Alex Schwartz: This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz. I'm Nomi Fry. 
Vinson Cunningham: I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now, and. We got here. What's up guys? Hello. 
Naomi Fry: Hello. How's it going? Going great. It's a new year. 
Vinson Cunningham: It's a new year. I got a new step.
Alex Schwartz: A new step. 
Vinson Cunningham: A new pep. A new pep in that step. 
Alex Schwartz: Both a new step and new pep. It's really great. We 
Vinson Cunningham: are back. It's a new year. Uh, and as usual, over the holidays, prestige film offerings have been raining down upon us like so many flakes of snow. Uh, and we're gonna be hitting some of them today. One of them, though, before we go further, involves our very own.
Naomi Fry, I could you give us a, a report from the red carpet, Naomi? Oh my God. Explain yourself a little bit. So 
Naomi Fry: to our listeners, I, uh, have like a line or two maybe in, um, Josh Sade's, Marty Supreme, woo-hoo. I'm suddenly an actor, 
Vinson Cunningham: the movie of the moment. 
Naomi Fry: I know I'm, and, uh, and, uh, yeah, I, I play a very. It's a bit of a blink and you miss it situation, 
Vinson Cunningham: but nobody's gonna blink 
Naomi Fry: that.
But hopefully nobody blinks. It'll be a clockwork orange style situation and, uh, up there in that theater. 
Vinson Cunningham: Thrilling. Can you tell us one thing that you learned about what it's like to go to a Hollywood premiere and be on the red carpet? What did you learn that you did not know? 
Naomi Fry: I learned that it's over before you know it.
Mm. And I learned that you interact with the. With the photographers in ways which I wasn't, some of them heckled me a little bit to get a smile. Wow. 
CLIP: Oh, a 
Naomi Fry: a mean heckling. No, not a mean, but just like, Hey, you know where not a smiler? Where's that? Yeah. Where's that smile? I mean, nobody knew who I was, so that added to the confusion.
But. There was some interaction. Did, did you smile in at the very end? I smiled. You look amazing in those photos. Thank you so much. You, you guys, you 
Vinson Cunningham: really do. 
Naomi Fry: Thank you so much. I mean, it was really a night to remember and generally an experience to remember and I hope those of our listeners who haven't yet seen Marty Supreme, I am of course a little bit biased, but I think it's a very good movie.
I'm not a hater. Uh, as, as far as this movie 
Alex Schwartz: goes for once, no. Not only do you cul do you comment on the culture, you now make the culture you are the culture I we're the culture. All make the 
Naomi Fry: culture. 
Vinson Cunningham: It's true. We all make the cultures true. Well that's beautiful. May this star turn beget many others.
Thank you. Another holiday movie that we're gonna talk about today is the Testament of Ann Lee. A rhythmic, intense, totally. In my experience, totally immersive film, uh, about the story of the titular Ann Lee, the woman who founded and led the Shaker movement. 
CLIP: The time is near at hand. I know itdo not be frightened.
Vinson Cunningham: How would you. Categorize this. I have a very, a very specific way to categorize it. Is it, what, what would you say? Like genre wise? It is, 
Alex Schwartz: I mean, it is a biopic. Yes. It's, I think it's divided into either three or four parts of Leigh's life, and it basically goes from cradle to grave, showing her as she grows up, as she gets a revelations, as she moves to America.
But it's. Spiritual pick. 
Vinson Cunningham: Spiritual pick. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: A bit of a 
Naomi Fry: hagiography. That's exactly, 
Vinson Cunningham: that's what I was gonna say. That's true. Okay. Okay. It's like the, almost classically the form of like, let tell you this person's life and you're gonna glean lessons from it as we go. Mm-hmm. And this aspect of the film, this sort of haggy actually led us to our topic for today.
Saints. The more we thought about it, we felt like there was this broader interest going on, uh, in the divine kind of humming beneath the surface of a lot of culture right now. 
Naomi Fry: One example that's happening right now that I was not aware of, but apparently is very popular, is the show about saints that Martin Scorsese, uh, has been producing and hosting on Fox Nation.
Clip: You believe you were sent by God? Yes. It is what I was born for. 
Alex Schwartz: That's a saint thing. Um, Rosalie's latest album, Lux is a Saint's album.
CLIP: lux
Alex Schwartz: I think each song is inspired by different saint 
Vinson Cunningham: That's right 
Alex Schwartz: on this album. So Saints are all over that thing. 
Vinson Cunningham: That's right. And there there's that and so much more. So today we're talking Anne Lee and The Shakers. We'll talk about our favorite art about saints. And we're talking about what's driving this interest in sainthood and divinity right now, and what it reveals about our culture and our politics today.
That's today On critics at large. Do we still need saints?
________________




All right, let's start with the testament of Anne Lee. This is a new film directed by Mona Fast Fold, co-written with her partner Brady Corbet, who she also worked with, uh, writing the Brutalist. It stars Amanda Reed in the titular role, and it came out over the holidays. It's going into wider release in mid-January.
