http://books.google.com/books?id=YbB9zKvpS88C&pg=PA311&lpg=PA311&dq=saint+augustine+roberto+rossellini&source=bl&ots=5T-ec9uejX&sig=QpSqVUkle3a43T5A8konFirVxxg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=FhCKUM6mOqai2gWVlYHYBw&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=saint%20augustine%20roberto%20rossellini&f=false

If so, any comments? Criterion Collection has released some of them, but I’m hesitant to indulge.

I agree that it is questionable whether the head and heart can separately be converted, because I’m not sure how separate they really are. But as you say, on the matter of interpretation it’s certainly the way Augustine tells us it happened in his writings. The link I wanted to share is to a blog by Edward Feser, who is great on philosophy of mind. He converted to Catholicism a few years ago, and argues in this post that his conversion and conversion to Christianity in general is always intellectual in some respect:
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2012/07/road-from-atheism.html#more

More seriously, a book I have found to be particularly luminous on Augustine is Brian Stock’s “Augustine the Reader”:

http://www.amazon.com/Augustine-Reader-Meditation-Self-Knowledge-Interpretation/dp/0674052773/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351183679&sr=8-1&keywords=Augustine+the+reader

It’s a very high end literary critical treatment of Augustine’s approach to religious formation through reading and interpretation.

Thanks to Paul Seaton for his thoughtful post above. I was trying to think of any movie that has been done in the past that had successfully conveyed the sort of inner process that Augustine’s story in confessions records.

For the life of me I can only think of one, and it only barely resembles Confessions. It’s about Dostoyevsky called the Gambler. Very worth seeing. It uses the story around his writing of the short story The Gambler to unveil the layers of complexity to the writer himself. Michael Gambon plays the Russian writer:

http://www.amazon.com/Gambler-Michael-Gambon/dp/B00005Y6Y4/ref=sr_1_11?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1351184021&sr=1-11&keywords=The+Gambler

CJ, you’re absolutely spot-on with the two-part, two-stage conversion: first of the mind, then the heart. It’s astounding how often people, including scholars (e.g., Chad Pecknold) miss it; their analyses are thus truncated and misleading. To add to the point: to really understand Book VIII, I would suggest that one go back to Confessions III, 4 (or is it 5?) to understand 19-year old Augustine’s own initial understanding of what “conversion” entailed for him. This rather definite (and questionable) understanding set his intellectual-and-existential agenda.

While it’s true that one should not just use the Confessions to understand and tell Augustine’s “life”, it provides essential architecture and event, I would argue. By “architecture,” I mean that his notion of what he’s doing — which we blithely call “autobiography” — is rather theo-centric, i.e., his story is really God’s story, with, I would argue, Monica the second most important agent in his life’s story.)

A bit more humanly speaking, perhaps the most essential characteristic of the way Augustine tells his life-story in the Confessions is its tunc-et-nunc structure, that is, how he was then (tunc), as he now (now) can discern its truth, because he’s come to the light of Christ. It would take a good scriptwriter to reproduce this, or come up with some approximation; if it’s not reproduced, however, then one only has the then-version of the story, without the deeper retrospect. And that story is too unilinear, or at least it misses what is characteristic about Augustine’s theological perspective (theocentric and retrospective-in-the light of Christ).

Thanks for the post, Carl.

To sympathize with the scriptwriter for a moment, I agree with Pseudo that it would be very difficult to do do a good film version of Augustine’s life, much more the “Confessions.” I had difficulty following the basic storyline of the book when I first read it, because there are so many philosophical reflections and moments of prayer and introspection. To work as a movie I think it almost would have to be written from Augustine’s first person perspective as narrator.

A good place to start if the screenwriter had wanted to sort all the threads of Augustine’s life out would be Vernon Bourke’s “Augustine’s Quest of Wisdom.” It’s one of my favorite books. Bourke tells the story of Augustine’s life not solely based on evidence from “Confessions,” but from all of the texts where clues about his life are given; especially important in that regard are the “Retractiones.” And Bourke really nails what you described about Augustine, Carl- his conversion of the head followed by his conversion of the heart in the garden.

BTW- Did they make a big deal out of Monica’s death at Ostia? It was a big deal to Augustine

There is an interesting scene after Hippo falls where the Vandal king saves Augustine’s books from the fire–lots of historically interesting tidbits like this throughout, although, alas, given the treatment of the Confessions you’re not always sure you can trust them. And maybe, since it is the only film I’ve ever seen that mentions the non-pseudo Plontinus, you might still want to see it. Just be prepared for a C-minus script.