Penance Movie

Through his act of penance, Mendoza is enabled to forgive himself for killing his brother, for enslaving the Guarani, and for the overall violence of his past. He is also enabled to receive forgiveness from the Gaurani. And while he cannot repair his relationship with his brother, he is able to form new familial bonds with the Jesuits of the mission (later becoming on himself) and with the Guarani. The purpose of penance is not to wallow in our guilt and shame, nor is it to punish ourselves for our sins. Rather, it is to return us to communion with our brothers and sisters. It is to release us from the weigh that turns us away from loving God. It is to remind us that, in being called to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must truly love ourselves.

penance movie

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15 years ago, Emiri (the Japanese rendition of Emily), an elementary school student from a rich family transferred to the small town of Ueda, and soon became close friends with four other girls, Sae, Maki, Akiko and Yuka. The girls always played together, occasionally in each other’s house, but at one point, after a series of antique dolls were stolen from each of the girl’s houses, they experienced a true tragedy. An unknown man came to their school after- hours, while they were playing at the courtyard, and posing as a ventilation technician, took Emiri away from the rest, supposedly to help him. A bit later, though, the girls went inside the gym only to find Emiri dead and the man nowhere to be found. The incident had a chilling effect on the whole school environment, but most of all, to the four girls and Emiri’s mother, Asako. The latter, some months later, invited the girl to her house, only to accuse them for lying about not remembering the face of the perpetrator, and even demanding some kind of penance for him getting away, also stating that she will not stop thinking about them until they deliver. 15 years later, the lives of every girl are in shambles, with the impact of the murder and Asako behaviour essentially dictating their actions, although in different ways.

My name is Panos Kotzathanasis and I am Greek. Being a fan of Asian cinema and especially of Chinese kung fu and Japanese samurai movies since I was a little kid, I cultivated that love during my adolescence, to extend to the whole of SE Asia.

In the beginning of 2017, I launched my own website, Asian Film Vault, which I merged in 2018 with Asian Movie Pulse, creating the most complete website about the Asian movie industry, as it deals with almost every country from East and South Asia, and definitely all genres.

The 11-minute piece, directed by Emmy-winning Revolution stunt coordinator Jeff Wolfe, was screened at the Los Angeles International Underground Film Festival, where it won Best Narrative Short. The movie, which was shot in 2013, was also accepted into the 2014 BeFilm New York Film Festival and will screen in Manhattan in late 2014.

The withdrawn Akiko (Sakura Ando) starts to emerge from her shell when her brother (Ryo Kase) returns to town with a new wife and stepdaughter in tow, but starts to suspect that her older sibling might have some dark secrets. And Yuka, (Chizuru Ikewai) since the night of the murder, has obsessed over policemen, which comes to a head when her sister marries one. Each interact in different ways, over the course of 5 episodes of roughly 55 minutes each, with the older Asako, reminding them each of their promise of penance, at least until she starts to see the consequences.

The biggest issue with Scott Teems' new drama The Quarry is that the story feels truncated. Sometimes knowing a story will be resolved adds dramatic stakes and the storyteller only has a limited time to payoff the narrative. But in the case of The Quarry, it feels like Teems is at a starting point with an obvious conclusion rather than the start of a bigger narrative that better accommodates the themes he wishes to explore. Instead, The Quarry feels like a simple morality play about the impossibility of building penance on top of sin. The performances from lead actors Shea Whigham, Michael Shannon, and Catalina Sandino Moreno are all terrific, but frequently it feels like we're just skimming the surface of a much deeper story.

Watching The Quarry, I wanted the story to extend beyond the confines of a film, which is rare, because I usually find prestige TV shows too long and drawn out. But the character questions that Teems poses with this premise are intriguing and lend themselves well to long-form explorations on the nature of penance, repentance, and sin. But within the confines of a feature film, The Quarry simply becomes an editorial about these topics. The dramatic tension of the film wants to be whether or not the drifter will be discovered, but the richness of the movie comes from his emerging conscience and his connection with the community. These are relationships and ideas that deserve further exploration than what they receive here, which is largely composed of the drifter feeling guilty and furtive over his actions. 2ff7e9595c