Who would like to give the gist of this? I must say very strange, very affecting film. 
Naomi Fry: I, I can try, please. Okay. So this, as we said, is the story cradle to grave of Ann Lee, who was born in Manchester in the 1736. Uh, the very simple daughter of a very simple, uh, blacksmith, uh, many children. A, a hard working class life, uh, begins at a very early age to have these religious, uh, visions and kind of becomes associated with this sect in Manchester of the shaking Quakers, who as they pray and as a way to get closer to God, are kind of, uh, impelled to shake and pound their breasts. And ride around, um, you know, on the floor and in the movie. So Ann Lee becomes the kind of preacher associated with this sect, much persecuted by the authorities and by the Anglican church, and, um, decides also along the way, thanks to a vision that comes to her when she is imprisoned, that no sex should be had.
If you wanna be godly, no one should do it. Okay. If you want to be a true person of god.
Naomi Fry: Her husband doesn't like that, nor do the authorities, and she decides along with her acolytes to sail off to the new world in 1774 across the ocean 
        CLIP: Testament of Ann Lee
And establish and lead the new sect of the shakers. In the movie, very interestingly this is transfigured into sequences of dance and song. 
Vinson Cunningham: Um, Alex, what did you think of it?
Alex Schwartz: Into it. Into Ann Lee. Yeah. Shake and quake me. Raise my hands to the heaven. You know, pound my breasts. Boom, boom. Yeah, I've been running around singing all the songs. Wait, really? Yeah, they got stuck in my head. Oh my God. They got stuck in my head. There's some good 
Vinson Cunningham: ones 
Alex Schwartz: doing the dances because the music, the music which is composed by Dan Bloomberg, who also 
Naomi Fry: composed and received an Oscar for the brutalist 
Alex Schwartz: Exactly.
Um, the music is based on actual shaker tunes. Yeah. And yes, there's a bit of a modern spin on them. Yeah. But, um. Yeah, this movie. Oh wow. What did I think of it? So yes, I did like, I, I liked it. I liked it. I liked it. You're not coming to this movie. Let's be very clear for irony. You're not coming to this movie No.
To, to see the dark in our workings of our religious organization. And it all seems wonderful, but actually under, actually underneath, there's a hunger for power. Right. And it's not. Conclave. And as we all know, right, it's no conve. I happen to also love conclave. We love conve. Really? You were a bit of a conclave girly, if I recall.
I did. I did in 2024. Personally identify as a conclave, girly. That's right. So this is a very sincere story. Trying to really present viewers with this vision of Ann Lee, which is a really. Anti-modern vision and trying in some ways. Mm-hmm. Um, just in terms of this personal religious experience and trying to really take it at face value and depict this experience.
And in other ways it's, it is a very modern vision because, of course, the thing about the shakers was that they believed in totally total equality of the sexes of the races. There is something that. Is very modern and very egalitarian and very American in the good sense about this movement. Um, and I think with this movie, I think it's probably best viewed by really trying to submit to it.
Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. 
Alex Schwartz: Maybe 
Vinson Cunningham: you have to kind of Yeah. Like it's like a, just a train, right? 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, yeah. Like you're not, again, like if you go in looking for that kind of spark of irony that I think. Most audiences are very used to in dealing with this kind of spiritual 
Alex Schwartz: Discussion. You're not going to get it. But if you go in trying to just bask in the presence of this both very earthly and other worldly person, I thought Amanda Seyfried was great.
You know, is it my favorite movie of all time? No, but I'm, I'm, I'm into it. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi, you, you, you synopsized, but did you also I did Synopsize Enjoy. 
Naomi Fry: I you guys, I'm too Jewish for this movie. Yeah. I mean, I really am. I, I agree with, you know, Alex, I, I see the wisdom of your words. I also thought, thought Amanda Zaher is, is great.
I think she's a really good actress. I, I felt really, I really wanted to support it. Mm-hmm. Because I really think. Like, I would love to see more ex experiments. Yeah. Such as these, you know, it's like, why don't we just like suddenly inexplicably burst into dance to suggest the fervor streaming from our spiritual fervor.
Mm-hmm. Let us also suddenly like be like Bache or something on, on stage. Mm-hmm. And kind of start dancing in tandem with each other. But I just. Uh, and this is why I'm saying I'm too Jewish. Like I kind of didn't see the point. Mm. I was like, I could see an externalization of her fervor, but somehow I couldn't totally relate to it, and that might be my fault.
Naomi Fry: Okay. 
Naomi Fry: because I don't experience that sort of thing in my life or haven't, and I felt like the movie somehow. Except for in, its, again, externalized forms of like, okay, I'm riding around on the floor. I'm like, you know, beating my breast. I'm like, mm-hmm. You know, huffing and puffing. I didn't understand it.
Mm-hmm. I felt like I could relate. You know, there were some moments where, you know, she's grieving the death of her children. She is experiencing the horrible pains of labor. Mm-hmm. Um, she is, um. Repelled by her husband's kind of domineering, sexual need for her. So these things that are closer to the body and closer to kind of like I.
