Title: Ordet
Rating: 4 Stars
This film is kind of a milestone for me. I have now completed my goal of watching the top fifty films on the BFI Sight & Sound's best films list. There's some 260 films on the list. I am not committing myself to watching the rest. In fact, I'm not sure if I'm even going to make it to 100. I must say that this has been a pretty awesome introduction to international cinema.
Ordet is a Danish film. Made in 1955, it was the same director (Carl Theodor Dreyer) that, in 1928, created the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc (click here to view my post on that film). That film is in the top twenty-five of the best films list. It's pretty astonishing to me that one director made two such classic films, one silent and the other in sound, over a span of nearly thirty years.
Thematically, you probably wouldn't be surprised by this fact. Dreyer must be fascinated by the experience of religion. The Passion was about a group of religious scholars trying to berate Joan into renouncing her beliefs.
Ordet is quite different but certainly deeply religious. The film is about the Borden family. The patriarch, and believe me, with his craggy features and long flowing beard, very much looks the part, is Morten. He is devoted to a religion based upon happiness and light. His eldest son, Mikkel, has no faith. Mikkel is married to the pious and pregnant Inger. Morten's middle son, Johannes, appears to be slightly touched in the head, going around seemingly in a trance, claiming to be Jesus Christ. His youngest son, Anders, confesses his love for Anne, the daughter of Peter the Tailor.
Morten thinks that the tailor is below them in class and refuses to bless the marriage. He does agree to talk to Peter. When he does, he discovers that Peter also refuses to bless the marriage. His reasons have to do with faith. He is devoted to a much more conservative and darker Christianity and refuses to allow his daughter to marry outside of the faith. Incensed that Peter is rejecting Anders, Morten changes his mind and demands that Peter approve the wedding. Peter refuses.
At that moment, the phone rings. Inger is in labor and is experiencing difficulties. Peter takes that moment to wish for Inger's death as a learning experience for Morten. Not cool. The two fight and then Morten and Anders return home. The baby is dead but it appears that Inger is safe.
That is, until she's not. She soon after dies. The family is stricken with grief. Peter and Anne arrive. Peter apologizes for, you know, wishing that the now dead woman would die and not only that, but is now fine with Anders marrying Anne. There's a weird moment, with the dead daughter-in-law quite literally lying in her coffin a couple of feet away, where Morten is like, well, it looks like we got a replacement to do all of the drudgery work that women do, so that's good.
In the middle of this, Johannes walks in. He says, why don't any of you believe that I'm Jesus. If just one of you believed, I could bring her back to life. Of course, everyone thinks that he's mad. Inger's daughter takes his hand and says that she believes. He looks down at her and nods. He voices a prayer to bring Inger back to life and, what do you know? Inger's back, baby!
With this miracle, Morten and Peter bury their differences. Mikkel, awestruck, confesses that he now believes as well.
I did enjoy watching this film. Dreyer represented the different elements of faith in Denmark. There are the liberal beliefs of Morten. There are the conservative beliefs of Peter. Quite often, people who share a pretty broad set of beliefs but differ at the fringes engage in the most vociferous debates. Here you see that with Morten and Peter.
Mikkel has the modern suspicion of faith, belief, and miracles. Morten's reverend represents the mainstream religious authority. It is the reverend who tries to stop Johannes from trying to bring Inger back to life, probably considering it an embarrassment to the established religion that he's charged with defending.
Finally, there is the physician representing all that is rational. He pooh-poohs religion and prayer and says that the only thing worth believing in is that which can be done with human hands (and oh, by the way, he has the worst bedside manner in history; when Morten asks to see the baby (not knowing that it's dead), the physician casually points to a bucket and says that he's in there, in four pieces. Wow).
Obviously, in the face of the miracle of the resurrection, everyone is stunned. The schism differences, in this new context, become meaningless. The physician is stunned into silence. Of course, Mikkel gains faith. I mean seriously, if I just witnessed a dead person coming alive, I might be tempted to toss in a couple of amens as well. Having said that, I am reminded of an old Far Side where a bear, in a casket at a funeral, sits up and says "I was just hibernating. Didn't any of you think to check for a pulse?". Especially before modern medicine, being buried alive was a legitimate fear. It could be that Johannes just caught a really lucky break.
The film is interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, the sets are really bare. Apparently, Dreyer was incredibly meticulous about determining the exact minimum number of items in each setting. The scenes are quite long. It's shot with one camera that swivels. That allowed Dreyer to shoot scenes that lasted several minutes involving actors in motion throughout a fairly large room. It must have required serious discipline for actors to recite their dialog and to reach their various marks.
One final amusing point is that this film had serious pipe action. Several characters regularly smoked pipes that were somewhat uniquely shaped. The pipe that Morten smoked at home was approximately the size and shape of a small saxophone.
Ordet was a nice way to finish off my top fifty accomplishment. The only minor issue is that it's not very available to stream. You can't even rent or buy it on Amazon. I did manage to find it on the Criterion Channel. This channel has some kind of relationship with Max. Criterion films often are available to stream there. For whatever reason, Ordet was not. I had to sign up to Criterion to watch it. They do have a seven day no risk trial period.
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