In the 1960s, the Soviet film industry decided to make an adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace that would blow any Hollywood epic out of the water. They gave it a virtually unlimited budget, with battle scenes using over 12,000 Soviet soldiers trained using the historical French and Russian drill manuals from the time of the war with Napoleon, using real period paintings and furniture borrowed from Russia's museums. The result was the most epic film ever made, divided into four installments taking over seven hours in total.

But War and Peace has something more than a big budget and battle scenes on a mind-blowing scale. It is also one of the most creative and poetic films ever made, a very faithful adaptation of the novel yet using all the tools of cinema in the most unexpected ways to bring Tolstoy's vivid prose to life in scenes of dancing, hunting, dueling, love, betrayal, forgiveness, and spiritual awakening.

Links

Watch War and Peace for free on the official Mosfilm YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaTJrWP-PVcB-kpfOvzzp_7m4RdJPc0MC

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Thomas Mirus's keynote address at the first annual conference of the Thomistic Artists Guild, on May 30 at the parish of St. Vitus in Los Angeles, CA.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH5KBsOIz_Y

Thomistic Artists Guild: https://thomisticartistsguild.org/

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Nathan Douglas and Thomas Mirus review Christopher Nolan's adaptation of Homer's Odyssey. It is not necessarily a bad thing if an adaptation doesn't reproduce the precise worldview of its source material - an artist makes his own work of art, not a scholarly translation. The movie is not a deliberate subversion of its source material, as many assumed. It is Nolan's honest personal reflection on what the poem means to him. But he does view the story through the lens of modern concerns which, while by no means false or unworthy of exploration or even totally incompatible with Homer's story, result in a less interesting version of Odysseus and a less coherent but overly didactic interpretation of the events depicted.

Links

Clip about diversity casting from previous episode https://youtu.be/5EEe-ogUXMI

Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

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James and Thomas begin a sub-series on the filmography of Andrei Tarkovsky (whose religious films Andrei Rublev and The Sacrifice they already discussed as part of the Vatican Film List). His first film, Ivan's Childhood, depicts a young boy, Ivan, who acts as a scout for the Russian army during World War II. Made precocious – and profoundly damaged – by his wartime experience, Ivan is a fascinating and tragic figure brought to life in a remarkable performance by Nikolai Burlyayev.

Tarkovsky begins his career with a film that is understandably more conventional than the rest of his oeuvre – but still plenty unconventional, and in fact serving as a test run for Tarkovsky's poetic convictions. James and Thomas discuss the director's views on "poetic links" in cinema expressed in his book Sculpting in Time and instantiated in this film's dream sequences and evocative landscapes. Tarkovsky believed that poetry comes about when the objective beauty of reality is filtered through the artist's subjectivity, connected to his own personal associations and feelings, such that the authenticity and density of life somehow appear on screen, in a way that is truly poetic and allows the viewer to take part in the aesthetic experience of the artist.

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Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

Thomas Mirus, Nathan Douglas, and Andrew Petiprin gave this panel session at the 2024 Notre Dame Fall Conference, presented by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. The theme of the conference was "Ever Ancient, Ever New: On Catholic Imagination."

30 Years of the Vatican Film List – Catholic Cinema's Past and Future

Thomas Mirus (Catholic Culture) – The Vatican Film List: Introduction and Reflections

Nathan Douglas (Independent Scholar/Filmmaker) – The Filmmaker as Auteur

Andrew Petiprin (Spe Salvi Institute; Word on Fire Institute) – Europe for Everyone: Yesterday's Vatican Film List and Catholic Imagination Today

Chair: John O'Callaghan (University of Notre Dame)

Video of the panel: https://youtu.be/-7oE8d6RcCw?si=x4cTzl847-A8bG5M

Paul Duda joins James and Thomas to discuss Steven Spielberg's first extant UFO movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and what it says about the kind of meaning and transcendence people are seeking in the current UFO obsession. Paul also talks about the film he is producing about St. Bernadette.

Links

Bernadette movie:

www.10thhourproductions.org

www.Bernadettemovie.com

www.Instagram.com/bernadettemovie

Frank and Lou Creative www.Frankandlou.co

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DONATE to make this show possible! http://catholicculture.org/donate/audio

Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com

On May 30, Thomas is giving the keynote address at the first annual conference of the Thomistic Artists Guild at the parish of St. Vitus in Los Angeles, CA. Free to attend!

https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/thomistic-artists-guild-2026-conference

Thomas Mirus, Nathan Douglas, and Andrew Petiprin gave this panel session at the 2024 Notre Dame Fall Conference, presented by the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. The theme of the conference was "Ever Ancient, Ever New: On Catholic Imagination."

30 Years of the Vatican Film List – Catholic Cinema's Past and Future

Thomas Mirus (Catholic Culture) – The Vatican Film List: Introduction and Reflections

Nathan Douglas (Independent Scholar/Filmmaker) – The Filmmaker as Auteur

Andrew Petiprin (Spe Salvi Institute; Word on Fire Institute) – Europe for Everyone: Yesterday's Vatican Film List and Catholic Imagination Today

Chair: John O'Callaghan (University of Notre Dame)

Video of the panel: https://youtu.be/-7oE8d6RcCw?si=x4cTzl847-A8bG5M

Brideshead Revisited is much discussed as a beloved Catholic novel. But it is also perhaps the only instance of a great book getting a screen adaptation that is equally good - almost to the point of being interchangeable with the book. We refer, of course, to the 1981 miniseries, not the 2008 movie! James Majewski, Nathan Douglas, and Thomas Mirus discuss what makes this series such a great work of adaptation.

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His Excellency Erik Varden, Trappist monk and bishop of Trondheim, Norway, joins Thomas Mirus and James Majewski for a discussion of the art of cinema. The interview touches on the danger of violent images, saint movies, the relationship between film and theater, the private vs. theatrical experience of film, the value of watching foreign films, and some of Bp. Varden's favorite movies.

Links

Thomas's interview with Bp. Varden about his book on chastity https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/173-chastity-integrity-and-desert-fathers-bishop-erik-varden/

Bp. Varden's website, Coram Fratribus https://coramfratribus.com/

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Music is The Duskwhales, "Take It Back", used with permission. https://theduskwhales.bandcamp.com