I guess a, a, a kind of a universal women's experience. I, I, I, I'm scared to say universal because who knows what people are feeling, but, but you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Like, I was like, oh, okay. Yeah, I, I can understand some of the roots of her rejection, of sex, of her, but the religious component of it, and again, this might be my, I might just not be the audience for it.
Mm-hmm. I was like, I don't get it. And it's dragging on for me for 17,000 hours. Mm-hmm. And I, and I, I just can't relate to it. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. I, it's interesting. I can, I almost like maybe over identify with it because, you know, the shakers are a lot like Pentecostals and I grew up in a place where like, okay, where, you know, where.
We're doing this, we're doing that. Uh, we're welcoming a guest. There's a preacher, but all of a sudden there's 30 minutes where people are running around mm-hmm. And dancing. Mm-hmm. And there is like a sort of ecstasy in the air that doesn't conform to any sort of like plot line or timeline. It's like a different color or an irrational kind of, right.
It's like extra liturgical. It's like out there somewhere that creates a narrative of togetherness and a narrative of shared experience between. The people involved that is not easily communicable.  Mm-hmm. Absolutely. There's so many times Absolutely. 
Vinson Cunningham: In this, um, in the sort of, they, they, there are signs, scenes of kind of evangel evangelism mm-hmm.
In this movie where they're like, Hey, and we believe this. Mm-hmm. And explaining the shaker theology. Mm-hmm. This happens by rote a lot of times, but it's basically like. You gotta come back and see Mother Ann, and you gotta be with us. Trust me, you'll understand when you get there, you have to be there. It has to be sort of embodied.
And that's what I admired about the movie, uh, was its, um, sort of ty to experience. And to embodiment. Mm-hmm. The, the logic, the strategy of the, the music is very similar. It's like, it's not the kind of musical where someone's thinking and then they burst into song to tell you more of what they're thinking or the, the, the song is not as some musical songs do, pushing the plot for it.
It's, no, it's just about a sort of expressionism, you know, it's just about, yeah. Um. Like painting a feeling on like flat on a canvas or something like that, in a way that, um.
It, I, it's just rare to see in film. And that I thought was really like, totally stylish and beautiful, but also, um, to me confirmed, like, confirmed experience that I have very much had. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I think, um, you know, know me when you were talking about your feeling about the movie, you kept saying relatable.
Like you don't find it relatable. Well, naturally, you know, like this is an experience of this kind of, um. Zealotry is one word that comes to mind. And also just faith conviction. It's a very solitary experience. I mean, I think a lot of what the movie is about and many things in it that I found beautiful have to do with how isolating an experience it is if you to, to have this level of conviction.
But I, what I like about this experience of watching something like the Testament Van Lee is precisely how. Alien It is. And to try to reckon with the extremity of life like that. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, I'm thinking about this scene early because Anne joins this shaker group, the Shaking Quakers in Manchester, and pretty soon comes to see herself as the second birth of God and is hailed as, as the second coming of God.
Um. By her small community. And one pivotal moment is when she goes to jail, she's jailed for running into someone else's church and starting much like rosalia to speak in a bunch of different languages all at once. And to preach that she's the mother of God. And like frankly, if you do that like. You're going, you are going to jail.
People don't like that and like, they don't like it. Yeah. She knows she's going to jail and she, she doesn't, she refuses food and drink when she's in jail and starts to kind of waste away and then has her visions and sings this song where she says, I hunger and thirst after true righteousness, 
CLIP: I Hunger and Thirst
Alex Schwartz: It's this very beautiful moment. Yeah. To watch someone hunger and thirst after this true righteousness, you know, maybe someone will see this movie and connect to that experience. Or maybe like, you know, us Nomi, there's no connecting to it. Yeah. But to me there is a fascination with, um, that kind of extremity of the human condition, this desire to transcend it.
Vinson Cunningham: in a minute, saints in art, critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back.
:: MIDROLL 1::


I NEED A CRITIC CALLOUT
For me, the testament of Ann Lee got me thinking about saints because it, you know it, it's one way to pose a proposition that says if something about the world irks you, if there is some. Incomplete thing in the world, and all of us in this room couldn't think of one. Right. How far are you willing to go on your principle to, uh, not change it, but to announce yourself as someone who says no?
Mm-hmm. You know, the, the sort of, um, determination. To go to any lengths to cross a great big ocean on a ship pointed at nothing, to go to a brand new land and see your friends die, et cetera, just because of belief is I, I think something that plucks at cords in all of us. So there, of course, this opens us up to a whole world of works of art.
About Saints, uh, what are some of your favorites and what are the maybe some of the themes in those favorites that connected you to, to old Mother Ann? 
Alex Schwartz: Okay. Well, this old, 
Vinson Cunningham: no fucking mother Ann. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, mother Ann. Um, I mean, the saints to me are about, they are art because I have no personal or religious connection to Christianity, um, other than living in a Christian world.
