Reactionary Entertainment: Black Death

An intriguing-seeming movie popped up on Netflix, one I'd never heard of before: Black Death, a 2010 film starring Sean Bean and Eddie Redmayne (Jack Builder from Pillars of the Earth). I was initially suspecting a bit of hokey trash along the lines of the awful Season of the Witch. What I got, instead, was a fascinating period piece, gritty and grim, of a medieval world in the throes of a pestilence-induced crisis of faith. No spoilers here, sorry to say, but suffice to say it resonates with our occasional discussions of atheism and religion.

The cinematography alone makes it worth watching: check it out.

Comments

[Samson J.]

Hm, I might watch this with my wife. (Boromir, I mean, Sean Bean? Sold!)

[Samson J.]

[No spoilers here]

I watched this tonight with my wife.

It's such an unusual movie, and there's so much to say about it, that I may write my own review. I don't want to give away any spoilers, so for now I'll simply say that I agree with you that it's thought-provoking. I haven't seen a Hollywood movie that is so sympathetic towards the Christian faith and balanced with respect to questions of religion, good, evil, and atheists who persist, ox-like, in disclaiming God.

And, as you say, the cinematography alone is worth it.

[Proph]

The amazing thing about the movie is that providing a balanced depiction of medieval Christendom was far from the producers' (Euroleftists all) intentions. It's pretty much the exact opposite of the normal Hollywood fare, in which they try to create a realistic and likable character who instead falls flat; here, they were trying to make a caricatural one-dimension zealot in Ulrich and instead, entirely by accident, produced this fascinating Byronic hero, simultaneously attractively noble and revoltingly cruel.

[Samson J.]

Yes, exactly! I kept contrasting the characters here with those in "Kingdom of Heaven", which was more of a typical Hollywood failure to portray Christians as anything more than shallow anachronisms.

Anyway, I'm going to write my own review.

[Steve Nicoloso]

[SPOILER ALERT]

At your suggestion, Proph, saw this with my wife last Friday. Interestingly Netflix categorized it as "horror" when I first added it the the Insta-watch queue; but by the time we watched, a day or two later, it was categorized as "Action/Adventure"... which is slightly closer to the truth. It is almost impossible to talk about without giving spoilers. I guess this is because the brilliance of the movie, such as it is, is in not giving what you expect. [SPOILER ALERT] We expect, I think, the seemingly overzealous, and overly superstitious knight Ulrich to find witches where there are none, and torture them until they confess. We are inclined to agree with the better educated monk, Osmund, that this just a peaceful little village yet to be affected by the plague. We don't get quite what we are set up to expect. The reactionary takeaway: 1) It is good to die for your faith (assuming it is the True One) and terrible thing to die after having renounced it; 2) Things really go to hell when you let women run things. [SPOILER ALERT !! SPOILER ALERT !! SPOILER ALERT !! SPOILER ALERT !!] It really sucked tho' that the monk was not ultimately redeemed in some way. I think that could have been accomplished without ruining the flick. He obviously could not have been a priest for having shed blood, but something good might have been made from it. Instead he remains a victim for life. So the movie is a real downer... but for the reactionary... well, we're used to that.

That being said, it is the most gory movie I've ever seen, tho' I do tend to stay away from gory movies. And yeah, the line they put in Langiva's mouth about how the Church and Christianity for 1200 (or whatever) years has kept people in misery, the astute watcher is thinking: Okay here is a perfectly innocent little leftist dove. Nope.

Thanks for the recommendation!