The three sons of devout Danish farmer Morten have widely disparate religious beliefs. Youngest son Anders shares his father's religion, but eldest son Mikkel has lost his faith, while middle child Johannes has become delusional and proclaims that he is Jesus Christ himself. When Mikkel's wife, Inger goes into a difficult childbirth, everyone's beliefs are put to the test.
Ordet - La parola, The Word, La parole, Sana, A Palavra, Словото, Ordet (La palabra), Ige, Słowo, Слово, Das Wort, Reč, 復活, La palabra, 奇跡, Ο λόγος, 诺言, 오데트, Söz, 词语, Словото Божие, 諾言, Ο Λόγος, La Parole, La paraula, Slovo
Denmark15
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I’ve long believed that the two summits of mise en scène in the history of cinema are Carl Dreyer’s Ordet and Jacques Tati’s Playtime..."
Because Jonathan Rosenbaum isn't wrong.
Because this shot.
Because the ending is perhaps the most simple, confounding, shocking, inevitable, breathtaking, breath-giving(?)... in all of cinema.
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I don't know where to start. This is a deeply Christian film, but the atheist character is never treated as a fool or a sinner--there are arguments, but it never crosses a line.
Though there is a conversion eventually, it's such a profound and powerful moment that it does not feel like a sermon--honestly, anyone who watches this and does not want the miracle to occur is a cold, hard asshole.
I'm rambling a bit, I think. This was beautiful. It's a religious film about tolerance and love. It's about miracles large and small, and about faith. It manages to illustrate so many interesting concepts without becoming dry and didactic by making them fundamental parts of the characters, and making the characters real.
It left me in tears.
Even on a second viewing, after over a year of time between seeing Ordet last, Dreyer's film still brought me to tears. An unimaginable act, considering how religious themed the movie is and my views on religion (or lack there of).
Ordet is based from a play written by Christian Pastor Kaj Munk who was murdered by the Gestapo during WWII and the German occupation of Denmark. Munk's spirituality may linger through the lines and seams of the film, but it is Dreyer who pumps life and meaning to its finished form.
It's story delves into discussions on love, neighborliness, family, devotion, and above all faith. Morten Borgen struggles as the patriarch of the Borgen Farm to retain faith amongst…
***One of the best 150 films I have ever seen.***
Interesting how directors like Angelopoulos and Tarkovsky are often credited as the auteurs that influenced Béla Tarr when, ironically, Ordet is an unparalleled masterpiece of insightful religion discussion set in times of intolerance and lack of faith. Also, it surpasses any Tarr project (except for Sátántangó). This is not necessarily an attack towards religious people, but rather it questions directly, in an ethereal manner, the true motivations behind those that carry an emotionless life and make up their inner void with banalities and materialistic illusions. Moral of the film (understanding the implications of the ending from a truly Christian perspective): Jesus Christ brought to us the greatest gift He could…
religious cinema is just so interesting and fascinating
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
Faith as an idea and how cinema is an art ideally positioned to move into the realm of the concrete. There's no stop talk about the subject and its many complications, but what matters is how Dreyer images suggest presence. Call it God or the auteur hand, neither benign or punish, but an organizing principle that remains through the images. The famous resurrection remains a triumph of believe and of the body.
Believer or atheist, it doesn’t matter. Ordet will wreck you either way.
Full review here.
Dos únicos filmes deste mundo que consegue efetivamente intuir a natureza sobrenatural da fé, que consegue encená-la e fazer disso um mote universal e um drama psicológico dos mais destruidores. Incrível como mesmo dentro de um espaço físico bastante limitado existe um senso de dinâmica cênica cinematográfica sem igual. Dreyer pode até partir de uma lógica visivelmente teatral em toda a marcação e a articulação dramática das cenas em longas sequências, possivelmente uma adaptação mais do que fiel a peça original, mas no final das contas fica sempre muito claro que ele abraça mesmo uma essência espacial absolutamente cinematográfica.
Early on in Ordet, we are told that miracles happen every day. Yet, at the end we learn that we have become so blind to the everyday acts of God that we demand something greater.
Ordet is a layered and rewarding exploration of faith and its limits. We see how an obsession with religiosity leads to division and schisms, how the attempts to tie down God lead us away from Him. This is smartly expressed through a man who, through the study of Theology and religious philosophy has lost his mind and sense of self. The idea here is that some things are beyond human understanding and that we cannot rationalise the divine.
However, this same man starts to see…
ORDET : THE WORD
But what word? God? Faith? Love? Rebellion?
"I believe a lot of little miracles happen secretly."
- Inger Borgen
Oh boy. Faith sure is a complicated and mysterious thing.
Ordet asks many questions but does not try to provide clear answers, for there are none. If we knew the answers to the many questions of faith, perhaps the people of this world would not be in the mess they are in? This is not a religious movie. It's not an anti-religious movie either, and I believe that is why it's been so revered over the years. It straddles the line beautifully, asking the difficult questions without being 'preachy'.
Carl Theodor Dreyer's 1955 masterwork is a tale…
‘was it... love?’
‘no, no, it was søren kierkegaard.’
did not expect to burst out laughing at that exchange.
would have been head-over-heels for this polyphonic spree-for-all when i basically only ever read dostoevsky. still in love with many, many aspects here, especially the extent to which every character is forced to confront the material implications of their own beliefs in the face of tragedy. i understand wariness over dreyer’s (temporarily) fridging inger, but her sobbing, pained face is one of just three close-ups in the film—the second close-up is the joy of young maren at seeing her mother’s eyes open; the third close-up is inger’s reunion with life and with her husband. though dreyer spends a lot of time…
Oh my.
