Exemplum

A Film Worth Your Time

I’ve got a movie for you. Surely, you could always use another movie recommendation from one of your fellow human beings (as opposed to, say, an algorithm or an “expert,” neither of which I claim to be).

Exemplum tells the tale of a Catholic priest (Fr. Colin) who uses recordings of his confessions to come up with content for his media ministry. It is a morality tale about morality tales. Here’s a trailer for the film:

The movie lasts a total of 1 hour and 36 minutes. You can stream it for free on Tubi, a channel that you can download and add to your Roku app. You may have to suffer through a few rounds of ads, but it is worth it. The film was released on March 9, 2023, so it has been out for almost 10 months now.

You might be thinking, “Recording confessions is an excommunicable offense,” and you would be correct. The film indirectly acknowledges this fact, and it certainly doesn’t glorify it. It is not an anti-Catholic film. Without giving too much away, we get to see the negative consequences of Fr. Colin’s decisions play out as the film progresses. In other words, we get to see the consequences of evil. As Pope Pius XII points out in The Ideal Film, moviegoers should be able to identify evil as evil.

There’s no sin in depicting evil prelates, either, as Pope Pius XII’s The Ideal Film also indicates. Pius XII writes,

“It is not impossible that historical motives, demands of plot, or even sober realism make it necessary to present failures and defects of ecclesiastical persons, of their characters and perhaps also failures in the performance of their office; in such cases, however, let the distinction between institution and person, between person and office, be made clear to the spectator.”

Roland’s film does precisely this. You’ll find references to the failings of those within the Church but not wholesale attacks on the Church, per se.

At the time of writing this post, Exemplum has an average score of 8.4 on IMDB. This is a fairly accurate number.

There are a few reasons why you should watch it. First, it is well-made and well-written on an incredibly low budget (in fact, basically no budget). It thus serves as an exemplar of what you can do with talented storytelling if you can get creative with how the film will be shot.

Roland explains in his YT video on micro-budget filmmaking that he made the film with just $9,000. He wrote, directed, and produced it. He’s also the main actor. He says, “You have to construct your entire story around what you know you can get for free or relatively cheap.” At one point, Roland says:

“I’ve spent a lot of time writing scripts with a mindset of artistic freedom, big budget scripts. It allowed me when it came to write this story, this small story, to think big with the emotions. I knew how to create a sense of urgency to the film and get creative with how I utilized the locations and the editing and play up the emotions of the characters and allow that to speak rather than allowing the budget to overtake things.”

Financing is a major issue when it comes to making a movie. You typically don’t see people making movies as individuals; like playing in a symphony orchestra, moviemaking is a corporate phenomenon, requiring you to work with all sorts of people. Money helps you to coordinate large groups of people and bring them together at specific times. However, money also constrains you, leads to conflict, and so on.

Dan Bielinski, a professional filmmaker and professor at the University of Mary in Bismarck, ND, once suggested how critical the location is to the story that can be told. When it comes to low-budget independent filmmaking, it’s just not smart to attempt an 18th century period piece set in Belgium if you live in southwest Florida and don’t have a massive budget. Instead, you’d be better off shaping your story around gators, airboats, and Florida Man, since you’ve got the landscape and environment that add production value to your tale. 

Roland’s Exemplum looks like Christopher Nolan’s Following, a film also made on basically no budget. As the legend has it, Nolan filmed Following on Saturdays 15 minutes at a time with his buddies. Both Roland and Nolan shot their films in black and white, which saved them the trouble of having to mess with color grading/correcting. If you don’t have the money for lighting packages, you could do worse than shooting scenes next to large windows, a strategy Nolan discusses in this interview.

Full disclosure: Exemplum is made by a Christian filmmaker. It’s a Christian film. Yet, it doesn’t resort to over-the-top evangelical tactics like cheesy in-your-face preaching, flat characters, on-the-nose dialogue, etc. It is a thriller. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but you get invested in the characters’ lives. It is an exemplar of the type of indirect communication that Soren Kierkegaard was urging upon Christendom in the 19th century, when Christianity had become a banality. For people who have already heard the Good News, you have to get crafty with your rhetorical approach.

In my mind, the best thing about Roland’s Exemplum is that it doesn’t preach. As the Catholic novelist and critic Walker Percy writes,

“…art is a virtue of the practical intellect. It is in the sphere of making, not reasoning, not reporting. A good novel is like a good table. The parts have to fit; it has to work, that is, sit foursquare and at the right level. And it has to please. Its truth lies in the way it looks, feels, hefts—the touch and the grain of the thing. Its morality follows from the form and the excellence of the thing. That is to say, its morality comes from within, follows naturally from its making and is not imposed from without. It does not preach.”

Exemplum looks good and feels good. Its morality follows from its form: it comes from within. Of course, the film is not appropriate for all ages (there’s some bad language, allusions to sex, and passionate kissing). However, all things considered, the movie is a testament to what you can do on a small budget and with an excellent story.

Roland is clearly conversant with some of the great minds of the Western tradition. You’ll hear mention of Sophocles, Chaucer, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn in Exemplum. If you watch it, you’ll be taught something. You’ll be delighted. And perhaps you’ll even be moved.

If you liked this post or would like to see others like it, please subscribe to this Substack. I’ll be playing around with various types of posts in the upcoming weeks, and I’d be curious to know what types of articles interest you most. Whether or not you’ve seen the film, please leave a comment below and give me your thoughts. Will you watch it? Do you agree with my assessment? Why or why not?