BLACK DEATH (2009)

This pick from my pal Schifty jumped a place in line; the third movie he recommended was Final starring Denis Leary but Netflix took that off instant-watch so the world will never know.  That means the first real star to appear in a Schifty's Pick is Sean Bean.  I don't know what Schifty's aversion to seeing films afforded a theatrical release is all about, but this film is definitely a few steps up in construction and coherence from the last two suggestions.  During the Black Plague, Bean is dispatched by the Church along with a rag-tag band of colorful knights to investigate reports of a remote village that has survived the troubled times by forging a dark pact with a sorceress who defies God's will by bridging the worlds or the living and the dead.  That's right, its a Men-on-a-Mission movie, and its not bad.  Is it good?  Yeah, it just might be.

Bean's team included a young priest played by Eddie Redmayne who hopes to abandon the voyage to make a secret forest rendezvous with his beautiful ladyfriend (no tragedy brewing there).  But most of the men are battle-hardened, crusty warriors, like the creepy fellow costumed to resemble Klaus Kinski in Aguirre: Wrath of God, or the filthy bastard nicknamed 'the defiler of women', and some other gruesome characters that make those two look pleasant by comparison.  They get their mission from The Abbot, a far-too-brief cameo from David Warner, who has been delighting audiences in crap and quality alike for decades: Straw Dogs, Cross of Iron, several Star Trek projects, Tron, Titanic, Burton's Planet Of The Apes, In The Mouth Of Madness, Scream 2, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: Secret Of The Ooze, Ra's Al Ghul on Batman: The Animated Series, and so many more.

This film deals in ambiguity, as the men have their faith tested and are never really sure what to believe.  Right up until the final moments, there are doubts and reversals, casting previous events in different lights.  Even the narrator, the one character we know will survive, is unsure of himself when he finishes the tale for us.  Its a nice parallel for the audience to share the uncertainty of the characters.  The world they traverse seems primeval and untouched, like the settlements of man are so few and far between, and the natural world has only barely ceded some of her territory to mankind.  The supposed sorceress is likewise an enigmatic ambivalent figure, played by Candice van Houten, who you might have seen in Valkyrie and who you might see in the next season of Game Of Thrones.

The colors are stark and simple, setting a tone of grim foreboding that rises as the group approaches the fateful isolated village.  The combat scenes get a little too shaky for my taste, but once again, the decision to go with practical effects saves the film, especially during a climatic scene involving drawing and quartering.  You could say the fights were a little more realistic, all quickness and chaos, and when they end, they really end.  The other guy isn't going to pop up a moment later for one last whatever.  The crimson intrusions to the color palette come and go quickly, serving as brief interludes to the carefully cultivated atmosphere of rising dread.

Catholicism plays a big role in the story.  The secluded and safeguarded village appears at first a pagan utopia, free of disease and danger, but obviously things are not quite as they seem, and most of the characters put that together shortly before they start losing their toes to a quiet but not gentle giant named Hob.  There are many attempts to force people to renounce Christ, and our gang passes a group of flagellates hauling an enormous crucifix across a river apropos of nothing, except perhaps to remind us the state of religious affairs for the time and the propensity for Catholic fetishizing of pain.  The life and times of Jesus even figure prominently into some of the better one liners of the film, like "As a Christian, I'm sure you'll appreciate the concept of betrayal" although He is nowhere to be found in such course rejoinders as "I look forward to shagging your mother's ass in hell."

Hi I'm David Warner