The 2022 Irish language film An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) begins with a dark screen, sounds of birdsong and water flowing, the chatter of farm animals, and the swish of wind through grass. The camera focuses, at ground level, on a green field. The churrs and chirps of nature are disturbed by a distant, human voice calling out, “Cáit,” as the camera pans in to the body of a girl lying in a field. Again the voice calls, “Cáit, Cáit,” this time more loudly, and with a touch of annoyance. After what seems a long time, Cáit, the young girl in the field, finally moves, first pulling at the grass, then slowly standing and walking toward home with her head down and her shoulders slumped. With each step, the audience senses her dread until, at the now exasperated yelling of her mother, she runs inside. In the next scenes, an unattended baby cries in a high chair and Cáit stands by a bed, the mattress stripped bare, a wet stain like a slap in the middle of it. A door slams. Footsteps. Cáit skitters underneath the bed. Her mother enters the room and says, in the Irish, “There’s muck on your shoes.”
After these opening scenes, we see Cáit with her family and at school, and quickly realize that she is the odd one out, her “otherness” so acute that she seems a stranger to those around her and to herself. Her siblings are loud—silence in this home comes from sullenness, sadness, fright, anger, but never, it seems, from peace or contemplation or comfort—and a bit rough. Her mother, Mam, is put-upon and weary; Da, her father, is a drinker, philanderer, and poor farmer—materially poor, but also bad at farming. Cáit is too daydreamy and insecure to do well at school. She speaks hardly at all. Other children call her “piss-pants” and “weirdo.” After recess one day, Cáit runs off from the schoolyard like a wild thing trying to escape a cage. We get the sense she might die if she does not do this. Her father goes in search of her and finds her walking along a road. She gets into the car and the two of them stop at a dank pub so he can get a pint before returning home. As he slumps over the bar, his back is to the camera and, of course, to Cáit, who sits alone, pulling the stuffing from a chair. On the drive home, Da picks up a woman who climbs into the passenger seat, turns her head slightly to glare at Cáit, and asks: “Which one is she?”
“That’s the wanderer,” says Da.
These opening scenes work like a spell, drawing us into Cáit’s story: her dread becomes our dread; we’re nearly as confused and frightened as she is; our bodies tense up along with hers. I felt a little sick as I watched those opening scenes, my shoulders tight with concern. We don’t know what’s happened to Cáit in the past or what will happen in the future, but we expect nothing but badness. Even after watching The Quiet Girl a second and third time, I expected bad things to happen! Adapted from the novella Foster by Claire Keegan, The Quiet Girl is a stunningly beautiful film. (The novella is really good, too, and well worth your time.) If I remember correctly, one critic described the film as lyrical, which is a catch-all word often used to describe that sense of enchantment, of being put under a spell, that we get from certain artistic experiences. That sense of being put under a spell is important, I think, because it conveys both the beautiful and frightening aspects of this film.
The beginning of the film, as I’ve mentioned, is ominous and dark, worrisome. Multiple themes surface. I wondered where the story was going. Would this be a straightforward coming-of-age story? Would it be bleak, harrowing, joyous? Would the film fill in what’s left unsaid in Foster by giving us some scandalous and horrific tale of abuse—because it does seem as if Cáit, still wetting the bed at 10, has been abused. Or was it going to devolve into one more story about how terrible old Ireland was, with its piety and poverty, its scrupulosity and saints and suffering? Would it be like so much of thw work that comes out of Ireland these days, work that presents the past, especially Ireland’s Catholic past, as all bad, a totally unredeemed and unredeeming history best squashed and rebelled against. I hoped it wasn’t that because, frankly, it gets old. History—life!— is much more complicated than that. But, of course, telling the truth, artistically or otherwise, is much harder than a straightforward smear job (but that’s a whole other essay!)
Thankfully, the filmmakers stuck closely to the original story, even while fleshing it out. The Quiet Girl is a coming-of-age story, yes, but, in the way of all good stories, it offers an expansive, not reductive, exploration of the human experience. It shows how a “bit of minding” (as one of the characters puts it) can help a person to flourish; how silence can be a sign of health and peace; how beauty and order can transform us and the world. It’s about parents, especially fathers, and how indispensable good fathers are, even if one’s own father is not good. Again, this is unusual, a refreshing change from the “father-as-bumbling-idiot” stories that are churned out these days. It is also a master class for artists—how to make art, as well as how to become an artist (or become a better artist or stay an artist).
I’ve been trying to think of one essential word or phrase to describe this story, and I think it’s reverence. If we look at the etymology of reverence, which I love doing because I’m a nerd, we get this:
late 13c., “honor, respect, deference (shown to someone), esteem heightened by awe,” also of places or holy objects, from Old French reverence “respect, awe” and directly from Latin reverentia “awe, respect,” from revereri “to stand in awe of, respect, honor, fear, be afraid of; revere,” from re-, here perhaps an intensive prefix (see re-), + vereri “stand in awe of, fear, respect” (from PIE root *wer- (3) “perceive, watch out for”).
There’s a note that follows this entry that cites the Century Dictionary. It states that reverence is different from awe because it includes love or affection without the fear inherent in awe. But, I don’t think that’s quite right. If we look at the etymology of reverence, there’s still an element of fear—I think because anything that elicits reverence has an element of mystery to it. To me, reverence does mean something less than awe—we have reverence for a saint, awe for God. Maybe it’s that wiith reverence, we have less fear and more familiarity: We can know the saints in a way we can’t know God; our experience walking in a park is different than the experience of looking at the Grand Canyon. Either way, I think the filmmakers treat the characters and the story with reverence, which is the stance an artist must have towards the world and everyone/everything in it. *
Shortly after that scene with Cáit and her father driving home from the pub, the story turns. Cáit overhears her parents talking. It’s been decided: She will go to stay with her mother’s cousin Eibhlín and her husband Seán—the Kinsellas. Mam seems to realize that Cáit is suffocating, but she is too overburdened to do anything about it herself. Her childless cousin Eibhlín, though, can. When Mam asks how long the cousins should keep her, Da answers, “Sure, can’t they keep her as long as they like?” The scene ends with the slam of a door.
It’s Cáit and Da in the car again, but this car ride from Cáit’s home to the Kinsella’s transports us literally and figuratively from dark to light, from squalid meanness to order and beauty, from cneglect to love. There is still a sense of worry, though—we don’t know anything about these people, the Kinsellas, and neither does Cáit. She is being sent to stay with complete strangers; she’ll still have to return home at the end of the summer. The transformation that occurs in Cáit—from strange, misunderstood child into a well-lived and cherished “fosters” who fits in with these people—occurs slowly. The film is filled with long silences—the Kinsellas are quiet people, too, and the natural world is almost a character in its own right—and that shimmering ominousness. When I first saw The Quiet Girl, I reveled in the beauty and pathos of the story (despite, or maybe because of, that ominousness), but as time passed, I kept returning to it because I found that with each viewing of this luminous, mysterious film something new emerged. As with all great art, it rewards sustained and continued attention.
To be continued . . .
If you’re looking for a book that explores this idea, Ryan Wilson’s monograph, How to Think Like a Poet, from Wiseblood Books is worth reading. I should note here that I work for Wiseblood Books so, yes, I am shamelessly encouraging your to buy one (or all) of our books, but I promise you, you won’t regret it. Ryan’s a genius and this monograph is simply one of the best things I’ve ever read on how to approach the world, whether you’re a poet or not.