...both exquisite cinema and an incredible act of grace.

It's simply a masterpiece.

In a little danish farming community, the word of Jesus Christ is debated and preached between rival classes of townfolk. Although all are christian, the debate concerns who the "real" christians are and which are truly following the word of Jesus as it should be followed. On one side of the feud is the Borgen farm, with it's elderly father of three sons, all of varying degrees of faith. Eldest son Mikkel is an agnostic whose pragmatic view of the world borders on blasphemy. Johannes, is opposite his brother, believing himself to be the lord Jesus reborn on earth (the youngest son, Anders, really only serves as means of connecting the feuding factions, in a manner similar to "Romeo and Juliet"). Away from the farm, in the village community, a new christian order has arisen where once there was none. Led by the town tailor's family, they celebrate the Christ of damnation and death. The lord of all the dead, the lord of the pious members of the community. There is a rivalry between the elder farmer and the tailor that might extend beyond just religion, as the tailor engages in a bit of class envy as well. While the farmer condemns the townsfolk for their "doom and gloom" christianity, his own faith seems to be only of the lip-service kind and hardly light-hearted and cheerful. He paces about, ringing his hands and cursing his bad luck in life, as he bades his children (well, the ones who aren't Jesus) to pray with him for blessings that never come. The family consider Johannes a burden, and none of them ever actually listen to the things he has to say. Johannes was studying theology until exposure to the philosopher Kierkegaard caused him to have a mental breakdown. What does all this add up to? As Johannes exclaims, these christians have so much faith in a dead christ, and the ancient word, but none know living Jesus nor apply his word to their lives (the following lyrics are quoted from one of the christian hymns: "none knoweth the day before the sun goeth down, Good morning good morning sings the bird on the bough, it saw the evening sun behind the prison wall, at dawn the flowers curtsied sweet-scented, by evening they lay crushed under a storm of hail, small children played often in the red glow of morning, by evening they lay on the coffin still and dead"- it's death they worship, not life). "Ordet" began its existence as a play written by a pastor who was condemned to death by the nazis. In the hands of filmmaker Carl Dreyer, it becomes not just a celebration of the living christ, but a celebration of life in general. Life and spiritualism and the notion that the two go hand-in-hand. Closing our eyes and ears to the life that goes on around us, to our family and friends, forsaking these moments so that we might honor ancient words in some brittle text, is not the way to spiritual enlightenment, nor should it be. What one loves in Christ, one must also find in the eyes of a child, or in the warmth of family. We were not put on this earth to celebrate death and sadness.

A broad, deep, challenging film, but my least favorite of Dreyer's works that I've seen thus far. I thought it was poorly paced and long-winded. The parts are there, but the composition is all wrong.