Review: the perversity of religion through the eyes of ‘Saint Maud’

This post contains major spoilers for Saint Maud

I was conditioned to believe even masturbation was evil. Like I was going to be cast into the fiery flames of Hell for a pleasure God herself created. I was 18 before I realized that much of what the Christian church was peddling was absolute rubbish. I consider myself a Christian these days, but I firmly believe institutionalized religion has perverted what actually appears in the original Biblical texts. It has taken me decades to work through religious-rooted trauma, as many other LGBTQ+ people have done, and there remain plenty of wounds that still need to heal. What struck me most about Rose Glass’ Saint Maud, her directorial debut, was the title character’s condemnation of self through isolation, self-mutilation, and strict, minimalistic living as a way to adhere to some unattainable idealism about purity and faith.

When we meet Maud (Morfydd Clark), she’s taken on a new role as an in-home hospice nurse to Amanda (Jennifer Ehle), a once vibrant pillar of the dance community. Maud is a relatively new convert, so she navigates still murky waters and contends with a tragic event that directly provoked her quest for truth and absolution. Slowly revealed through brief flashbacks, we’re invited into Maud’s polluted mind — a dark shroud of paranoia and obsession drives her need for faith, rather than an honest search for good — and discover she blames herself for the death of a former patient. Amanda’s blasé, sometimes mocking, attitude certainly doesn’t help matters; in one particularly uncomfortable scene, Amanda feigns interest when Maud describes how she can feel God within her bones, mimicking Maud’s very real, if delusional, bodily experience. It’s nearly sexual for Maud, as she’s sought out religion to replace the human connection she can’t find anywhere else.

She tries to reach out to Joy (Lily Knight), a friend she knew pre-tragedy, but it all seems terribly superficial and pointless. So, the cross has become her salve, a self-medication for someone that might just be too far gone before the film has even started. Maud’s relationship with Amanda quickly twists and tangles, and her overbearing nature nearly severs Amanda’s romance with a young woman named Carol (Lily Frazer). When Amanda confronts Maud about her threats, during a rousing birthday celebration no less, Maud lashes out at Amanda, slapping her across the face until her nose bleeds. Every ounce of frustration she’s ever experienced over her life and faith informs that moment, an electrifying one that sends her on an entirely different path. Faith, as we’ve seen in the news the last four years, is vessel for the depraved and the outrageously greedy, a way to oppress, rather than to do what the religious establishment promises it will.

I remember loathing myself for all my queer thoughts as a teenager. Countless times, I would punch myself or bash my head into the wall because I was taught that I, as a human being, was unfit to be alive and in my own skin. That rage nearly swallowed me whole. When I was done harming myself, I would return to whatever scripture had been preached about that week, hoping for grace and some kind of sign, and obsess over trying to fix myself. When Maud plants small nails into the soles of her sneakers, my body twinged with pain; that’s the kind of deliberate mutilation that’s subtle, and perhaps most dangerous. It sends ripples into your brain, slowly but surely chipping away at your psychological state. Later, Maud returns to the local pub she used to frequent, tries to gain attention from a nearby table, and then randomly hooks up with a stranger. But she feels nothing.

Nothing can satiate her like religion does. So, she cowers back into the pages of her tattered bible, because he has no other place to go. She mercilessly repents for backsliding so easily, and now a new wave of self-hatred overtakes her mind and body. A reinvigorated faith pulses through her body, but she’s already split in two. When God’s voice pierces in the darkness, a chilling bass that feels far more devilish than one might expect, she commits herself fully to the warped fantasy. Here is where Maud’s unreliable perspective immerses the viewer, and we see exactly the delusions she sees. From a glistening gold set of wings to Amanda’s transformation into some sort of demonic entity (I don’t believe that’s actually happening), the final act correlates chillingly to centuries of religious perversity by those in power, and the poor and vulnerable are left to suffer and die and feed the monster.

Religious trauma is an extreme kind, and you often feel as though you’re a human pendulum. You swing back and forth from both ends, hoping that self-loathing and heightened discipline will cleanse you or that spiraling out with drugs, alcohol, and sex will numb you cold. What the church doesn’t tell you is there’s a middle ground. You can live your life and enjoy whatever pleasures you will and still be tied to a faith in a higher power. It’s not a one or the other situation. What Saint Maud highlights so eloquently is the deterioration of such understanding and how deeply-rooted trauma transforms your entire life, leaving you to struggle for years to find the truth. It takes work, decades even, to extricate yourself from such a dark abyss. And Maud is a simple testament of the many who never will escape.

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