FILM REVIEW: BLACK DEATH

Langiva (Carice von Houten) in Black Death.

A sign of tortuous times

By Ed Rampell

Like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal, Black Death is set in Europe during the Dark Ages, with man confronting death and his own mortality. Although it’s not in the same league as the 1957 classic starring Max von Sydow as a benighted knight, I found director Christopher Smith’s movie to be an engrossing account of Europe ravaged by the Black Death. It is also a frightening tale as well as quite thought provoking.

Set in 1348 England (but shot in Germany), the Grim Reaper comes in Black Death not in the form of a cloaked spectral chess player but as bubonic plague sweeping the continent, wiping villages and monasteries out. An elite unit of knights, who are skilled swordsmen and torturers -- think Dark Ages Dirty Dozen or Middle Ages Magnificent Seven -- led by the formidable Ulric (Sean Bean of the upcoming The Magnificent Eleven) are dispatched to a distant plague-free village. Osmund (Eddie Redmayne), a young, fallen monk familiar with the terrain, is recruited to lead the not-so-merry band on their somber mission.

David Warner, who portrayed the madcap Marxist in 1966’s delightful film, Morgan! (which Jacob Tierney’s wonderfully droll 2009 comedy, The Trotsky, is reminiscent of), plays an Abbot -- minus Costello, as this is definitely not a comedy. Indeed, like those European Medieval Mystery plays, Black Death is a morality tale suffused with religious themes. When Ulric encounters the village spared the plague, he has something quite different in mind than learning from them how the rest of Europe can scientifically be saved from destruction.

Led by the sensuous healer Langiva (Carice van Houten), the villagers know the not-so-gallant knights have something up their armored sleeves. Black Death becomes a very philosophical film about sexuality: free love versus original sin. It also questions the nature of religion and the existence of God, just as Bergman’s masterpiece did 54 years ago. The ensuing debate between Christian fundamentalists and pagans is cleverly contemporary, and Dario Poloni’s screenplay is suggestive of the current struggle between religious zealots and atheists.

Some wags have pointed out that today’s nonbelievers, typified by Christopher Hitchens, are as dogmatic and doctrinaire in their discarding and denying of deities as the faithful flock. Touche! (Although I noticed on a recent 60 Minutes report that Hitchens, who is now battling cancer – not bubonic plague -- appears to be giving himself some theological wiggle room. You know – just in case. Call it the “No atheists in the foxhole syndrome.”) In any case, regarding Black Death’s faction fight, your humble scribe says: “A plague upon both of your houses!”

I generally avoid horror movies like the, ahem, plague, but I found this spooky flick and its trip two thirds of a millennium back in time to long ago and far away to be an absorbing and enthralling voyage. Amen.