Before There Was Grayscale, There Was the Black Plague

Is there a better source of horror than the devastating plague that killed almost half of the European population in the 14th century? I sometimes wonder why there aren’t more medieval set genre films that use this event as a springboard. Paranoia, cool beak masks, boils...so much potential.

Quick Plot: It’s 1348, and everybody is dirty and gross. The least grossest is, of course, Lena Headey’s Matilda, the lady of a small isolated village awaiting the return of her knight husband from a war with France. When the rest of the soldiers (including her husband’s nephew, Nicholas) return without Lord Walter but with a handsome and valuable hostage named Jacques, Matilda is understandably disappointed. When she meets with the obese and lecherous bishop holding sway over her and her town’s future, she’s understandably grossed out.

Matilda is given ten days to come up with tax payment or else she’ll have to do some very carnal things with a man she despises. Things get much more complicated when the cruel Nicholas bullies Jacques only to end up dead, possibly via plague-related complications. 

At Nicholas’s funeral march, the town steward is struck with some kind of curse, flashing back to witnessing a horrible event while also succumbing to the same plague. Once again, Jacques seems to have been some kind of instigator but only Matilda’s loyal servant Randall seems to notice.

There are plenty more twists and turns in Black Death, but to go too much further starts to a) give some things away and b) get a little laborious. Director Alberto Sciamma moves a little too slowly in unfolding his film’s mystery, making the the film feel far longer than its 115 minute running time. It’s something of a shame, since there’s a very strong concept at the heart of Black Plague.

Little by little, we learn that the village once endorsed a terrible sin twenty years earlier. Is Jacques the literal or figurative child of said sin, and do the townspeople deserve the boil-filled plague they may inherit? It’s a great concept, and just a minor shame that the film isn’t quite tight enough to fully make it work.

High Points

Lena Headey may have been born to wear velvety dresses from centuries ago. It’s also quite nice to see just how different her most famous royal character is from the more romantic and well-meaning Matilda

Much like the similarly titled and themed (and also Game of Thrones actor-filled) Black Death, Black Plague ends on a note that helps to put the entire film in a fascinating perspective

Low Points

There certainly should be an epic quality to The Black Plague, but that doesn’t quite excuse what feels like an interminable running time

So, you might have suspected from the DVD cover that Lena Headey looks a lot like Cersei Lannister in this movie. Well, actually, she doesn’t. She’s not blonde, nor does she ever sit upon an iron throne-ish chair. Clearly someone designing the newer cover art saw an opening and went for it. 

Lessons Learned

Feudal lords and ladies were not well versed in CPR

A real man knows how to pick any lock, particularly one sealing a chastity belt

Not being able to read or write makes a pretty good alibi

The Winning Line

“I wanted my husband and you bring me a monkey.”

If you thought your Mondays were tough, just imagine what they were like in the 14th century

Rent/Bury/Buy

I enjoyed Black Plague, but I tend to enjoy anything that’s set in that time period or that deals with that kind of widespread devastating sickness. The film is ill-paced and too long, but some of the ideas it plays with regarding sin and penance are quite interesting. Don’t expect a Sword of Storms-like romp, but if this is your kind of jam (as it is mine), it’s certainly worth a watch. 

2011 Awards, Emily Style

Hey, not every movie can be awards chloroform like The Artist or Hugo. Some need a little help, even if they already have Mickey Rourke's badass headgear Nicholas Cage's non-accent-in-a-period-film to help them out. Hence, head over to the Gentlemen's Blog to Midnite Cinema for my very own version of the Emily Oscars. There will be clowns, there will be brazen bulls, there will even be Muppets, but sadly there will never, never ever never, be enough dinosaurs.

Go figure out what I mean.

I like my plague the way I like my coffee/men: black & Beany. Um...

Ever since I stayed up late four weeknights in the 6th grade to watch ABC’s adaptation of The Stand, I’ve had something you might call ‘a thing’ for plagues. Whether it’s a movie like Carriers or a novel like Blindness, the idea of infection sparing no one is just such a ripe and rich premise for any horror film.

