Quills: A Christian Response

“This book is a threat to decent people everywhere,” says Dr Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) of the Marquis de Sade’s lewd novel, Justine. Could the same be said of the play and the 2001 film Quills, from which the quote comes? I feel embarrassed at confessing to having seen a film on the Marquis de Sade, the man whose sexual perversions gave us ‘sadism’. It includes violence, bad language, explicit sexual references and blasphemy.

So why did I bother going to see the film?

I was intrigued by this Oscar nominated film which has been praised as ‘intelligent’ and ‘quite brilliant’, with high calibre actors being drawn by the outstanding quality of the screenplay (by Doug Wright). Its self confessed theme is that of artistic censorship, using the Marquis as a figure to weave an argument around. Housed in a 19th century asylum, the Marquis is forbidden to write after surreptitiously publishing a novel that shocks (or delights) all France, and a battle of wits ensues as he goes to ever more extreme measures to continue…

 So is this film “nothing more than an encyclopaedia of perversions” (as Caine also says of Justine), or masterpiece of moral philosophy in drama?

 To decry the film seems to beg the Marquis’ question: “are your convictions so fragile that they cannot stand in opposition to mine? Is your God so flimsy, so weak?” I find fleeing from controversy a form of cowardice and rise to the challenge, especially as it directly includes the Church, and we have only the mouth of Joaquin Phoenix’s liberal Abbe de Coulmier (who runs the asylum) to speak up for us. He puts De Sade in perspective: “You’re not the antichrist! You’re just a malcontent who knows how to spell!”

 Quills shows little violence or sex: most of the film is dialogue, although there are some scenes I am still uncomfortable with. It is exaggerated, often very funny, human and touching with a convincing central romance. The characters are vivid and unstarched by period drama.

Its central premise is a timely question when the boundaries of film censorship are being tested. It is superbly structured ‘escalating frenzy’ with succinct synopses of philosophical debate in rich language.

Both sides of the argument are given: the violent acts committed seem to stem from the Marquis’ story, insinuating that those who have a more laissez faire attitude must consider those incapable of telling fact from fiction. Equally, the Marquis claims that he writes a work of fiction, not a moral treatise, and he writes what he observes as the eternal truths: the most base of human nature; he says that elevating the human soul to higher things is the job of the Church. But it leaves the viewer with the right to make up their own mind.

Quills has a tendency to elevate the writer’s creative needs above all else in society, and perhaps the East Anglian newspaper reviewer who stated that Quills is full of its own self importance did not charge unfairly. But there are other themes which interest me more. The most central and relevant to me is redemption. It challenges me as a Christian: is it for us to say where God draws the line at forgiveness and where humanity has taken leave? Dr Royer-Collard, the alienist sent to cure the Marquis, uses discipline to yield self improvement. But is denial and punishment the way forward? Or is the Abbe’s approach of befriending and encouraging the channelling of one’s demons as a form of catharsis (such as the Marquis’s writing) more fruitful? We see the pitfalls of both: the hypocrisy of the supposedly upright doctor, and that repression has equal dangers as too much freedom – something the Church needs to learn.

 The Marquis’ tenet that “to know virtue, one must first be acquainted with vice” is a refraction of Romans 1: we have the law so we know what sin is. The only thing the film really incites is debate, not debauchery. The film certainly inspired lots of thoughts for me – not perverted or disturbed ones, but really involved issues that few films have the courage to address.