Going scourging

Rating: 4/10 (14 November 2010)

I'm either too guilty or not guilty enough to accept this movie. At bottom it's just another of those suspense stories that amount to a half-hour TV episode--specifically, an episode of the old Alfred Hitchcock series--padded out to five times the length; but this one differs from the rest in its aesthetic and social pretensions. Quite evidently, the director set out to make an art film and a political parable, and prepared himself by watching a lot of early Bergman and late Carl Dreyer, and probably Bela Tarr, as well as art horror movies. And so the movie is shot in black and white, in formal, frozen compositions that last forever; it takes place in an isolated, almost medieval village, where everybody looks as if they were in mourning; and the whole story is narrated offscreen in a muted voice. All this seems like much ado about nothing, since the moral of the fable becomes obvious at once and that is the point of the exercise, as well as the sole source of dramatic interest. Having gotten the point already, and not feeling the need to undergo ritual purification, I found the movie a reverse luxury: something I could have afforded but didn't want. Those who have ears to be boxed, let them hear.