I can't add much to what other reviewers have said, except to reiterate that this is one of the true masterpieces of world cinema. I can't comment on the print, since I saw it on the Sundance Channel. Is it a howl of rage against religious intolerance, or any intolerance? Yes. Is it a comment on the role and powerlessness of women in a male-controlled society? Yes, in part, but to stop there would be too facile an interpretation. It is also a comment on how women can also obtain power, of a vicious, destructive sort, and use it to control and destroy others; I am thinking, of course, of Absalon's mother Merte, the true villain of the film. It is also about how those who are miserably set in their ways are threatened by, and will ultimately destroy, those who display a joie de vivre and a yearning for freedom. Perhaps the saddest line in the film is when Anne comments that when he married her, Absalon took away her youth, something she is trying to recapture in her affair with Martin. I know this wasn't Dreyer's intention, but while watching this film I couldn't help but think of the plight of women under the Taliban and other repressive regimes, and that even as I write this a young woman in Nigeria is under a death sentence by an Islamic court for having sex outside of marriage; it is a sad reminder that what happens in this film is still going on today, and perhaps will still be going on until the earth ends. The true tragedy of this film comes at the very end, when we see that Anne has come to believe she is what everyone else thinks she is. 10/10
Review of Day of Wrath
