samhainfest 2014: the black plague

(2002. dir: Alberto Sciamma) (original title: Anazapta) It's interesting that even in these days of glaring, fluorescent scientism we still look backward aghast at the Black Plague, particularly as it swept across England in the middle 1300s, secretly wondering if it proves the existence of a harsh and malevolent God. Or so one would guess from our horror films.

This one is a true example of the Gewissengeist film, this time set within the Dark Ages. A feudal village labors beneath the secret of a shared guilt: a terrible wrong was done to its chatelaine at her husband's behest. Years later, soldiers return from the Hundred Years' War, and with them a witchy stranger, a Frenchman who wields the kiss of death and bears a scar which terror-smites all who see it. The Bishop, as is de rigeur in our cinema, is corrupt, carnal, utterly ruthless. A curse is manifested through manipulation of Holy Communion. The world is made of mud and rain and the eerie cries of foxes.

Jon Finch is the lord of the manor, gone these many years in Europe, and Lena Headey his young wife, confused by her abandonment and possibly by the chastity belt she wears. While she fights at home to keep the creditors at bay, gather the ransom to deliver her husband from his French captivity, and curb the mounting mob-panic the new pestilence is breeding, there are interesting interscenes in which we see her escaped lord, alone and trudging homeward, howling mad curses. Finch is so wonderfully imposing an actor that although we don't see much of him until the end, he is very satisfying, with his rich voice, his rolling "r"s and thunderous roars. The whole cast is made of marvellously steady, English journeyman actors (Christopher Fairbank! Jason Flemyng!), and so it cannot fail to engage, and Headey is good as the innocent on the brink of a revelation. The ending is unexpected, and I was utterly pleased with it, although I can see how it might not be to all tastes.

The tragedy of this movie is that, like so many failures, its story so far outclasses its screenplay as to create an untenable imbalance. The dialogue rarely rises above the pedestrian (although the noseless gaoler gets some decent banter), and never approaches the level of intrigue offered by some of the storyteller's ideas. Too much not-very-interesting time is spent on the slow-percolating attraction between the discarded wife and her mysterious visitor, there is an embarrassing scene in which the Frenchman pulls out his dick to win an alpha-male contest against his bullying English captors (of course it doesn't work; they beat the crap out of him), and somebody in power either needed to A) pick up the pace or B) heighten the tension, because we need one or the other to pull us along. As it stands, most people are going to turn the channel at an early commercial break, long before they reach the more interesting plot-turns.