The debut film by Alice Rohrwacher, Celestial Corps (2011), offers a meditation without discounts on faith, identity and belonging through the eyes of the thirteen-year-old Martha. As soon as Switzerland returned to the native country of her mother, in Calabria, Marta was catapulted in an environment defined by Catholic orthodoxy, community rituals and strict gender expectations. While Rohrwacher’s gripping machine crosses anguish apartments, worn classrooms and the ruined Calabrian landscape, it captures both suffocating intimacy and the alienation of the province’s life. This chapter examines theological, cultural and cinematographic dimensions of the Celestial Body, focusing on Catholic sacraments, catechism and Communion, and on the intersections between faith, disorientation and adolescence.
In Catholic theology, the sacraments are external signs established by Christ to communicate divine grace. Traditionally, the sacraments are seven – Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist, Penance, Untion of the sick, Marriage and Sacred Order. Each acts as a rite of passage that binds the believer to the spiritual and community life of the Church. In Italy – especially in rural and southern contexts – the Catholic Church has historically operated as a central institution that keeps community life together. Catechism, sacraments and rituals are not only religious practices, but cultural codes of belonging. For teenagers, this creates an inevitable bond: rejecting the Church means risking social exclusion. Rohrwacher shows this tension by staging Marta’s silent refusal to fully conform, an attitude that the island not only on the spiritual level but also on the social level.
The most central sacrament in the Celestial Body is the Eucharist, preceded by catechism lessons and preparation for the First Communion. For a child, this stage should mark entry into full participation in the ecclesial community, favoring both spiritual intimacy with Christ and social belonging. Ideally, catechistic education should nourish faith, offer theological foundations and encourage moral growth. However, in Rohrwacher’s film, the process appears as mechanical, institutionalized and alienating – highlighting the gap.
Marta’s catechism classes, guided by the severe and often impatient Santa, highlight the performative aspects of religious education. Young students store prayers, try rituals and undergo Santa’s corrections, but little attention is paid to their personal involvement with faith. The room dwells on Marta’s silent detachment while she struggles to interiorize rigid forms, opposing the spiritual awakening expected to her tangible extraneity.
A particularly incisive scene occurs when Martha is reprimanded because she does not know the answers of catechism. Instead of accepting his questions, Saint imposes conformity, showing the role of the Church as an institution of discipline rather than dialogue. For Martha, Communion becomes less a spiritual transformation than a cultural obligation – a sign of belonging that cannot easily embrace.
As a migrant child raised in Switzerland, Marta embodies cultural eradication. It is at the same time “inside” for inheritance and “outside” by experience. The return to Calabria pushes her into a world of dialects, rituals and expectations that are foreign to her. Rohrwacher captures this extraneity through the frame: Marta is often placed on the margins of the groups, observes in silence, or is recovered in long fields that accentuate its isolation.
His interactions with peers range between a hesitant bond and a silent alienation. Unlike classmates, who largely submit themselves to the ritualized demands of catechism, Martha questions the meaning of these rites. His skepticism is not an explicit rebellion, but an incarnate discomfort, which signals both his adolescent research of himself and his condition of culturally “in the middle”. Marta is the emotional and thematic nucleus. His eyes questioning, hesitant gestures and body retraction contrast clearly with the noisy and performing practices of the institution. Rohrwacher builds her as a witness and critical group of the Catholic Church’s grip on young people in South Italy.
Marta’s mother is overloaded, pragmatic and emotionally distant, committed to balancing the demands of work, family and tradition. His poor attention to the inner conflict of Martha strengthens the loneliness of the protagonist, underlining the generational gap between mothers anchored to cultural survival and daughters seeking identity. The sister represents assimilation and conformity. At ease in the rituals and rhythms of the Catholic life of Calabria, it is necessary to constrict Martha – an image of what it means to accept without question.
Saint embodies the institutional rigidity of the Church. Discipline, correct and reproach, favoring ritual accuracy compared to authentic spiritual growth. His character highlights the bureaucracy of the faith, in which children are prepared not to a personal encounter with God, but to external conformity.
The choice of Calabria as a setting is crucial. The country is represented as an intimate and oppressive assembly, and its decaying urban spaces reflect the institutional stagnation. The natural light and the hand room emphasize realism, while the long floors allow Martha’s discomfort to emerge organically. The final, in which Martha departs from the preparations for Communion and meets a kitten just born near the bank of a river, crystallizes the message of Rohrwacher. This moment of fragile new life outside institutional frameworks symbolizes another type of spirituality – rooted in nature, vulnerability and personal discovery. The kitten, as an unauthorized “sacrament”, embodies a faith released from the rigid ritual.
The prospect of Alice Rohrwacher is not of total rejection, but of criticism and nostalgia. It shows the void of the ritual separated from meaning, but remains attentive to the spiritual hunger that rituals should feed. Focusing on the look of a girl, Rohrwacher brings to the forefront the intersection between gender, teens and faith in South Italy. His message to the public is twofold: first, that institutions risk alienating just the souls they seek to grow; second, that authentic spirituality often flourishes on the margins, in small unplanned encounters of daily life.
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