I am a sucker for this kind of film, i.e. historical drama in some exotic place (for a North American). There is a lot going on:
The redemption of a fallen padre as exemplar of a Church in need of reformation, a hypothesis about the beginning of western drama -- after all, SOMEBODY had to come up with the idea -- and the strange paths that the human psyche can take when a man presides over society but also cut off from it. Mix this in with a Europe not recovered economically or psychologically from the after-shocks of the Black Death, possibly three, and you have an interesting situation. Then too, there is the mystery story . ...
The physical setting seems meticulously recreated insofar as I can judge as a non-mediaeval scholar. Certainly more than one good woman practised medicine without a license for the people a physician would not bother to see. A sharp-featured nobleman with a Pan's beard in red leather strikes one as much, but as a type specimen he is fascinating. Dafoe is wonderful. Even though a bit "Hollywood," as foretold by the angry dyer the final scene symbolises what is in store for the whole mediaeval order.
The redemption of a fallen padre as exemplar of a Church in need of reformation, a hypothesis about the beginning of western drama -- after all, SOMEBODY had to come up with the idea -- and the strange paths that the human psyche can take when a man presides over society but also cut off from it. Mix this in with a Europe not recovered economically or psychologically from the after-shocks of the Black Death, possibly three, and you have an interesting situation. Then too, there is the mystery story . ...
The physical setting seems meticulously recreated insofar as I can judge as a non-mediaeval scholar. Certainly more than one good woman practised medicine without a license for the people a physician would not bother to see. A sharp-featured nobleman with a Pan's beard in red leather strikes one as much, but as a type specimen he is fascinating. Dafoe is wonderful. Even though a bit "Hollywood," as foretold by the angry dyer the final scene symbolises what is in store for the whole mediaeval order.