Day of Wrath

Carl Dreyer's Day of Wrath is an amazing film. I saw it a few months ago for the first time and saw it again last week. I liked it even more. Ordet is another soul-stirring and unforgettable film that I want to see again. I was also thinking about Bergman and Bresson and I realized that I like Bergman and Dreyer more than Bresson and then I came to know that Dreyer and Bergman were/are of Lutheran background whereas Bresson was a catholic. Is it because Lutheranism is intellectually more respectable? (Not that I know much about Christianity or Theology.)

I have seen five Robert Bresson films so far. My personal favourite of them all is Mouchette, one of the most cruel and shattering films I have ever seen. People say similar things about Au Hasard Balthazar but somehow I couldn't make the required leap of faith in this case. My mind was occupied by thoughts about animal rights and related philosophical issues more than anything about religion and human suffering. Pickpocket and A Man Escaped are both masterpieces too but I admired them more than I loved them. Diary of a Country Priest left me a little cold. Not to say it is bad or anything just in comparison to others.

Anyway, I have digressed. I wanted to talk about Day of Wrath in this post. So the film is set in a Danish village sometime in the seventeenth century when people were still burning witches. The film is not really about witchcraft though it shows the obvious misogyny and male sexual paranoia which underscore witchcraft very eloquently. It is also interesting that even the idea of religion and God itself, in a general anthropological way, had the same basis as Witchcraft. That is, in people's need to assign agency to every natural phenomenon. This need to find answers to questions like Who shook the leaf? Then who made the wind blow? And then who changed the air pressure? And on and on until you find your God. It is similar with say, a plague or an unnatural death -- must be the work of the agent of the Satan on earth. And who could that be other than the scheming and resentful woman, mostly old ones and widows.

What I loved best about the film is that Dreyer doesn't have any obvious agenda. He is not interested in denouncing witchcraft or religious superstition, that would be an obvious and pointless thing to do. You don't need a film to learn about the evils of superstition. Rather he is more interested in the nature of faith, what is its source and what it can do. Just like in Ordet, he makes the question that "Can faith resurrect a dead body" a non-obvious question, by moving it outside the domain of rationality. In this film the similar question is -- Can someone cast a spell, wish someone's death and can the wish come true? In other words, is witchcraft possible? The power of this film lies in the fact that it makes you think about this obvious looking question.

I haven't described what happens in the film because just like Ordet it is quite suspenseful (even for believers). The other striking thing is the visual design, specially the austerity of the set design, the harsh lighting and the gloomy Danish background -- everything to a truly stunning effect. In fact it must be one of the most stunning Black and White films ever. In short a masterpiece for the ages. You should be running to the nearest DVD rental if you haven't seen it yet.