Amy Welborn on the film about St. Maximilian Kolbe, Triumph of the Heart
“Triumph of the Heart,” then, is an artful, creative digest of Kolbe’s life and impact in Auschwitz, dramatized through fictionalized characters, conversations, and actions. It’s beautifully shot and staged and powerfully acted, an encouraging sign of what creators can accomplish with a strong vision and limited resources, outside the established filmmaking ecosystem.
The great theological and spiritual struggle here is twofold: the fundamental question of theodicy, the goodness and even very existence of God, as well as the challenge of existence itself, particularly in a situation of great suffering.
As D’Ambrosio has said in interviews, these are quite personal, not abstract issues to him. During a time of questioning, deconstruction, suffering, and darkness, it was the witness of Kolbe that — to use Pope Benedict’s words — glowed through that darkness.
The existential questions that Kolbe and his fellow prisoners faced are also for us, on both a personal and social level. In a world of cruelty and dehumanization, in a world that scoffs at the good and even seeks to eradicate it, in a world in which the value of life is decided by the powerful, the witness of Kolbe reminds us of our privilege and our duty, explained to a priest-fellow prisoner, but for our ears as well, “We must do great work for God here.”
As an imaginative reconstruction and mediation, “Triumph of the Heart” is an affecting way to engage with the memory of Kolbe, even if theologians and historians might take issue with certain elements. For example, the last scene — which I won’t spoil — a coda of sorts, struck this reviewer as well-meaning, but a near-trivialization of the suffering and shape of hope that has preceded it.
But as a whole, “Triumph of the Heart” offers viewers, whether they be new to Kolbe’s story or old friends of the saint, a moving reminder of the power of God’s love in the midst of any circumstance, an effective dramatization of words the saint wrote to his mother from Auschwitz: … because the good God is in every place and with great love He thinks about everyone and everything.