So there's. They came to me through art, like mm-hmm. Paintings, going to museums, look going into churches, looking and observing and seeing this entire world. Um, and system built on the idea of kind of the exceptionalism of certain individuals and also their great, great suffering. Mm-hmm. So, um, I have a couple forks I'd like to share that I particularly enjoy.
One is this absolutely wonderful painting by a guy you may have heard of. Michelangelo, the temptation of St. Anthony. So the thing about this painting is that first of all, it's a copy of another thing, a copy of an engraving. And Michelangelo did it when he was, but a lad of 12 or 13. And we also don't know if it's by Michelangelo.
So with all that in mind, gather round my friends. And 
Vinson Cunningham: please, 
Alex Schwartz: of course the visual arts are not the best medium for Not conducive Yeah. For a podcast. But let's just say what we see. There's one very unperturbed man floating in the sky. Yes. 
Vinson Cunningham: A 
Alex Schwartz: little halo around his head. 
Vinson Cunningham: He's got a long beard and a he yellow ubic face, but not, but, but, and he is being pecked at and otherwise molested by a.
pH of, uh, let's call it like we see it. Goblins. Little demons. Demons. 
Alex Schwartz: Devils. Little demon. Devils. 
Vinson Cunningham: Devils. Yep. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah, I mean, if you, if you, if you came across this today, you know, you might this, this painting, say if you were scrolling through a social media feed of some kind, you know, you might be tempted to repost this with a caption it me and leave it at that. Because who is not this Saint Anthony? Just trying to go about his business and his nice black dress and instead like the demons and the devils.
I mean one has, one has a little ass face here and a normal face. Face. They're just coming for him. They're coming for him, and he's just going to float about above his landscape. Un. Bothered. Um, so I, I love that painting because it's so funny.  Like, I get it. The saints are serious business. They're holy people, and they are not letting the regular stuff of life and even the more extreme stuff of life, like being persecuted, burned at the stake, you know, twisted on some kind of horrible wheel.
They're not letting it get to them. And this painting says that with a bang. Um, and one other thing that comes to mind, especially after seeing the testament of Anne Lee is the movie The Flowers of St. Francis. Have you guys, have you guys ever um, ever seen this movie, this Roberto Rossini movie? No, it's very unusual.
It's 
Naomi Fry: called The Stigma Meadow of St. Francis. It's called 
Alex Schwartz: The Flowers of St. Francis. Okay. I think if, if, if you are into the Testament family, and if you're not totally fine, but you might wanna check this movie out. It's, it's, now, I think it's on HBO, interestingly. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, and what it is, is it's vignettes from the life of St.
Francis of Assisi, who famously was, um, very, very humble in the way he conducted himself in the clothes he wore. He, he loved animals, birds, um, living in poverty and. It's this movie, like the Testament of Anne Lee tries to take all that at face value and just perform this radical act of imagining what such a life could have looked like.
CLIP: Flowers of St. Francis
Alex Schwartz: great movie. They're just a merry band of brothers who are running around. Um, building huts. Not as handsome as the shaker huts, boiling water, uh, dealing with persecution. Very, very interesting film. 
Vinson Cunningham: Did. So before we move on, can I ask you though, so you said, so this idea of sainthood really arrived to you from the outside.
We've been talking about this idea of like, you know, whether these ideas are sort of like indigenous to your worldview or whatever. Did the, do these works of art make you like. More amenable to the concept 
Alex Schwartz: of saints. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. I'm just wondering, oh, like more attracted to the, this kind of figure? 
Alex Schwartz: To me it's a complete, I mean, is it an attractive figure?
Like it's not, it's not something I see in as worthy of emulation in my daily life. And again, because it's because I was raised in a totally different religious tradition in in which, um, sainthood is, is not a concept. It's, um, it's alien and familiar at the same time. Mm-hmm. And I see it most appealingly as a kind of key to a certain mythology.
Mm-hmm. And a mythology that I find fascinating and also interact with regularly. Um, and, uh. Prefer to keep in art rather than politics say, but, uh, yeah, yeah. The figure of the saint is, is a really interesting figure because again, whether or not you believe that these people are holy or or not, they're very real.
Mm-hmm. People who lived like this, um, and did these things and had this intensity of conviction. And often intensity of suffering. This is, this is very real. Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. I guess the first time I remember thinking about Saints, and this just came to me because my daughter, uh, who is now 14, has been. Bringing me back to Madonna. One of those hits is like a prayer. Mm-hmm. Came out in 1989 
        CLIP: Like a Prayer
and I remember watching the, like a prayer video and the controversy around the, like a prayer video in which 
Vinson Cunningham: famously o iconoclastic 
Naomi Fry: famously o iconoclastic, uh, Madonna lost her like big Pepsi deal because of it. The Pope condemned her. The video for those of us who are too young to remember, don't, or you know, have already forgot too old. And I've already, uh, depicts Madonna seeing a crime. Uh, murder committed. A, a, a woman, a white woman. Mm-hmm. Uh, murdered by a bunch of white thugs who escape and a black man rushes. Mm-hmm. To the white, the white woman's aid.
