Evergreen confessions of a wandering son

Saint Augustine and his mother, St. Monica, lived a long time ago in a land far, far away. But the story of a parent’s sorrowful prayers for a child whose search for meaning has led him astray is familiar to every generation, including many right now.

St. Augustine: Son of Her Tears, available on multiple streaming services, is an unconventional film that effectively conveys the great saint’s early life as a kind of “movie within a movie.” It is educational especially for those unfamiliar with the saint’s Confessions, his spiritual autobiography about his journey from doubt and sin to the truth of the Catholic faith. It’s a foreign film, but overlooking the dubbed dialogue — where all voices tend to speak at the same volume and at the same clipped pace — its viewing is time well spent.

The film opens as Hedi, a filmmaker with a production company in Paris, is sent to his native Algeria to make a documentary about Augustine ahead of a cathedral’s dedication in the saint’s honor. As he studies the Confessions, he finds parallels between Augustine’s struggles and his own relationship with his mother and girlfriend. We see dramatized scenes from Augustine’s life interspersed with conflicts in Hedi’s life. As Augustine’s intellectual pursuits eventually bring him to embrace the faith of his mother, so does contemplation of Augustine’s journey bring Hedi to make positive resolutions about his own relationships.

Augustine’s acceptance and later rejection of Manichaeism and his immoral lifestyle are portrayed thoughtfully, as is his dramatic conversion that culminates in his baptism by St. Ambrose, whose preaching plays a major role in his enlightenment.

Watching this movie won’t match the value of reading his Confessions, but the key themes to draw from Augustine’s life are here: the errors and successes of his methodical quest for truth, the power of a mother’s persistence in prayer, and encouragement to all parents to not lose hope in a wayward child’s conversion.

GERALD KORSON is a Legatus magazine staff writer.