Sister Mary Explains It All (& Lovesick / The Manhattan Project)

Fans of Christopher Durang's bitingly satirical play Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You might be surprised by the somber liturgical score Philippe Sarde composed for Marshall Brickman's 2001 cable film version. In the stage play, Sister Mary spoke to the audience directly, leaving spectators to decide for themselves who the autocratic nun was speaking to and why. The ambiguity and theatricality of the setting helped to underscore the comedy of the piece by encouraging a suspension of disbelief that distanced the audience emotionally from the gruesome final scenes. The film version (retitled Sister Mary Explains It All) removes all of that ambiguity. It establishes the locale (a 25th anniversary celebration for Sister's school), the identity of the audience (an assortment of repressed Catholic-school victims), and adds a superfluous subplot. As a result, the film is both more realistic and more dramatic than the stage version, making the bizarre events much harder to take. Sarde's score -- replete with pipe organs, somber Latin choruses, and snippets of familiar hymns -- pushes things even farther in a serious direction, creating a reverent tone that might have seemed out of place in the play. The music contributes to a sense of tragic gravity that the script, ultimately more caricature than character study, can't quite bear. Which isn't to say that the music isn't beautiful -- it is. Purely on a musical level, Sarde's work on Sister Mary compares favorably with both of his other Brickman collaborations, Lovesick and The Manhattan Project. This soundtrack also contains excerpts from both of those fine compositions. ~ Evan Cater|