And of course the police, the racist police, you know. Thinks this arrests this black man mm-hmm. As the perpetrator and Madonna runs to a church, you know, full of, kind of like shame and tumult and, and there she sees a black saint, uh, the same, you know, who has the face as who is played by the, the, the, you know, uh, black man that she just saw being arrested, but in the form of a.
Statue of a saint. The statue is crying. He is behind bars. Madonna, clinks to the saint. Uh, it's very sexual. Madonna is wearing kind of like a revealing dress and a cross. But the whole thing of like a black Saint Madonna and like a nip slippy, you know, dress burning crosses. And I, I remember being like, Alex is like Michelangelo.
I'm like, so remember that Madonna video? Uh, it was huge for me too. I watched some popup video. It was huge. Yes. Years 
Alex Schwartz: after the fact 
Naomi Fry: and. I remember being very, as a, as a young Jewish girl, I remember being very affected by it and thinking, oh, Catholicism, what a mysterious thing, but saints are kind of sexy.
Yeah. Like, which was the problem with it of course, as far as the Catholic church was, was concerned that Well, intensity. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. And, and this is something also Yeah. That I think is part of the deal. Right? I mean, it's, it's obviously part of the deal. This is not a Catholic movie, the Ann Lee, but the testament of Ann Lee.
But it also is, you know, the sublimation of kind of like erotic mm-hmm. Energy into, um, belief and warship is, is kind of a, a central part of, of the whole thing. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. And I think some of that, um. Using the figure of the saint as a, as a vehicle to, to transmit other, as you say, energies. Yeah. Is like, is is maybe the thing that we've been talking about that's like kind of coming back. One of my favorite albums of the year is Rosalie's Lux, Light. Mm-hmm. And it is a, it is a polyglot work of sort of pop opera orchestration. She's speaking in, uh, I think 14 languages, 
Naomi Fry: 14, uh, 
Vinson Cunningham: in, in this, uh, really great and really cinematic.
Album and using, uh, female Saints as the sort of the vehicles. For I, for her idea, she talks about, uh, Saint Theresa of Avila, Saint, uh, uh, Theresa of, of Jesus, Jonah Ark, who often shows up in these kinds of narratives. She's also got, you know, songs that really go to the. Erotic edge of this connection. My favorite song title is The Stalker.
God is a Stalker. Uh, and it's all about like, I know all of your inner thoughts. I know the, you know, this like the eroticism of trying to reach, uh, some connection with the all knowing or whatever. 
        CLIP: Dios es un stalker
She's like this beautiful singer. Who uses every single sound at her disposal to i in a similar way to the, to the testament of Ann Lee, just like is trying to convey, experience absorption, surrender 
        CLIP: Dios es un stalker
Vinson: Where else are we seeing it? We're, you know, we're making this claim, it's Saint Hood is back. Where else is it? Coming across. 
Naomi Fry: Let's talk about Marty's show. 
Vinson Cunningham: Oh, yeah. You, you guys, 
Naomi Fry: I know both of you guys watched. I only, I have to admit, I only watched one episode about Joan of Arc.
Mm-hmm. Uh, there have been two seasons of Marty Scorsese, uh, uh, produced and hosted series on Fox Nation, about the lives of the Saints. So Scorsese is. A, a host of the show, he introduces it in the manner of kind of like a masterpiece theater. Mm-hmm. But then throughout the show it's these, it's this like dramatization of whatever story of a saint is Each episode is, is centered on, um. But kind of between scenes as it were. Scorsese comes back in and gives a kind of little spiel about what things mean or what happened Then, you know, kind of connecting the dots. 
        CLIP: The Saints
To me it suggests that this, this choice of his to do this, I mean, suggests a very. Strong belief in the kind of like, um, importance of these figures and importance of these figures for contemporary audiences. almost like, let us illustrate these stories for viewers who either are not completely familiar with them or who want to revisit them.
Mm-hmm. Like a kind of favorite text because they are believers and they wanna be fortified mm-hmm. By the story. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. This is like the classical. Use of the Saints Yes. Is precisely what you said. 
Naomi Fry: Yes. 
Vinson Cunningham: You know, we talk about the lives of the saints. Right. The 
Naomi Fry: lives of the Saints people.
People 
Vinson Cunningham: write these hagg ies in order to say, somewhere in here in this encyclopedia of figures is someone who is not just like you, but might be in a situation not different than yours. Mm-hmm. And so that you can. Uh, use their lives. Their lives become a, a usable past, a usable history that you can rummage through, right?
And, uh, it's like a guide or, and, and, and apply to a life like yours. There's a young Italian boy, I don't know if you guys have heard of uti. He is a young kid. He died as a teenager. He had some terrible inflammation. Um, and he is, uh, right now he is like one of the most recently. Um, 
Naomi Fry: canonized, 
Vinson Cunningham: canonized Catholic Saints.
