What aunt_zelda Thinks: Black Death, the movie

[aunt_zelda]

What do you get when you cross The Wicker Man with The Pillars of the Earth, heap on some pacing issues, and throw in a dark twist of an ending? The movie Black Death starring Sean Bean of course! Sean Bean playing, what else, a grumpy man with a sword! (WIN!) Strangely enough, Eddie Redmayne, who played Jack in Pillars, stars in this as … a monk who betrays his vows. What a surprise, he's really playing against the type here!

(Actually towards the end, he does … but for the most part the movie is like a weird Pillars of the Earth fanfic.)

Is it cheesy? At times, yes. Is it grungy and devoid of color? Yuh-huh. Is it awesome? Um … kinda? I was wicked excited during the first half, the second half started to lag, and then the ending punched me in the face in a good way. So … AWESOME! MOSTLY!

What can I say, gimme swords, great costumes, a cheesy plot, a domineering woman, paganism gone awry, and INTENSE EMOTIONS, and I am one happy camper. 

It does well with subtlety in its story, it doesn't revel in gore or religious rites, there's a lot of suggestion and bits that are simply … there, not overblown. Which I appreciate. That kept this from being action shlock. 

I mean, with lines like:

"You have no power here! You have no power here!" shouted by bound Sean Bean standing waist-deep in water in a cage, followed by "Crucify them all" by a hot blonde lady in a red dress (I want that dress so much) … wow. This movie is great. It's not quite a guilty pleasure, but it's not quite an honestly GOOD movie. It's somewhere in between. Like Kingdom of Heaven, but without the EPIC, HISTORICALLY ACCURATE (FOR THE MOST PART) BATTLES.

[Actually, Kingdom of Heaven might be a better movie. The Director's Cut of it certainly is, but then, I am probably biased because I have an unhealthy and very perplexing love for Kingdom of Heaven, despite its historical inaccuracies and miscasting of the lovely but not-an-action-hero Orlando Bloom. Fuck, I love that movie … I need to watch it again, it's been more than six months!]

One big complaint about the movie Black Death: wish the camera hadn't shaken around so much during the fights. The fighting was good, why was it so hard to concentrate on?

Also, considering the ending, why wasn't THAT the focus of a movie? Osmund hunting down witches and torturing them, fueled by grief from this whole movie's events, would have made fore a better story. Perhaps told half in the present with him hunting witches and half in flashbacks to the events of this movie, showing us how he got to be such a monster. I'd have liked that a lot. 

Then again, for the most part this movie worked. It did a good job building up the unsettling feeling of the Creepy Cultist Town without overdoing it too much. I liked that. 

I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. Not blown out of the water, but I'd watch this again later.