I was fortunate enough to encounter Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1955 film “Ordet” without any background knowledge on the movie itself. Around 2006, I was just a young moviegoer willing to watch and absorb any interesting movie out there as soon as possible, and I was already familiar with Dreyer to some degree after watching “The Passion of Joan Arc” (1928) and “Day of Wrath” (1943). When I later obtained a cheap DVD copy of “Ordet”, I expected it to be very dry and austere, and the movie did not surprise me in that, but, what do you know, it engaged and then touched me a lot in quite unexpected ways.
The movie mainly revolves around a rather serious conflict between the two differently religious families living in some rural Danish village during the autumn of 1925. On one hand, we have the Borgen family, who are led by an affluent widower farmer named Morten (Henrik Malberg). On the other hand, we have the Petersen family, who are mainly represented by a taciturn local tailor named Peter (Ejner Federspiel). Although both of these two families are technically Christians, Peter and Morten’s religious views cannot be more different from each other. While Peter and his family are your average solemn puritans, Morten and his family are relatively more secular as placing joy and life a bit above faith.
It is implied that Morten’s longtime skepticism on faith comes from not only his deep personal doubt but also the current status of Johannes (Preben Lerdorff Rye), one of his three sons who came to have a serious case of delusion after studying religion a bit too much. Johannes believes he is Jesus Christ, and he surely disturbs a local priest a lot when this priest drops by Morten’s house at one point early in the story. This lad may be quite insane, but it is apparent to us that what he monotonously says touches something deep inside the priest, who soon leaves the house after briefly saying hello to Morten and the other family members.
While Johannes’ madness is always something to be tolerated by him, Morten is usually brightened up a lot by the happy marital relationship between his eldest son Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen) and Mikkel’s wife Inger (Birgitte Federspiel), who has been to Morten pretty much like a daughter he never had. When Inger, who is incidentally pregnant with her second child at present, has a little important private conversation between her and her father-in-law, we can clearly sense the genuine human affection between them, and they remain respectful and affectionate to each other even when their conversation becomes a little strained later.
The reason is pretty simple. Morten’s youngest son Anders (Cay Kristiansen) has been in love with Peter’s only daughter Anne (Gerda Nielsen), and he and Anne want the approval from both Peter and Morten. No matter how much Inger tries to persuade him, Morten only becomes more adamant in his disapproval of Anders’ relationship with Anne – until he comes to learn later that Peter refuses to allow his daughter to marry Anders just because Anders is not “Christian enough” in his viewpoint.
What follows next is a long but compelling conversation scene between Morten and Peter. As occasionally making subtle movements here and there, the camera of cinematographer Henning Bendtsen patiently and steadily observes the growing conflict between Morten and Peter’s equally dogmatic viewpoints up to a certain point, and the result is dramatically captivating to say the least. The more they talk and discuss, the more apparent that, to our little amusement, neither of them is willing to step back for any compromise at all.
Around its middle turn, Dreyer’s screenplay, which is based on the 1932 play of the same name by Kaj Munk, throws a sudden plot turn which consequently makes many of its main characters including Morten and Peter have doubts and questions on their respective religious viewpoints. Even at this narrative point, the movie sticks to its phlegmatic non-judgmental attitude as usual, but it pulls off a series of sublime moments to haunt you for a long time. Although the camera mostly maintains some distance from the main characters in the movie, their respective emotional struggles are presented with quiet but palpable emotional intensity as being unfolded under the dry and austere atmosphere surrounding them. In the end, everything in this part culminates to one of the most powerful human moments in the history of cinema.
It should be pointed out that Dreyer was not a particularly religious man in real life, and this reminds me again that many of the best movies about faith and religion have come from filmmakers no more religious than Dreyer. Probably because they are mostly not blinded a lot by all those meaningless religious dogmas from the very beginning, they could think and ask quite seriously and thoughtfully much more than average believers, and it is no surprise that some of their outputs truly and deeply challenge whatever we believe, instead of blatantly proselytizing us to the end (Just think about how, despite its overwhelmingly visceral qualities, Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of Christ” (2004) feels inherently superficial compared to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The Gospel According to St. Matthew” (1964) or Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” (1988)).
On the whole, “Ordet”, whose title incidentally means “The Word” in Danish, is still capable of impressing and then moving us even though it has been more than 70 years since it came out. Although he only made four feature films (His last feature film was “Getrude” (1964), by the way), Dreyer has been regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers to remember, and I assure you that you will not have any doubt on that once you give a chance to “Ordet”.