Hmm. And part of the reason for the Catholic Church to do this is to say, look, even if you're a kid who loves video games, like Calo did. You know, you can be a saint in your situation. So, and on a, on a certain level, Scorsese as being like a, an ex, like a, an extreme traditionalist in the way that he's absolutely extreme, extremely traditional, more.
Is that, was this your also your experience of watching 
Alex Schwartz: guys? This is Martin Scorsese presents the Saints is the cheesiest thing I've ever seen. I've never seen anything more cheesy in my life. I'm extremely here for it. 
Vinson Cunningham: That's so fun. Tell me why I'm extremely 
Alex Schwartz: here for it, first of all, because again.
Alien to me. Okay, let's keep this in mind. It just the comforting cheesiness of it. The fact that they cast in the Joan of Arc episode, a French actress, to play Joan because Joan was French. Even though the entire thing is in English. It's in English, it's crazy, is awesome to me. It's awesome. 
Naomi Fry: Must see, I must see the Dfar.
Alex Schwartz: It's like she can barely. Connect the emotion of the acting role to the fact that she has to speak words uhhuh in like at best, a second language. And I'm obsessed with it. I'm also, I'm a little bit over Joan of Arc personally, because she's so archetypal. Yes, she's, 
Vinson Cunningham: her pockets have already been rmad for material.
She totally 
Alex Schwartz: the nose to on the nose, the entire legality of the whole thing and the, you know, the horrible interrogation that happens on the state. It's a legal drama. Joan of Arc is a war story and illegal drama. How could you not love it? But what I loved in the Scorsese. Was the second episode, St. John the Baptist.
Vinson Cunningham: I'm, I'm a big John the Baptist 
Alex Schwartz: fan. I'm, because I'm thinking, who is this man? I'm there primed to be taught by Martin Scorsese. Oh yeah. Who are you? Me, Papa Teach me papa. All I know. And he's so papa mode and all. He's so papa mode. Who John was never knew it. Why he baptized Jesus. I've been wondering for years.
Didn't understand it. Didn't under, like, couldn't get it. So I will just say this for the John. The Baptist episode, there is a super Scorsese moment in it, like it's still the Marty we know and love. There's a moment where Sady comes to be baptized, and it's a classic Scorsese scene. It's violence by baptism.
John is like, oh. You wanna be baptized, let's go. Because the Sadducees is just messing with him and he grabs him and violently dunks him in the water. And it's just, it could have been right out of Taxi Driver. 
CLIP: Beautiful. 
Alex Schwartz: There's another great scene where Herod, who's a bit of a bitch in seems, seems to be a bit of a bitch.
Yeah. I mean he was, he 
CLIP: was. 
Alex Schwartz: Um, and John Wonk stop going on about Herod and his, whos Herod and his horse, this Herod and his horse that like Herod is not, that's 
Vinson Cunningham: how it got himself. Trouble. Yeah. Yeah. His 
Alex Schwartz: Gaz. Yeah. Herod and his Gaz. He's not. It's, Herod is not happy. He's, he takes this news while he's in a bath of his own, the water theme.
We got it. And um, Herod's wife says to him, you know, when are you gonna avenge us? When are you gonna execute him? And Herod. In incredibly petty way just says, I will decide who's to be Aven and when I'm gonna do the avening, I'm gonna do the executing. Okay, guys, that's good. It's great cinema. Okay, good. It, it pairs beautifully with, you know, light edible, I would say.
And just, and do it. I see. I see what happened here. I'm going to, I'm, I'm willing to defend it in any state of consciousness.
Vinson Cunningham: Why are Saints making a comeback now? Critics at large will be right back.
:: MIDROLL 2::
So do you guys feel that saints are big right now? Saints are in right now? Am am I making this up? 
Alex Schwartz: Well, something is going on. There's, there's a, there's a, something's up, there's a saintly motion in the air. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, saints are, saints are always with us. They're always around. Yes. In, in the, and I'm talking culturally Yes.
Not talking religiously. I culturally, yes. No, they're, they're 
Vinson Cunningham: always around kind of lurking at the edges of the imagination. I, I 
Alex Schwartz: mean, I'm just, I'm just looking. Uh, an article from a very well respected source, the Daily Mail right now. 
Alex Schwartz: One of my favorites. Yes. Paper of record. And it's a paper of record.
And the headline I'm looking at is the Bizarre Rise of convent dressing as Lily Allen in Sydney. Sweeney leads celebrity fashion trend of dressing up as Nuns. Nuns. Are they saints? No. They, some of them may be and some of them may not be. And it's not for me to say who's who. No. But there is a trend.
