers. Even if you prepare for it, you’re caught unawares. It hits you right in the heart. That’s the cross we bear. Behind all joy lies the cross.
The constant presence of the cross in The Innocents—not as a visual symbol but as a looming horror, physical and psychological—asserts a spirituality that refuses to be untethered from the physical, devastating and bloody as the physical sometimes is. Spirituality is a complicated concept. It is doggedly “both–and”—emotional and intellectual, religious faith and everyday life, ecstatic and quiet. The Innocents doesn’t let us off with simplistic promises of a better future in heaven or the hope of a faith set free from all doubts. “Faith is twenty-four hours of doubt and one minute of hope,” Maria affirms. “I know happiness isn’t the goal we pursue, but . . . without the war . . . without the horror that has struck us, I could say I’m happy.” “You’re lucky,” Mathilde replies. “Aren’t you?” the nun asks. Mathilde confesses, “I don’t know.”
As the nuns challenge Mathilde, The Innocents challenges us to reconsider what we believe, in response to a historical account that takes us right into the heart of the age-old questions of theodicy. Fontaine understands that none of us is offered a spirituality or faith that’s separate from the challenges of the physical. Faith can’t look away; it has to answer for the horrors of war and the darkness humans bring forth from their own desires and actions. The nuns, all called to their vocation by the same God, respond to their situation in different ways. What is our response, to this story and to the violence done against “innocents” today? Do we have eyes to see both the joy and the cross as we faithfully pursue our vocations? — Neil R. Coulter (2026)