Rating: 4.5/5
Hooptober 8.0 | 11/34 | Folk Horror 2/2
The credits open over Goya’s etching “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.”
Sin enters the world through man. Woman is sin. A woman's womb is the gateway to Hell. Her insatiable carnal desires are the root of all evil.
Nude women bathing and grooming — existing in a safe space where they can let their guard down.
It begins with a communion wafer. An older woman receives the wafer but spits it out and pockets it. An altar boy notices and reports her to the religious officials. He delights in the woman’s tears and begs for mercy. She meant to give it to her cow so that it may receive God’s blessing and produce milk.
The Father declares her a witch, but Deacon Lautner tries to de-escalate, showing that she’s a superstitious older woman. The Father doesn’t relent and insists on a judge to oversee an inquisition.
When all you see are sinners, everyone becomes a witch. The judge stresses to the royalty that the older woman is a small part of a more dire witch problem.
When one woman accuses the inquisitor of being the Devil, he has his assistant choke her to death, blaming the death on the Devil.
Everything comes from the Devil, especially wealth.
Lautner tries to enforce temperance. The inquisitor feels inferior around Lautner because Lautner has many books. Seeking a way to prosecute him, he shares a story with one of the accused. A story that she saw Deacon Lautner and his cook, Zuzana, at a Black Mass.
The Father, seeing women who quietly ask forgiveness for lying about being witches, grows to regret his piety. He begs for the trials to stop. Everyone gives him the same advice: shut up and save yourself.
— I can't understand how a man like him can be allowed to have the power to decide the fate of others. — It will always be so. — If that's true, I'd rather die!
The priests discuss how prisons have the power to destroy individuals and strip them of everything. They dismissed one judge because he could not see justice in prisons.
We see how fear is the tool of fascist regimes. How the propaganda of what the Devil is capable of sustains the power structure.
The Czech government banned this movie as the witch trials depicted evoke the show trials in Communist regimes, where a defendant has already received their verdict, and the court presented the defendant to the public as a warning to any dissidents.
Unlike Mark of the Devil (1970), this story empathizes with its characters. It shows the tortures at first, but once we know their deal, we see the aftermath because it allows us to care for these characters.
The rich enjoy their comfort while they persecute the poor and make examples of them.
This movie escalates brilliantly in its intensity. It’s infuriating because I’ve seen and read enough to confirm these are not exaggerations. If anything, this film cannot depict the torture inflicted upon people.
But it’s enough. In black and white, the gore is more believable.
This film is one of the best depictions of the witch trials I’ve seen.