There is a trend. Here's Lily Allen. With a nice sheer black tight stocking, um, a very high heel, a kind of a, a, a habit, Okay, so none dressing is a thing. This is, here's Rihanna. Rihanna was on the cover of interview, um, dressed as in sexy nun, dressed as a sexy nun. Um, Sydney Sweeney nun, uh, Sabrina Carpenter. Nun in, in Feather. She filmed it in a Catholic church. That caused a scandal. I think. I mean, these are all the daughters of Madonna. It's exactly, it's not hard to understand why there's remains something subversive about dressing up in nun's clothing and doing something a little bit untoward.
People do it every Halloween. I think the bigger thing about. Saints saintliness and why we're seeing it in the culture and kind of swirling around it. And to come back to a movie of Anne Lee, I mean, again, it's, it's obviously ironic if you do it as Lily Allen did it by smoking a cigarette and making an album about your failed open relationship and dressed, do it dressed as a nun. But I think this kind of turn towards a sincere reckoning, or sincere, at least attempt to understand what is actually a very alien and lonely experience. It makes sense to me at a time when. Look, I can spout off any number of cliches, but they're all true.
The world is moving faster and faster. Materialism is now reaching every single corner of the globe. It's very hard to say no. Mm-hmm. And to say stop and to say, I will do without rather than, I want more and more and more. And I think that explains some of the modern cultural appeal of that part of saintliness.
The part that is. Not necessarily about the most, the strongest religious conviction, although we can talk about that too. Um, but just a kind of insistence on moderation and self-denial. I mean, sometimes maybe these things find too profane a form. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And go into something like, you know, as banal and kind of disturbed as diet culture.
Naomi Fry: Absolutely. I was just, I was just thinking, you know, we have. In contemporary culture is so many forms. It it's like the, the, the kind of like pendulum swing between glut and self-denial, uh, as you said is, is like really, those are the two sides of the coin that we're so often dealing with, and it's like. You talk diet, but it can also be alcohol. It can also be like partying. Um, and, and, and then the, you know, after we're now in the new year, you know, new year starts resolutions. I'm never eating another grain of sugar again. I'm never smoking another cigarette. I'm never, you know, having one more drop of alcohol wellness will be my credo.
It's, it's like even without talking. About religion? The, the, the draw of kind of like discipline? Yeah. Self-discipline is uh, is so, uh, strong in our culture.
And I think the, the turn towards. The kind of cultural figure of the saint is, is, can 
Alex Schwartz: be, can be seen as part of that. Well, Nomi, you actually are making me think of something else, um, which I think is connected, which I think is shared by the really different projects of the testament of, and Lee and the Scorsese Saint Series.
Mm-hmm. Um, which is, they're very, very different. Um. Which is, I think both of them really are trying to remind us that these figures, these saintly figures who commune with God, who have special purpose, what have you are. People are human beings. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And that is the part that I think very often falls out.
But I think, like Scorsese talks about this in, uh, in, in some of the clips that we see where he's discussing his own take on the lives of the Saints that follow each of the Saints episodes, and it's very, obviously they're in the, in the Anne Lee movie, it's about human struggles to live according to one's own principles and one's own beliefs.
And again, the. Yeah, that can be great. It can be frighteningly fanatical. Yeah. It, there, there are, it can go in any number of, of ways. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. I, I think, you know, we, we have sort of continued to make reference to the sort of classical Catholic sense of saying, but really, I mean, you know, we can think of any number of people in the modern world.
It's like, you know, a Nelson Mandela. 
Mm-hmm. 
Vinson Cunningham: And the bracing and sort of terrifying thing about them is precisely that they are human beings because of what they say to us. Mm-hmm. Is like. If you had the juice, you could do it too. Like they're working with the same apparatus as you, except they believe harder and you could change your life right now.
Naomi Fry: Yes. If 
Vinson Cunningham: you had whatever this is making and you won't. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: I'm sorry. So, 
Vinson Cunningham: you know, there, there is a kind of abyss into which you stare when you think about a person like this. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. And that's the part at which it, it stops appealing to me in any particular way. 
Naomi Fry: Yeah. I mean, it's making me think about something else.
You know, the, the hunger. And thirst 
Vinson Cunningham: I, hunger and thirst. Yeah. 
Naomi Fry: For figures like this in our culture and the haste to push people off these pedestals mm-hmm. Putting them on these heightened pedestals and pushing them off, uh, you know, whether it's through so-called cancel culture or through just. You know where like the heights are reached, the heights of like this person is like a modern saint, are reached very quickly.
Mother obsessed with him. Whatever is the case and the downfall over like. Something that's probably not even that bad. Right. Always, you know, can't fail to come quick enough. And sometimes it's, it's things that are like truly disappointing. You know, someone like what is happening now with Chomsky? Right.
You know, Chomsky, uh, long known Chomsky, nom Chomsky, you know, professor Noam Chomsky. A longstanding hero to the left, and. He showed up in the epstein files. He wasn’t implicated in any of epsteins crimes or anything like that, but he was corresponding with him for years, even after epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. So it doesn’t look great. And I've seen people around me, you know, post about it. 
CLIP: Mm-hmm. 
