Placement On Sight & Sound Top 50 Movies List: #19
One of the best parts about going through all these Sight & Sound 50 Greatest Films titles is discovering so many great movies centered around theology. I'm a proud Christian but I've been dismayed that thought-provoking modern-day Christian movies are few and far in between (though Noah and Silence do prove they can exist!). But going through all these movies has allowed me to discover a number of faith-oriented movies I would have likely taken forever to discover otherwise, one's that blow the likes of God's Not Dead and War Room out of the water and then some. As you likely suspect by now, one such film is the 1995 Carl Theodore Dryer movie Ordet.
Set in 1925 Denmark, Ordet revolves a small family consisting of a father and his three sons, each of whom has a unique disposition that affects how they view the world around them. The father of this family is Morten Borgen (Henrik Malberg), a man whose getting up there in years and tries to take care of his children and grandchildren as best as he can. Of his three kids, there's the meek Anders (Cay Kristiansen), who wishes to marry a woman whose father is incredulous at the idea of the two being united by a romantic union, Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen), a man whose mostly abandoned the Christian faith and is happily married to Inger (Birgitte Federspiel) and then there's Johannes (Preben Lerdoff Rye), a guy whose thought to have lost his mind due to him now being convinced that he's the reincarnated form of Jesus Christ.
The way each family member approaches the concept of Christianity both in casual situations and in the grander scheme of their entire lives informs the entire movie and that includes characterizing long-standing feuds between people such as the differing approaches to Christianity that make up the feud between Morten and a tailor (the latter of whom is the father of the woman Anders wants to marry). Ordet wrangles lots of conflict and fascinating dialogue out of having everyone's unique personalities inform the incredibly different ways they each comprehend Christianity or the way they incorporate the faith into their own lives.
Carl Theodore Dryer's restrained filming style that I found to be a tad emotionally distant in Gertrud turns out to be a perfect fit for this story, especially since the actors aren't looking off-screen for distracting amounts of screentime. It's fantastic that the camera is allowed to just sit there and take in all of the action and dialogue that transpires, allowing the words the characters speak to wrap around the audience like a blanket. There aren't any odd scene transitions or overly showy camerawork to distract from the themes and dialogue found in the screenplay (which was also penned by Dryer) and that kind of visual prudence serves Ordet so incredibly well.
Not that there aren't some incredibly remarkable visuals to be found here with cinematographer Henning Bendsten finding time to create a number of shots that are tremendously evocative without breaking the more intimate atmosphere of the piece. Just as absorbing as the cinematography is the spellbinding acting found under the direction of Carl Theodore Dryer, with each of the actors managing to create well-realized personalities even if they're given the most limited amount of screentime. I love how the individual family members bounce off each other in certain scenes in a way that both feels true to how normal families interact and can even shed light on new facets of individual personalities.
Just look at how Morten reacts to Johannes coming into the room and spouting the gospel as Jesus Christ while Inger is under intense medical duress. In this scene, you get an immediate sense of how Johannes believing he's Jesus Christ is a deeply-rooted mental issue (or perhaps it's a gift?) that he has very little control of since it's obvious the mood of the room calls for people to be silent and contemplative instead of the more talkative behavior he's currently engaging in. As for Morten, you can see how he's trying to be gentle and helpful to Johannes while also gathering how trying it must be to see another human being in place of the son he once knew. All the while, the duos dynamic here feels authentic to how fathers and sons can behave around one another.
Like I said, the various actors in the cast do a magnificent job with the material in imbuing all of those types of thoughtful underlying themes throughout the movie in their performances. Henrik Malberg is so terrific at playing this pillar of the family that, over the course of the story, becomes more and more emotionally fractured to engrossing results while seeing the confident and content Mikkel similarly be consumed over the course of the story has a similarly devastating effect thanks to the way Emil Hass Christensen portrays the character that makes both his satisfied nature and pain feel all too real.
But one would be out of their mind to sing the praises of the cast of Ordet without offering massive kudos to Preben Lerdoff Rye, the man who embodies the very heart and soul of the entire motion picture. Rye is incredibly gifted at playing Johannes as Jesus Christ, you can feel the stirring commanding presence in Rye's performance that Jesus Christ carried in his days on Earth whenever Rye talks while his lack of eye contact and lack of physical response to those around him are the kind of tiny physical traits Rye plays so well that help cement the idea that Johannes has become a distant figure from his brothers. On a sidenote, one can't miss the intriguing parallels in Johannes plotline of people refusing to believe he could be Jesus Christ to the sort of skepticism Jesus Christ drew when he tried to spread his powers and the word of God for good. That's an intriguing thought that goes well with an absolutely mesmerizing performance in an outstanding movie like Ordet.
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