I don't know if everyone here understood the purpose of this movie. I think the main issue is language. The girls speak Basque. And some of the women who work in the prison where the girls were held accused of witchcraft also speak Basque. But the Inquisitors speak only Spanish. So what happens is the girls come up with a way to delay their almost certain death at the stake until the village fishermen come back from the sea and can save them. This fails and then enters the second and most difficult to understand part of the film. As the girls recreate the ritual for the inquisitor and are surrounded on the edge of the abyss, something subtle but extremely important to understand the film occurs: the women employed by the inquisitor sing a song suggesting that on a full moon night the tide is high. Soon after that the girls throw themselves into the sea. Most people must have thought they died. The inquisitor claims that they fled by flying. Both possibilities are wrong in my view. I believe that by throwing themselves at high tide the girls escaped death, thanks to the music sung by the working women of the prison. A tip that was passed on in Basque unbeknownst to the Inquisitors.
