Tulen morsian

This is a historical recreation regarding lives lost to the accusations of witchcraft.

The setting, costumes and acting were all well done but for me the problems lay in the dramatic story surrounding the historical realities. I just thought it was a bit weak. If you are looking for a historical drama on witchcraft, this is a nce pick but the side drama is a bit less than enough to make it spectacular.

Watched this on Spanish (Latin American language) Netflix, the linguistics of the translation was very good using a standard Mexican Spanish with a sophisticated vocabulary.

It is interesting to hear the folk song in pentameter which links up Hungarian with Finnish music.

The story itself is not ground-breaking but is interesting for information about Scandinavian history with well-done costumes. Worth watching if you are a history buff or interested in Scandinavia/Finland/Estonia.

Would like to see more from Finnish cinema.

Beautifully done movie, nice landscapes, and seems true to the late 1600's in costuming. Yes, the characters get lost in their tangled relationships which makes it harder to follow the action. But it is such a very somber theme. Let us commend the filmmakers for revisiting this painful history in their country, for this history needs to be preserved so that we never go there again! The witchcraft trials in this film are almost contemporaneous with the 1692 Salem Witch Trials in New England.

Oh - languages spoken in the film are both Finnish and Swedish. The Åland Islands are an autonomous part of Finland, wherein 95% of the Åland population speaks Swedish as their first language (so says Wikipedia). There is a lot of Swedish spoken in this film. In fact, in one scene, someone is actually ordered to speak Swedish.

Let's face it, movie reviews are all subjective. There is no such thing as an objective movie review because it's all about the tastes and they differ. There's no use dissing anyone's opinions.

This movie has high production values on every aspect but still it manages to be very sloppy. Its pacing is non-existent, it doesn't engage and touch when it should. It's also very hard to like the main character after she causes great pain to other woman. It's hard to have sympathy on that character when it was supposed to be the most likeable person in the film to sympathize with. In my opinion her fate was well earned.

Also the acting is mediocre, even spoken finnish is difficult to follow because of the strong swedish accent. I needed subtitles to make sense of what they were talking about. Better idea would have been to make them all speak swedish.

I was so happy that i never went to see this film on the cinema and paid nothing to watch it. It was such a waste of time that i was disappointed. Usually finnish movies aren't very good. Only Finns keep fussing about them while they don't usually get widely distributed (exception is Kaurismaki films).

Devil's Bride, or Tulen morsian in Finnish, is based on the witch hunts that took place on the Åland Islands in the 17th century. A young woman named Anna Eriksdotter is an apprentice to a local herb woman. Things start to unravel when she falls for a handsome fisherman, who just happens to be married. And at the same time a new judge is sent to town to bring the wrath and fear of God into the countryfolk. And he almost immediately starts lashing against the old pagan habits followed by many. Including those of Valpuri, the aforementioned herb woman and Anna's adoptive mother.

Tulen morsian shines as a movie because of its commitment to the source material and its willingness to stick to real events. All the judged girls are named after real women, whose names can be found in the church records. The ending is also quite bleak, though handled with care and given a twist that makes it a bit more bearable, while in no way ruining it. The technical aspects also work rather well and it's a beautiful period drama, especially given the relatively modest budget.

Unfortunately, there are some flaws. Some of the actors are not quite as good as you'd hope, but that is to be expected, given that Finland and Sweden don't have that large of a pool to draw from. The bigger problem is the story, half of which seems to have ended up on the cutting room floor. There are more than a few story lines that are started but which are never finished. The relationship between Anna and the judge, for example. Goes absolutely nowhere.

Still, I'd recommend seeing this if the source material and the general idea interest you. It's well-made and kept together reasonably well, plus the main characters are very good.