| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Daens (1992) |
| Director | Stijn Coninx |
| Writer | François Chevallier, Stijn Coninx, Louis Paul Boon (novel) |
| Lead Actor | Jan Decleir |
| Cast | Jan Decleir, Gérard Desarthe, Antje De Boeck, Michael Pas, Johan Leysen |
| Genre | Biography, Drama, History |
| Release Date | December 16, 1992 (Belgium) |
| Duration | 2h 18m |
| Budget | $5 million |
| Language | Dutch, French |
| IMDb Rating | 7.5/10 |
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DAENS
In every movie that aspires to greatness, there has to be at least one great moment something you didn’t expect and can never forget. In Daens, it happens late in this film about Father Adolph Daens. A starving boy has been admiring the priest-hero from afar and is especially impressed by his sermon on the loaves and fishes. The boy takes a few bits of crust and water and prays over them, in hopes of multiplying them and satisfying his desperate hunger.
This Belgian/French/Dutch coproduction, directed by Stijn Coninx and nominated for an Oscar in 1992 for best foreign film, belongs on the short list of outstanding movies about priests. It never played in U.S.
Although set in Aalst, Belgium, at the turn of the century, it has many similarities to Dorothy Day. It may be the classic Catholic story, since the hero takes literally not only the gospel but also Pope Leo XIII’s then-new 1891 encyclical on social justice, Rerum Novarum. That gets him, of course, in all kinds of trouble inside the Church with wealthy laymen and politicians, fellow clerics and pragmatic bishops and cardinals.
Many of us simply don’t know enough social history. The horrors of child labor that now haunt the Third World were then rife in Europe. (The factory directors worked women and children under unbelievable conditions to save money.) Nearly all the arguments that now divide Catholics on social issues raged then, when the Church, always organized to resist change, found itself tested by both atheistic socialism and laissez-faire capitalism.
Father Adolph Daens (played by the bluff Depardieu-like Jan Decleir) was an obscure priest and advocate of the Catholic Workers Party. He foreshadowed Father Pierre Cardijn in his compassion for workers and managed to serve two terms in Parliament. He’s presented not as a saint, but as a brave idealist who loses just about everything in the fight but his soul. It’s done in Flemish and French with English subtitles.
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