Black Narcissus and the Faith of Sister Philippa

As Powell and Pressburger’s Black Narcissus wrestles with so much lust and colonization, the film’s contemplation of faith gets a little lost in the scrum. It is a movie about nuns. It is also a film where these nuns live and work out of a former palace for concubines. Mister Dean’s shorts are so short, red lipstick is wielded like a weapon, and Michael Powell called it, “...the most erotic film I have ever made.” Desire courses through the film like a thudding vein, and along with a little madness, drives Black Narcissus to its climax. Yet faith plays its part, a force that pulls the nuns to, through, and away from their mission. Madness and desire thrive inside the primary triangle of Sister Clodagh, Sister Ruth, and Mister Dean. The film’s crisis of faith is left for Sister Philippa. Confronted with new horizons, Phillipa struggles to know what her faith means if it’s not a tool to make change in others. 

To briefly run it back, Black Narcissus is a 1947 Technicolor capital-M masterpiece as praised into oblivion as it is worthy of that praise. Though, to do some necessary praise, for all the film's cinematic achievements, the performances carry Black Narcissus. Deborah Kerr as Sister Clodagh quietly wears the sensuality and restraint grappling beneath her skin. Kathleen Byron cultivates the hunger inside Sister Ruth until it erupts as something uncontrollable. And Flora Robertson, blue eyed and stoic, meets Sister Phillipa in her earnest, steady devotion. 

Along with Sister Briony (Judith Furse) and Sister Honey (Jenny Laird), the nuns are sent to the fictional palace of Mopu, high in the Himalayas. Led by the ambitious Sister Clodagh, they are tasked with converting the weary palace into the convent of St. Faith’s. As a certainty, the sisters slowly confront realities within themselves and about the world around them. From the technical to the artistic, every layer of Black Narcissus demands the full discourse. But the film’s most astonishing feat may be doing it all in 100 damn minutes. 

Amongst the ruinous lust and recriminations of a collapsing empire, a story of faith shaken to its foundation plays out in Sister Philippa. And as a testament to a film with no wasted frames, Sister Philipa lives this arc in mere minutes of screentime. Philippa is sent to Mopu with one task, to grow things, and she becomes irrevocably entwined with the palace’s overgrown gardens.

Philipa’s crisis of faith is first spoken aloud as she readies the garden beds for winter planting. The afternoon bell rings and Sister Clodagh notices that Sister Philippa, instead of reciting her prayers, is entranced by the mountain horizon. Clodagh goes to her and Philippa says she no longer feels, “light and happy and near God,” during chapel. Old memories she wants to forget, memories from before her time in the order, have returned. Sister Clodagh, repressing memories herself, blames the strange atmosphere, the strange people, and she implores Philippa to pray. Not only to pray, but to work, to work until she can’t feel anything. Philippa reveals her hands, and they are already worked into tatters. 

“I think you can see too far,” Philippa explains. “I look out there and then I can’t see the potato I’m planting. And after a bit, it doesn’t seem to matter whether I plant it or not.”

“You can see too far.” What does an unfettered view mean to a devoted member of the order like Sister Philippa? Did she get too much of God’s point of view, high above everyone else? With her face pressed against the towering mountain peaks, was she unable to find a trace of her God’s presence? Did the vast horizon instill a smallness in her, incongruent with her calling as a nun? Or did she realize her faith only worked with blinders on? Whatever the reason, the effect was existential. Philippa’s place was to grow things, so to question the meaning of the potato was to question the meaning of her work. Sister Philippa perseveres and plants the gardens, and when those seeds bloom, the depth of her crisis is revealed.

On a fragrant spring morning, Sister Clodagh overhears the local school children reciting the names of the plants in the gardens. They start with forget-me-nots, then sweet peas, then tulips, then daffodils, until Sister Clodagh realizes they are only naming flowers. Clodagh consults the garden chart and discovers these beds were meant for potatoes, runner beans, and cabbages. Sister Philippa planted flowers instead of food. 

Considering the variety of planting times for both the intended vegetables and the flowers grown in their place, it was a months-long unraveling. Philippa could have planted the tulips in fall innocently enough, certain the rest of the beds would be vegetables. And each day, with each new bed, her inner turmoil raging, her rational mind begging to know why, she plants flower after flower. When the weather finally breaks, spring peeking behind the mountain, her last chance to plant green peas instead of sweet peas, Sister Philippa plants the flowers. 

When an incredulous Sister Clodagh asks why she’s done it, Sister Philippa answers, “I was becoming too fond of the place. I was too wrapped up in my work. I thought too much about it. I’ve forgotten…what I am. I was losing the spirit of our order.”

Philippa grew to love the place and its people as they were. She stopped seeing Mopu as something in need of her intervention. They say once you grow crops somewhere, you’ve officially colonized it. Instead, Sister Philippa plants something beautiful and temporary. Her bursting flower beds were an acknowledgement that the souls of Mopu were not theirs to save.  

With Black Narcissus, it always trails back to systems of oppression. Colonialism and religion and personal repression undergird the nuns’ calling to Mopu, and the film treats these not as discrete layers, but interlocking pieces. Clodagh, running from what she sees as the weakness in her own flesh, joins the order, where they deploy her devotion to spread the English language and christianity. In the end, as Sister Clodagh laments to Mr. Dean (David Farrar) about her inability to bend Mopu to her will, she blurts out the absurd scope, but stark aim of colonial efforts, “I couldn’t hide the mountain.” 

Whether it was an awakening or an effort to be sent away, Phillipa declines her place in that system when she disobeys direct orders from her superior. Yet, in her desire to maintain a connection to her calling, to ply her craft, to feel near something larger than herself, she stuffs the garden beds with something befitting her fondness of Mopu. Ultimately, Phillipa finds her actions irreconcilable with her vows and she asks to be transferred. Clodagh tells her a transfer will be a bad mark against her, and Philippa is glad for it. A bit of a heartbreaking turn back to institutional comfort from an unruly world, Phillipa contains true devotion.

After the tragic events which force the nuns’ exodus from Mopu, Sister Philippa is given one last look. She walks through the bustling grounds of the palace, her gardens in full bloom. Stopped in front of a cross the nuns erected, tears pour down her face as she places a bouquet of her transgressions before the image of Christ.

An act of love, a gesture at reconciliation, Philippa appears recommitted to her work as a nun. Perhaps it’s a cynical retreat into self-repression, a complete condemnation of the nuns as nearsighted, unkind people who put ritual over true acts of service. And there’s probably some of that! Though something in Philippa’s final bouquet of flowers offers consideration. She could have brought nothing to that cross, but she brought the fruits of her most outrageous act of defiance in 21 years as nun. Even in penance, there is something too vast in the horizons of Mopu to be forgotten. 

Does Philippa uncover an intense spiritual devotion intended only to change the person within? She doesn’t get to say. But Phillipa does leave Mopu with a choice to go forward and serve without requirement or judgment. 

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