Ars Christiana No. II (XVI) / 2023
‘The Monk and the Demon’: a philosophical take on ‘Stan Pățitul’
Elena Dulgheru The Monk and the Demon (2016), the final film by Russian director Nikolai Dostal, based on a screenplay by Yuri Arabov, is a dramatic comedy blending folk parable, hagiographic fable and theological inquiry into the relationship between man and the devil, set in a nineteenth-century monastery. Following monk Ivan and the demon Legion through a series of fantastical adventures culminating in Jerusalem, the film raises the provocative question of whether fallen angels can be humanised through love and repentance.