News reaches me that the forthcoming
film The Nun is set, and was entirely
shot, in Romania. This is the latest
instalment in the Conjuring franchise
and is directed by Corin Hardy from a story co-written by James Wan, who
directed The Conjuring and The Conjuring 2. Originally scheduled for release this month,
the date has been pushed back to early September.
Set in 1952, the plot concerns a Roman
Catholic priest, who is of course haunted by his past, and a novice, played by
Taissa Farmiga, who are sent to Romania to investigate the suicide of a
nun. According to the teaser trailer,
Sister Irene has been having a series of visions each ending with the image of
a nun, leading to this piece of dialogue:
‘Word of my visions reached the Church and I was asked to accompany a
priest to an abbey in Romania.’
Well of course she was. Naturally, as they investigate the pair find
that not all there is as it should be (doorway to Hell, etc.). This is a long way from Audrey Hepburn and Peter
Finch in The Nun’s Story. Wan has said one influence on the film is the
1986 film version of Umberto Eco’s The
Name of the Rose, but it is obvious that whereas William of Baskerville
uncovered a human perpetrator, The Nun’s
is going to be demonic.
Taissa Farmiga is sister of Vera, who
played Lorraine Warren in The Conjuring
and The Conjuring 2. The Nun
is a spin-off of the latter, featuring Valak the demon nun, a character seen
proving troublesome to Lorraine and husband Ed in the suburban setting of Enfield,
north London. Valak is again played by
Bonnie Aarons, and in chronological terms the film is first in the Conjuring cinematic universe.
But Catholics in an overwhelmingly
Orthodox country? According to
promotional material the setting is the Cârța Monastery, near Sibiu in southern
Transylvania (a structure which has its own tales of ghostly monks). The Cârța monastery was originally a
Cistercian establishment but is now a Lutheran church in one of the remaining
Saxon communities, the monks having been expelled by Matthias Corvinus in 1474,
somewhat before the film’s setting. How
the script deals with the presence of nuns in the monastery, and presumably an
absence of monks, will either be ingenious or, more likely, the difficulty will
be ignored.
Some filming was done in Bucharest, at
Castel Film Studios and at the Palace of the Parliament, as well as at Hunyadi Castle and in
Sighișoara. Why 1952 was chosen has not
been revealed. It could be because that
was the year a new constitution was unveiled, ‘the constitution of building
Socialism’, consolidating communist power, or perhaps merely to fit in with the
Conjuring universe’s timeline. It will be interesting to see if there is any
sense of the political situation in the country. Bearing in mind how The Conjuring 2 played
fast and loose with the Enfield case, probably not, and it is unlikely much of
the film will be taken up with visa applications.
One
of the nuns is played by Ingrid Bisu, who was born in Bucharest. Appearing on a San Diego Comic-Con 2018
panel (18 July), she is
quoted as saying, ‘It was awesome to be known hopefully for something
different than “Dracula”. We’re ready
for something fresh.’ Different and
fresh? The Nun is not a huge leap from Dracula
in genre terms, and it sounds as if the film is trading on Transylvania’s image
as somewhere mysterious and menacing, for which Stoker’s story is largely
responsible. Bisu went on to talk about
the crew’s exposure to Romanian food, particularly the sour cream aspect, so at
least it sounds as if everyone was well fed.
Update 27 July 2018
Also at San Diego Comic-Con, director
Corin Hardy claimed he had seen a pair of ghosts during filming. As ghosts have allegedly put in appearances
on previous Conjuring films, a
paranormal event on the set of The Nun
could be expected. This experience involved
a sequence called ‘The Corridor of Crosses’ being shot ‘in a fortress’, as
Hardy put it.
Hardy had monitors set up in a
small cell-like room off a long corridor.
As he walked into the room, which only had one door, he noticed a couple
of men sitting at the back, and as he assumed they were from the sound
department they must have looked normal, and wearing clothes that were
unremarkable.
Hardy briefly said hello and sat with
his back to them. The scene was a
difficult one, so he concentrated on the monitors for about half an hour. Shot completed, he turned round to see what
the pair behind him thought, only there was nobody there. He concluded there never had been because
they were obviously ghosts.
His evidence largely hinges on
the claim he felt they were there the whole time, and they could not have left
without him noticing. Yet if he had been
absorbed in organising the shot, they could easily have walked past without him
realising they had gone. Hardy
apparently made no effort to find out if they were flesh and blood.
When talking to CinemaBlend (20
July) about what happened he concluded, ‘I can only assume that they were
probably like Romanian soldiers…’, though one would expect costumes to match,
and he should have noticed such a distinctive manner of dress when he walked
into the room. The most likely verdict
is that Mr Hardy is ramping up the hype for his film, but without putting much
effort into conjuring a convincing story.
The fans will love it though.
Update 7 August 2018
The Daily Mirror (4 August) carried an article on the film which covered
its mysterious on-set happenings.
Undermining Ingrid Bisu’s claim that ‘It was awesome to be known
hopefully for something different than “Dracula”. We’re ready for something fresh,’ the article
cites screenwriter Gary Dauberman:
‘Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula was an important
visual and tonal reference for The Nun.
It’s a fair comparison as much of the filming was done in the vampiric Romania
in order to capture the right mood. While the movie is set in 1952, a lot of
sets were based in 14th century buildings.’
Worse, Taissa Farmiga is quoted
as saying ‘it [the ambience] helped her get into character. “With castles,
cloisters and rolling countryside it doesn’t feel as if you’re in the modern
day – it feels as if you’re transported back in time,” she said. “It feels as
is a demon could possibly be around the corner.”’ If I were a Transylvanian I’m sure this sort
of attitude would annoy me.
Father Cosmin, an Orthodox
priest, blessed the production at Hunyadi Castle, though Hardy later found a ‘handprint’
he could not account for in the dust there (no details given as to why this was
noteworthy). The article mentions the
anecdote of the Romanian soldiers/sound technicians/guys caught illicitly
putting their feet up and sliding out discreetly while the boss is busy, and
gives the location as Mogoșoaia, adding that Hardy believed they were Romanian soldiers
‘curious about the filming’. Why then
did they not stick around to give their verdict?
