The stark landscape, the humble simplicity of Father Anatoly, the remoteness of the monastery on the White Sea, and the miracles of his redemption converge into a timeless snapshot of lived spirituality. The Patriarch of Moscow, Alexei II, praised The Island for its profound depiction of faith and monastic life.

Sarah Conover

Although I loved The Island–the 2006 Russian film directed by Pavel Lungin, written by Dmitry Sobolev, and starring Pyotr Mamonov as a fictional 20th-century Eastern Orthodox monk–I am giving it three (out of five) stars because the resolution of the film is too pat. 

The movie begins with a tragic choice during wartime. It is 1942, a German destroyer captures a Russian coal station, and the Nazis round up the captain and his first mate. The Germans hand the first mate a gun and put him into an impossible moral dilemma: kill your captain, or we kill you.

The next time we meet our tragic sailor, it is 34 years later, and he is a monk who lives in a boiler room next to an Orthodox monastery on a remote island. He is now Father Anatoly, still atoning for his sin. He wears rags, toils all day, and refuses to follow to proper church rituals. As one reviewer puts it (Sarah Conover), “Is Father Anatoli a madman or a holy man? For most of the film we aren’t really sure. By the time the movie ends, we’ve likely made a decision.”