the pietà
6 titles
Films that borrow or nod to the Pietà, the image of Mary holding the body of Jesus in her lap. The pose took shape in Germany around 1300, and Michelangelo carved his marble version in 1498 and 1499. The marble now stands in St. Peter's in Rome.
The first two films give the pose to people who are not Mary and Jesus. In Rome, Open City (1945), Pina is the fiancée of a resistance fighter and Don Pietro is the priest due to marry them. When Pina dies, Don Pietro holds her body. Joseph Luzzi, writing in The American Scholar, compares him to the Virgin holding Jesus in Michelangelo's sculpture. In Cries and Whispers (1972), Agnes is dying of cancer and her sisters cannot comfort her. Near the end, Anna, the maid, comforts the dead Agnes in a dream, and Roger Ebert said the composition mirrors the Pietà.
The Passion of the Christ (2004) uses the pose for its original subject. It follows the last twelve hours in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. When he is lowered from the cross, his mother Mary holds his body, and James Wicker, writing in Baptist Press, calls the moment a recreation of Michelangelo's Pietà. Children of Men (2006) gets to the pose through a photograph. Humans in the film have been unable to have children for eighteen years, and one shot shows a woman holding her dead son. Its director, Alfonso Cuarón, has said the shot refers to a photograph from the Balkans, which in turn refers to the Pietà.
Two more carry the name. In Pieta (2012), which won the Golden Lion at Venice, a loan shark is forced to reconsider his violent lifestyle when a woman claiming to be his long-lost mother arrives. Director Kim Ki-duk has said the title refers to the Virgin Mary embracing her son, and the poster shows a woman holding a man across her lap, which Korea JoongAng Daily compared to Michelangelo's sculpture. In La Piedad (2022), also billed as La Pietà, Mateo lives with his mother Libertad in a world with only the two of them, until he is diagnosed with cancer. On the poster Libertad, veiled in white, holds him across her lap, and the trailer ends on the same pose.