Naomi Fry: Very ha, heartbroken. And I totally understand it because it's like this was a figure for a certain subset of a kind of modern saint, and now it's like, oh shit.
He was like. Consorting with this pedophile. 
Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. An interruption in a, an otherwise kind of smooth surface. Yes. But it's interesting though, because this points to the way, in the same way that you can sort of be disillusioned. There are the big events, great ruptures, often deaths that can do the opposite.
You know, make someone who was. Like manifestly all over the place, whether ideologically, personally, whatever, uh, ethically and make them into one clean surface that has one legible meaning. We could talk about how that that is being recently done in front of our faces about Charlie Kirk. 
Vinson Cunningham: mean, it's like, yeah.
Um, someone dies and speaking about a usable past, they can be made to represent things that they didn't necessarily manifest in life. 
Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Yeah. 
Vinson Cunningham: Um, 
Alex Schwartz: And especially, you know, Charlie Kirk obviously died in a horribly violent horse, horrible way.
Yeah. So you have, uh, it's, it's ready made for a sainthood story because there's an element, a big element of, you know. Persecution in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, I do think, again, I'm so sorry, but my mind is going back to Martin Scorsese's, lives of the Saints, the John the Baptist epi episode, where they're all talking about how, how in the land there is a hungering for the Messiah and everyone is primed to see a Messiah because there's such a desire for deliverance, because there's a political wrought afoot.
Guys, I'm not seeing things so differently in our. Current moment.I think this is part of this, the hunger, the thirst, the hunger, the hunger and thirst for the saint, I think is, is part of the same, is part of the same thing. I mean on a totally different part of the spectrum. I was walking around in my, in my neighborhood in New York City recently and was kind of shocked, uh, to see Luigi man Joni's face.
I wasn't shocked to see his face, but I was shocked to see it in the guise. Of a saint. He, you know, like you would see on a, um, on a candle in a votive candle posted to Lamppost St. Luigi. Like what? But again, I think it's because like we are craving this kind of clarity where no such clarity exists and we're trying to, and that's obviously done with a code of irony that is very.
On Saint like itself. Mm-hmm. Um, but surprising, unusual, this whole St. Luigi business. 
Vinson Cunningham: Well, I think you're right. If there was a, you know, by the time this, uh, this podcast, it's the airwaves, um, I will have, you know, my, my Christmas essay will be back, will be out. And this is what I have been kind of trying to think about, which is like, you know, these moments of.
Um, I don't know, whatever you call the Christmas story arrival or these times of like great hunger and, uh, desire. But of course also just fear of what comes next. 
CLIP: Mm-hmm. 
Vinson Cunningham: You know, fear of what the, you can feel an era ending. You can feel a world that you're familiar with ending and it's like, how do I cross the bridge into something new?
And often you, we sort of like displace that anxiety or just place it. Into a figure. Mm-hmm. Um, and it’s interesting because it can be a really inconvenient symbol, like the symbol structure around mangione, he’s saint luigi, whatever. Part of the reason that society grabbed this kid who had allegedly done this awful thing was because he symbolized higher ideas about can you afford to live in america and what are the forces that are making it impossible to do so, and I think it’s interesting we don’t hear about him so much now that there’s been a resurgence in progressive politics, better symbols for the same problem. All of a sudden, the huge positive interest in Mamdani, maybe he’s a more convenient wholesome representative of who’s managing the thing well that’s already on my mind. Someone who seems to be walking the tightrope, well crossing the bridge in a way that we can admire. 
Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I, I think, I think that's, I think that's very true. 
Vinson Cunningham: Are there. Saints that, you know, keep coming back to you, people who you'd like to take something from and bring it forward with you.
Alex Schwartz: I like Hildegard Von Binging. Okay. I'm just gonna say it. Mm-hmm. Are you guys familiar with, with this Saint, I've heard Hildegard that Well, I'm just, I profiled the writer Patricia Lockwood last year and, um. Part of the piece in her, in her latest book is about having had visions during long COVID, like getting visions, getting things just popping into her brain mm-hmm.
As this 11th century German ais had. Um, and I keep seeing her as almost like this coming up across the culture. There's new opera that's based on her life is a kind of patron saint for mm-hmm. Female creativity. Like this, this is, this is a saint. I enjoy, I'm gonna get behind that and. The saint of writing the saint of the, the, the saint of, she's also 
Vinson Cunningham: mentioned by Rosalia.
Yes. And lux. Yeah. 
Alex Schwartz: And of course like we need that. We need that artistic creation. Have a vision, sing and dance. Do a little writing. 
CLIP: Beat 
Alex Schwartz: your joke, but just a little. Just a little. And that. And that's enough. That's enough. You don't have to give up sex. That's 
Naomi Fry: really good. That's something I'll be taking with me into this new year.
Vinson Cunningham: Let it be your Hilda.
This has been critics at Large. Al Barish is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Alexis Gudo composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from Vince Fairchild with Mixing by Mike Kuman. You can find every single episode we've ever made at New yorker.com/critics.