Black Death (film)

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Movie
German title Black Death
Original title Black Death
Country of production Great Britain , Germany
original language English
Publishing year 2010
length 102 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Christopher Smith
script Dario Poloni
production Douglas Rae ,
Robert Bernstein ,
Jens Meurer ,
Phil Robertson
music Christian Henson
camera Sebastian Edschmid
cut Stuart Gazzard
occupation

Black Death is a British-German period film with features of a horror film from 2010 . Directed by Christopher Smith , the screenplay was written by Dario Poloni . The main roles were played by Sean Bean , Eddie Redmayne and Carice van Houten . The film opened in German cinemas on September 9, 2010.

action

The film takes place in 1348 in medieval England , which was ravaged by the plague . Osmund, a young novice , urges his pretty blond lover Averill to flee the plague-infested city into a remote forest. First of all, his monk's vow prevents him from following her, then the opportunity arises for him, on behalf of the old bishop, to lead the dreaded knight Ulric with his six-member entourage of mercenaries to a distant village on the "great moor" and rumors according to which it has been spared the plague because it turned away from God and worshiped demons. Ulric's job is to hunt down a necromancer who is said to be able to bring the dead back to life.

After a journey full of dangers, on which the men have to cross the moor on foot, leave their witch's cage behind and in the course of which Osmund finds traces that convince him of the death of his beloved, the troop finds the village turned away from God, in which an eerie idyll prevails and in which there are more women than men. The leaders of the village are the friendly-looking Hob and the sinister Langiva, who has amazing healing skills and acts like a Celtic sorceress. Their hostile attitude towards Christianity confirms the prejudices of men in the Middle Ages that women are less firm in the faith and are in covenant with evil than witches. At first the men are welcomed in a friendly manner - they are offered something to eat and a bed - and discover that no one in the village has contracted the Black Death, nor do they see any corpses burning. A young blonde woman wears an amulet with the bishop's seal that she allegedly found - for Ulric's men proof that other emissaries of the bishop had previously come to the village and were killed. You stay to track down the necromancer. Langiva, meanwhile, binds Osmund's wounds and constantly shows her aversion to the murderous Christian church that killed her husband. She also shows him the corpse of his lover and later a ritual in the forest during which Langiva apparently brings the girl back to life from the grave. Osmund flees in horror.

At an evening feast, during which Langiva speaks disparagingly about Christian grace, Ulric and his men are served meals with sleeping pills. The next morning the troops woke up tied up in a cold water pit with a cage above it. It is revealed to them that no one in the village believes in God and that they are protected from the plague by the magic of their leader Langiva. Langiva tells the nearby villagers that with the Christians in the cage, they see the centuries of oppression and suffering that this religion has brought with it. One of the men is tortured to death by nailing him to a St. Andrew's cross and stabbing him to death after he refused the offer to forsake God and thus save his life. The only man who desperately follows this call is first hugged in a friendly manner by Hob and then, under false promises, several men lead away and hang up on a tree in the forest. Osmund is taken to a hut with his resurrected lover Averill. But she seems completely confused - and Osmund kills her in faith to end her torment. When he comes out of the hut with the dead, this is further evidence for Langiva of the cruelty of Christians who, in the name of faith, kill even those who love them. Then the steadfast Ulric is stretched between two horses and quartered . Shortly before, he asks Osmund to open his shirt for him. His plague bumps reveal that he is infected and thus brought death to the incredulous village. The villagers scream in horror when it is torn up. In the meantime, Ulric's last two men can break free and kill some renegades. Langiva escapes, and Osmund follows her into the moor. She reports that everything was fraudulent and that she merely numbed Osmund's lover and woke her up again. When Osmund asks her to bring Averill back to life, she mocks him and tells him to turn to his God. Then it disappears in the tall reed grass. Wolfstan, one of the remaining fighters, brings Osmund and the captured Hob, who is supposed to be handed over to the bishop as the alleged necromancer, back to the monastery.

Wolfstan reports off- screen that the village was actually not protected by a spell by Langiva, but was too remote and isolated to come into contact with the plague, and that those who had not been massacred by the remaining mercenaries would soon perished of the epidemic transmitted by Ulric. He also reports that Osmund, out of desperation over the events, took up his sword in a vengeful manner and became a merciless witch hunter. The final scenes show him riding through the country with his men in search of witches. He knocks on the door of a hut in a village, whereupon the supposed Langiva opens and asks friendly if she can help him. She is taken away and tied up in a room. She desperately protests her innocence, but Osmund does not listen to her and has her tortured without him receiving the desired confession. Then he moves on and comes to several women who are doing their work in a field. One of them, who also looks like Langiva, is taken away and burned. It turns out that none of the women are actually Langiva, but that Osmund, in his vindictiveness and delusion, murdered innocent women. The voice says in the last scene that he may find the good and love in life again.

production

Large parts of the film were shown in Saxony-Anhalt at the Teufelsmauer , at Blankenburg Castle in Blankenburg and Querfurt Castle in Querfurt and near Arnstein Castle near Aschersleben as well as in the monastery and collegiate church of St. Pankratius in Hamersleben in the first half of the year Shot in 2009. The location of the medieval village was the museum village Ukranenland in Torgelow / Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . The film production was funded by the German Film Fund , the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg , the Central German Media Fund and the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania Film Fund.

Reviews

“The fact that Black Death still does not fully convince is probably due to the fact that Smith again does not succeed in the synthesis of form and content so convincingly. While in Creep or Severance the focus was still entirely on the form that worked on foreign ideas, Black Death appears like a film of ideas that does not always make enough effort to maintain the interest of its audience through an affective staging. The arc of tension that Smith was able to tighten so virtuously in the comparatively empty style exercise Creep, for example, he lets drag in Black Death a little negligently, only to then demonstrate again in the clever and bitterly consistent epilogue that he allows effect and emotion to be absolutely brilliant is able to combine. "

- Jochen Werner : Critic.de

“Similar to M. Night Shyamalan with The Village or Danny Boyle with The Beach , Christopher Smith not only tries to deconstruct a power political system based on fanaticism and fatalism, he also wants to fathom human nature in the same breath. But belief stands against belief; Pain is answered with pain and the director leaves Osmund alone in his delusions on a bloody path. Despite the impressively intensive camera work, Black Death remains in the suggestion of a psychological and cultural-historical portrait in the Schopenhauer sense and, together with the simple-minded, grandiose film music, is bogus in the clichés of a less than visionary genre. "

- Wibke Wetzger : Berliner Zeitung

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Certificate of Release for Black Death . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, August 2010 (PDF; test number: 124 047 K).
  2. ↑ St. Pankratius Monastery and Collegiate Church in Hamersleben ( Memento of the original from December 26, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dome-schloesser.de
  3. ↑ Black Death on themightybean.com (English).
  4. ↑ Jochen Werner: Criticism on critic.de, accessed on December 7, 2010.
  5. ↑ Wibke Wetzger: Horror in the Harz. The plague drama "Black Death" shows horrors from the heart of Germany . In: Berliner Zeitung . No. 210/2010 , September 9, 2010, cultural calendar. Film, p. 2 .