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In The Third Miracle, Agnieszka Holland drills beneath the surface of a mystery to very core of what gives a fallible human being faith. This engrossing, moving and soulful story takes on a subject that has fascinated filmmakers for decades: supernatural occurrences and the power of belief. But it does so in a bold and unexpected way: with a gritty realism, a deft human complexity, a refusal to romanticize and an openness to multiple interpretations.The film is structured like an intricate detective story – except that a world-weary priest is the detective and he must investigate not a crime but the sensual, the mystical and the inexplicable as he comes to terms with the works of a possible saint and the love of her earthy daughter.
The title The Third Miracle refers to the three miracles the Vatican formerly required (the current requirement is two) before declaring any human being a saint. Father Frank uncovers two miracles brought about by the woman he is investigating, but in the end he awaits a third. Could the miracle he is looking for be his own transformation? Could it be the birth of an unexpected child? Or is the third miracle yet to happen?
For Agnieszka Holland, the power of The Third Miracle is that the audience can have their own individual interpretations and emotional reactions to the final mystery – and that none are wrong.
Holland, one of Europe's premier filmmakers and best known for such Oscar-nominated films as Angry Harvest and Europa, Europa, has long been fascinated by the jagged conflicts between faith and objective reality. Earlier in her career, she explored the secular aspects of the tension between belief, desire and truth in her acclaimed French-language film Olivier, Olivier, but for Holland the questions persisted and grew. When she came across the script for The Third Miracle, it seemed an excellent opportunity to delve with her characteristic passion and fierce intelligence into this realm.
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