Toss in the word bubonic--easily one of my favorites--and  you’ve got the ingredients for one kicking movie. Oh, and did I mention Christopher Triangle Smith is behind the camera?

Yes, you could easily say my expectations for Black Death was about as high as the body count of the actual Black Death.

Quick Plot: It’s 1348, a great time for rats, mead, and long hair but a crappy time for life expectancy. A deadly sickness is tearing through Europe leaving nothing but paranoid Christians and rotting corpses in its path. 

Enter Oswald, a young monk torn between his village love and his word to God. Fearing the worst, he sends his girlfriend home to the woods where she plans to wait for him every morning as he decides where his true heart lies. 

A sign comes in the form of the rarely shampooed Sean Bean playing Ulric, a knight leading a tribe of Christian mercenaries into the woods to capture a rumored necromancer. As they venture deeper into the wild, they encounter violent savages and eventually, Black Book’s lovely Carice van Houten’s Langiva, a mysterious beauty lording over a gang of pagans.

Christopher Smith has one of the most impressive resumes of any genre filmmaker working today, so the idea of putting one of my favorite film premises in his hands is beyond exciting. In a way, unless Black Death met Wizard of Oz standards, it was probably never going to truly be as good as I wanted it to be.

That doesn’t mean I didn’t like Black Death. It had body boils, angry mobs, David Warner, a bleak ending and Sean Bean snarling. Of COURSE I enjoyed the movie. But coming from the man who made a beautiful day of sailing into a time warping horror complete with a baghead killer, Black Death fell a tad short of being the bubonic bonanza I was hoping for. 

High Points

One of the interesting aspects of any film set pre-1700 is the necessary lack of firearms. Black Death gives us a great moment of dialogue where the young monk learns from a grizzled knight about the mercy knife and how a carefully placed stab wound serves as the medieval headshot for merciful killings

SPOILERS

I drifted off a bit from Black Death during its somewhat disappointing third act, but I found the epilogue to be absolutely great. Having Oswald, our young and lovelorn hero, 

transform into a dark witch-hunting murderer (with Episode 2 Anakin Skywalker hair to boot) was devastatingly brilliant, making it a spiritual prequel to films like Mark of the Devil and Witchfinder General

The only good thing I was ever able to say about the awful Hitcher remake was that hey, at least the truck stretch out was cool. So it’s kind of neat that Black Death, another Sean Bean vehicle, gets to do the limb pulling, period style


THUS ENDETH SPOILERS

Low Points

While some of the sound design is haunting (ew death gurgles!) I find it hard to believe that every time sword moves it makes that slicey sound

There’s a fantastic shot when one of Ullric’s men is crucified by the pagans, as Smith’s camera follows him face-on in a frenetic Wicker Man-like final prayer. The problem is that this type of moment is far too rare. With a hauntingly fogged landscape and some set pieces that speak for themselves (hooded executioners marching on, corpses a’plenty) it’s kind of a shame that Black Death doesn’t feel truly immersed in the natural madness like, say, Vinyan or Aguire: The Wrath of God.

Lessons Learned

Christians appreciate the concept of betrayal

The longbow is quicker to load AND farther in flight. Take THAT buck of tar!

It’s indeed possible to smell a lie on a man

As Red Riding Hood taught us well, eye makeup was never more lovely than during pre-Industrial Revolution times

The Winning Line

“I look forward to shagging your mother’s ass in hell”

Who knew medieval times were filled with such great trash mama talk!

Rent/Bury/Buy

Black Death is certainly worth a lights-off watch, particularly since it’s currently streaming on Instant Watch. My slight disappointment probably stems more from the fact that I just watched Werner Herzog’s drop dead gorgeous Nosferatu (review coming soon) and was slightly spoiled by his masterful use of medieval times, plagues, and European forestry. So Black Death ain’t Nosferatu, but it’s still an engrossing period horror refreshing for our age.