The Little Hours brings an old tale to new cinematic life
There are a wealth of stories to be found in the public domain. Storytelling after the advent of copyright laws and arguably the perpetual ownership of properties can do more harm than good when taken through the long view of human culture.
We are a people steeped in oral histories, retelling and reshaping the familiar into something new yet recognizable, adding new flavors and dimensions to well-trodden paths. When a story or property is tightly (and corporately) controlled, innovation is stifled and stories become stale.
An artist with a fresh view can invigorate even the stodgiest of stories, bringing something old to a new generation by updating the language or humor while maintaining the original meaning.
Think about the varied approaches to Shakespeare—from Baz Lurhman’s Romeo+Juliet to the little known Scotland, PA. to The Lion King, the world’s most famous adaptation of Hamlet. Each of these films brought something new to the themes found in the Bard’s most famous tales.
Imagine if these stories were wholly owned properties of Sony?
At any rate, there are other writers and other stories that can be found within the public domain that are worthy of retelling. The Little Hours, a film by Jeff Baena, is a loose retelling of several tales from The Decameron by Giovanni Boccacio. It’s delightfully weird, stacked with talent, and relatively unknown to most filmgoers. That the Catholic League labeled it “trash, pure trash” is as ringing an endorsement as you could hope.
The Little Hours tells the story of a poorly run convent sometime in the Middle Ages. The sisters spend their time digging root vegetables, embroidering fabric, and cursing out the handyman that works for Father Tommasso (John C. Reilly). It’s apparent that most of the nuns have no interest in nunning—Alessandra (Alison Brie), for instance, hopes to be married.
Her father is a rich merchant run afoul of some bad luck, and is hiding his daughter away until he can afford the necessary dowry to marry her off. Ginerva (Kate Miccuci) mostly wants to be accepted by her fellow nuns, to whom she feels a strange attraction. Fernanda (Aubrey Plaza) is as far from pious as a person can get.
They all whittle away their time with their mundane tasks until a new young worker arrives at the convent. Masseto is on the run from a local lord for fornication with his master’s wife. He assists Father Tommasso and sets to hiding from his fate, pretending to be a deaf-mute gardener and desperately hoping to stay on the straight and narrow. The nuns have other plans, however.
The reasons for the Catholic League’s distaste should be fairly obvious—nothing is sacred in the film. But Baena didn’t create these stories. He merely retold them. It is historically accurate to say that many nuns in this time period weren’t nuns by choice. They were forced to take vows for a variety of reasons. Not to mention, ribald humor from the time period commonly featured various members of the clergy.
The Catholic Church has always been a source of humor for most of its existence. There’s no sense in complaining now. That said, some audience members may find The Little Hours to be more dull than droll.
There is a pointlessness to the entire exercise, particularly in that despite a hysterical dressing down by a visiting bishop (Fred Armisen), there’s not much in the way of consequences for any of the characters.
That may be the point, however.
These small acts of defiance, which later become large acts of defiance, are merely a way for the characters to pass the time in an otherwise meager and frustrating existence. Gardening isn’t enough for everyone.
The Little Hours is a charming film and a good way to pass a rainy afternoon. The language and jokes are updated to make it more palatable to modern audiences, although if you aren’t a fan of weirdness for the sake of weirdness, it might not be the film for you. If there’s anything in you that finds foul-mouthed nuns chasing Dave Franco around a sparsely populated farm particularly hilarious, though, The Little Hours is a definite must see.