Ordet is the second Dreyers film I've seen - the first being The Passion of Joan of Arc which at the time both amazed and scared me with its dark, brooding and sinister camera work and acting. I can only wonder what happened in between this and Ordet (I will soon find out though), but the latter surely makes a few steps backward in terms of almost everything I've seen in the Passion.
I'm not a religious person and I can understand that this film may have a great appeal on a Christian (or, as someone else has put it, a quaker). It deals with Christianity, faith, doubt, god and two different ways how to approach it - one represents the "happy Christianity" of Morten, the father and per se the head chief of the Borgen family. The other one is the opposite, a very outdated, medieval way of embracing god through guilt and fear-of-burning-in-hell view of the other family, led by Peter the Tailor. The two views antagonize themselves, causing a conflict. There's something else though - Morten's son Johannes, who thinks is Jesus Christ and ultimately makes the two branches merge together and embrace each other's differences.
The plot includes turning points that trigger and motivate some of the internal thoughts and actions of the protagonists. But as the plot progresses, it really does very little or nothing ,in fact, for the viewer, because everything here is really predictable. It makes sense that the movie is based on a play - the actors themselves look like they're in a play. Which would be good, if their acting wasn't so dull. I mean, really - they have the same exspression from start to finish (the film lasts more than 2 hours, mind you), they move from room to room like they are chained animals in a cage, they are empty, conveying the dialog in such a tiresome and dragged manner, that one can only wonder what the hell was Dreyer doing with them in the first place. The material of the dialog is also tiresome - I could just go read the Bible directly if I wanted endless usage of Christian terms all over. And the worse part of it is that it doesn't really lead anywhere - the praised-by-critics finale is anticipated a couple of times before - the resurrection is just the final nail in the coffin in the form of this movie. Its banality and ethereal pathos just shows you how bad the director is trying to get across the "point", that if you believe in god strong enough and you pray every day, then miracles will happen (including dead people raising back to life). Well, if that's the only thing that this movie can convey across, then it's really shallow, outdated and bizarre at most.
Some folks can argue that it's allegoric, metaphoric and transcends the general conception of Christian religion, meaning of life and death. Not good enough for me. It has been done so much better and in a lesser self indulgent way in so many other films - somebody here mentions Bergman's Winter Light and I agree completely. The latter is an original, intelligent and non pretentious movie that deals with pretty much the same themes as Ordet, but with a whole new prospective and deep interest in the matter. Ordet is just pale in comparison, on all levels. The other one being Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, though its main theme is the artist and the movie is set in the 12th century, it doesn't poke the viewer with endless talk about Christian guilt and morality as Ordet does. Some may also argue that the views expressed in Ordet are just reflections of that time and so it cannot be condemned or viewed as useless or/and outdated. Well, recently I saw Fritz Lang's M, which was made 24 years before Ordet and it didn't even crossed my mind to think it was outdated at any rate. So yeah, Ordet is the "problem", not the time it was made or the topic it deals with.
When I see a movie where the lead protagonist talks to a little girl whose mother is on the death bed and says to her that it's better that her mother is in heaven (meaning is earthly dead), because that means she will always watch over her from a distant, undefined "above", than here on Earth with her, I just feel insulted and very, very sorry for the little girl. At times it really seems like the film is trying to sell some sort of medieval Christian brainwash/phantasmagoric fantasy to the viewer and that's something I cannot digest.
It's still an art film though - the lighting and filming are still very good, at moments even amazing. But the acting and overall ridicule views expressed within (that drag for two hours), make this film a cheap try at finding the meaning of life, death, god, faith and doubt. May be good or even excellent for some people, but I'm pretty much out of this club.
I'm not a religious person and I can understand that this film may have a great appeal on a Christian (or, as someone else has put it, a quaker). It deals with Christianity, faith, doubt, god and two different ways how to approach it - one represents the "happy Christianity" of Morten, the father and per se the head chief of the Borgen family. The other one is the opposite, a very outdated, medieval way of embracing god through guilt and fear-of-burning-in-hell view of the other family, led by Peter the Tailor. The two views antagonize themselves, causing a conflict. There's something else though - Morten's son Johannes, who thinks is Jesus Christ and ultimately makes the two branches merge together and embrace each other's differences.
The plot includes turning points that trigger and motivate some of the internal thoughts and actions of the protagonists. But as the plot progresses, it really does very little or nothing ,in fact, for the viewer, because everything here is really predictable. It makes sense that the movie is based on a play - the actors themselves look like they're in a play. Which would be good, if their acting wasn't so dull. I mean, really - they have the same exspression from start to finish (the film lasts more than 2 hours, mind you), they move from room to room like they are chained animals in a cage, they are empty, conveying the dialog in such a tiresome and dragged manner, that one can only wonder what the hell was Dreyer doing with them in the first place. The material of the dialog is also tiresome - I could just go read the Bible directly if I wanted endless usage of Christian terms all over. And the worse part of it is that it doesn't really lead anywhere - the praised-by-critics finale is anticipated a couple of times before - the resurrection is just the final nail in the coffin in the form of this movie. Its banality and ethereal pathos just shows you how bad the director is trying to get across the "point", that if you believe in god strong enough and you pray every day, then miracles will happen (including dead people raising back to life). Well, if that's the only thing that this movie can convey across, then it's really shallow, outdated and bizarre at most.
Some folks can argue that it's allegoric, metaphoric and transcends the general conception of Christian religion, meaning of life and death. Not good enough for me. It has been done so much better and in a lesser self indulgent way in so many other films - somebody here mentions Bergman's Winter Light and I agree completely. The latter is an original, intelligent and non pretentious movie that deals with pretty much the same themes as Ordet, but with a whole new prospective and deep interest in the matter. Ordet is just pale in comparison, on all levels. The other one being Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, though its main theme is the artist and the movie is set in the 12th century, it doesn't poke the viewer with endless talk about Christian guilt and morality as Ordet does. Some may also argue that the views expressed in Ordet are just reflections of that time and so it cannot be condemned or viewed as useless or/and outdated. Well, recently I saw Fritz Lang's M, which was made 24 years before Ordet and it didn't even crossed my mind to think it was outdated at any rate. So yeah, Ordet is the "problem", not the time it was made or the topic it deals with.
When I see a movie where the lead protagonist talks to a little girl whose mother is on the death bed and says to her that it's better that her mother is in heaven (meaning is earthly dead), because that means she will always watch over her from a distant, undefined "above", than here on Earth with her, I just feel insulted and very, very sorry for the little girl. At times it really seems like the film is trying to sell some sort of medieval Christian brainwash/phantasmagoric fantasy to the viewer and that's something I cannot digest.
It's still an art film though - the lighting and filming are still very good, at moments even amazing. But the acting and overall ridicule views expressed within (that drag for two hours), make this film a cheap try at finding the meaning of life, death, god, faith and doubt. May be good or even excellent for some people, but I'm pretty much out of this club.