Black Death

Saw Black Death (thanks, Basil!) It was a grim little meditation on the more painful aspects of religion. Set during the plague years, Boromir is sent by a bishop to a remote village which is mysteriously untouched by the plague. Because the plague is a punishment from god, a village that does not suffer must be overrun with heathens. Therefore, they must all be killed. He is guided to the heathen village by the protagonist, a young, perpetually gobsmacked monk, and accompanied by a crew of monstrous torturers. I never got the sense that these torturers were actually dangerous however. They mostly seemed more like douchey, macho poseurs than like seriously dangerous men. Anyway, that's the setting. The film has a few twists and turns which I'll skip.

Religion's main benefit (so far as I can tell) is to bring existential comfort in times of hardship. That this hardship is sometimes the product of the institution of religion is frequently brought up in this film. Another, twin point is also raised: if that is all that religion is, what matter if it's only really smoke and mirrors after all? The film frequently pits humanism against the implacable logic of religious philosophy but curiously, humanism is not always allowed to win.

There is a scene early on where a frightened woman is being burned as a witch by an angry mob. Boromir cuts her loose and then cuts her throat (this was not too shocking to me. At this point the film was still trying to establish their unenlightened brutality. I knew things couldn't end well. Anyway,) He explains to the shocked monk that she was doomed anyway with her village against her and that a quick death was at least merciful. This scene serves as a sort of thesis of the film's philosophical preoccupations. Religion fuels the angry mob, but religion is also the only succour to the harsh pragmatism of a life in the midst of such madness.

Ultimately, I think this film is a bit too preoccupied with establishing the brutality of the times. There's a slightly leering attitude it takes in regards to suffering (though I may feel this only due to the lingering bad taste that Philosophy of a Knife left in my mouth.) It's interesting however beyond the suffering of its characters and the aforementioned twists keep it interesting. It's not wise or clever enough to escape me, as other films have, so I feel like it's not the most trenchant of films, but it is pretty trenchant and pretty entertaining, which is more than can be said for a lot of think-pieces. It reminded me a lot of Sauna which investigates civility rather than religion (if memory serves) but tackles it in much the same way. This film is also not afraid to investigate religion, thank heaven (even though it does this investigation is a sort of ginger, equivocal sort of way.) This could be construed as church-baiting, I guess, although the imdb board on this film has a hot topic condemning its pro-christian themes, so who knows. Perhaps for some people, the only comfort for their outrage is that selfsame outrage.