The Decline of Decadence: A review of "Damsels in Distress"

The Decline of Decadence | Christopher S. Morrissey | Catholic World World

A review of Whit Stillman’s Damsels in Distress, a film depicting the search to be rescued from the rampant boorishness of contemporary culture.

Pope Benedict XVI has observed that “Christianity, Catholicism, isn’t a collection of prohibitions: it’s a positive option. It’s very important that we look at it again because this idea has almost completely disappeared today. We’ve heard so much about what is not allowed that now it’s time to say: we have a positive idea to offer ... I believe we need to see and reflect on the fact that it’s not a Catholic invention that man and woman are made for each other, so that humanity can go on living: all cultures know this.”

Whit Stillman’s new film, Damsels in Distress, offers one of the most positive film endings in recent memory. What most reviewers of the film have neglected to mention is how the film makes a subtle suggestion about authentic Catholicism as a positive, counter-cultural option in the face of dominant cultural trends.

The film’s virtuous heroine, Violet (Greta Gerwig), speaks a number of times about the need to be a good Christian. Most reviewers pass over this important aspect of her character in silence, no doubt for the same reasons that audiences have reportedly gasped out loud in horror at such declarations by Violet.

At first, Violet’s charming naivety seems to be played for laughs, as if she is simply a comic character with an amusing form of mental illness. But by the time the movie ends, the audience is challenged to ask themselves: Isn’t Violet’s crazy dream-world in fact preferable? Is hers not the most beautiful way of choosing to transfigure the real world? Isn’t it really the dominant culture—concretely symbolized by the movie’s decadent “Cathar” heretic, Xavier (Hugo Becker)—that is truly crazy?

Read the entire review at www.CatholicWorldReport.com.