It must make life easier for documentary filmmakers when they stumble across real-life people who fit naturally into the “larger than life” mold.
Such a person is the cranky Jorgen Lauerson Vig, the elderly subject of “The Monastery: Mr. Vig &the Nun.” The film gives no indication of how director Pernille Rose Gronkjaer found Mr. Vig, but she must have done a cartwheel when she did.
Mr. Vig lives in a rustic part of Denmark, where 50 years earlier he purchased a smallish castle, now deteriorating. Now 86 years old, he has decided to donate the building to the Russian Orthodox Church, to use as a monastery.
This act of generosity is more complicated than it seems. As the reality of letting go of his place becomes more real, the stubborn, irascible Mr. Vig must learn to get along with the new tenants.
We should pause to note that Mr. Vig is tall and lean, with a waving mane of hair and a long white beard that looks like it was stolen from a J.R.R. Tolkien character. He has never married, nor been in love, and he regards other people with difficulty.
His ideas about life are as dogmatic as they are sad. He believes that sex should only exist in marriage for the purpose of having children, and anyway the appeal of sex “only lasts for a week or two.” (We infer that he has never experienced sex himself, which could explain his attitude.)
Mr. Vig meets his match in a Russian nun, Sister Amvrosija, who arrives to oversee the initial repairs and assessment of the place. You know the place is in disrepair when one scene begins with the question, “What kind of fungus is it?”
A wonderfully direct, apparently fearless woman, Sister Amvrosija must deal with Mr. Vig’s moods as she firmly guides the project to an acceptable conclusion.
She’s a wonderful character by herself, but her bemused appreciation of Mr. Vig makes their chemistry a very entertaining thing to behold. As Mr. Vig doubts his gift, she keeps her focus steady.
This film is a character study, with a casual approach to storytelling (large sections of time pass without remark, and unexplained events are left mostly unexplained). But it succeeds nicely at introducing two unusual people, and at capturing the quiet mood of a place overlooked by time and progress.
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