SUE CARLSON IN STOP THE POUNDING HEART

Docudrama -- or propaganda?

If Roberto Minervini's Stop the Pounding Heart, last in a Texas trilogy the US-based Italian has been making, were a documentary, as it at first appears to be, it would be very remarkable indeed since it has access to some intimate moments. But eventually we realize this film is "staged" by "people playing themselves." And that's a lot different from either documentary or drama, and, since the Carlson family are the main focus and their Christian piety is held up to the light, this starts to seem like a "Christian film," and therefore a kind of propaganda. The film is supplied with simplified English subtitles, presumably for an international Christian audience -- though director Minervini himself, a graduate of the New School in NYC, is a Buddhist.

The family chiefly depicted in the film is certainly a remarkable one, living simply and productively off the land and providing many children with the upbringing they want them to have. Except for a couple of harsh words from the father, the Carlsons put their best foot forward, and many details are missing. (The Carlsons and some others appeared in the two other films.) What's stressed is the austere life of the huge Carlson family (two parents, 12 children, by reports) -- get up, feed the goats -- they run an artisinal farm that sells goat milk, cheese, and yogurt at farmers' markets -- then Bible-study, breakfast, work.

The alternate theme is of blond 14-year-old Sara Carlson's occasional meetings with Colby Trichell, an amateur bull rider about her age from another large (though not quite so large) Christian family in the same community. Though darkly handsome and slightly rakish (too reedy yet to be a successful rider himself), Colby is polite and restrained and this "courtship" is so subtle as to be almost imperceptible. In the Carlsons' version of Christian ethics as explained by Sara's mother, dating is frowned upon, since it only shows a mate who is available for "fun." What about the un-fun times? Performance during those is what counts in a mate, Sare's mom says.

But how then is a mate chosen? This is not explained. Nothing is explained. At the end, after Sara's mother has soothed her girl who's going through a time of worry and fear she does not explain (stopping, presumably, the pounding of her heart), Sara is dressed in a tight girdle and what looks like a 19th-century-style wedding dress and goes out. Is she going to marry Colby? At the age of 14? Or is this old-fashioned dressup just to reinforce the girls' allegiance to traditional women's roles, since their mother has coached them on the great values of being submissive and putting the men in their life first?

Sara's mother's counseling of the girls is wonderful, but rather generic, as is Sara's counseling of some younger daughters. As one of the oldest children, she does part of the home schooling.

But the home schooling we see is only vague Bible lessons, no other teaching.

The cinematography of Stop the Pounding Heart by Diego Romero Suarez-Llanos is handsome, and blond heads are often attractively back lit, with cute baby goats coming up to nuzzle Sara Carlson's hand. She knows their names and calls them "sweetie." The film shows a number of bull-riding sessions, involving young boys, including Colby. Colby gives lessons to Carlson boys and encourages them to try real bull-riding. The actual full-sized bulls seem terrifying and dangerous, and Colby gets hand and arm injuries. At times it seems that the film is more interested in the bull riding than in the Christian lessons, perhaps because they are livelier to film than hand-milking goats. Another bit of excitement comes from target practice with guns in the back yard in which the Carlson girls participate.

The film includes a childbirth at which Sara observes in a doorway. The mother is on the floor, Sara's mother attending, a midwife, and the mother's husband helping out. Sara seems a bit uneasy.

And we are uneasy after watching this attractive, so natural-seeming film, which seems to advertise a pure Christian way of life that it does not delve into deeply enough for anyone but the converted to be satisfied with. Admiration for this film when it showed out of competition at Cannes seems to show that you can get away with a lot nowadays with festival critics if you use documentary elements attractively.

Stop the Pounding Heart, 100 mins., was screened for this review as part of the FSLC-MoMA 2014 New Directors/New Films series showing Friday, March 21, 6:15pm at MoMA and Sunday, March 23, 3:30pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.