Ordet. La palabra

Others have reviewed this picture in a more scholarly and contextual manner than I can, so I will only endeavor to add the following:

I have a particular interest in the nature of faith, and undertook to view Ordet as something "good for me," but probably arduous. Wrong! I also grew up in an area heavily populated by Scandinavians, and knew immigrants who were contemporaries of the oldest characters in the picture.

Ordet, set in 1925, is a dead-on take of old-school Scandinavian culture, suffused with both the most intense dramatic elements imaginable and moments of comic relief as well. The action moves right along without help of special effects or a distracting musical score.

This picture at least alludes to the seldom-asked question, "Why do people believe?" Is it merely for the rewards of faithfulness, or something more?

The final scene, utterly devoid of effects or music, has a dramatic power unexcelled in the ensuing 47 years of cinema to date. It is very long, but uses its duration in service of the tension of the story. Nobody is yelling, fighting or firing weapons, despite the fact they are enduring emotional torment that is as painful as it gets.

In an oblique way, the scene reminded me of the part of Jim Jarmusch's "Down By Law" where Tom Waits and Co. are sitting in the clink in real time, and time passes glacially in one very long scene, illustrating the sheer boredom of incarcerated life. Here real time is used to illustrate the unrelenting nature of grief. In both cases we see what happens long after the scene would have changed in nearly any other picture. The pace conforms plausibly with real life, and in so doing serves the dramatic tension.

One negative review alludes to the final shot and the expression in a character's eyes. I would defend that as an insight that no blessing is unmixed.

As others have noted, one needn't hold a Christian point of view to enjoy this film and be given much to ponder. See it.

Subtly suspenseful. Thought-provoking. Unpredictable--there's nothing cliché about this film. The long, single shot scenes are a very refreshing change of pace and help build intrigue. I loved it! I confess I had never even heard of this film until tonight while watching it on TCM. What a gem! Although it seems to get off to a slow start, it gains momentum. You find yourself intrigued by each family member's personal dilemma. Surprisingly, nothing turns out the way you expect it to! It's like that favorite good book you can't put down. On a sour note, I was very disturbed by a scene when the town doctor is called to the farm to aid Inger's midwife during childbirth. I'd like to do some research and learn if the director was true to the medical practices of the time.

... but you wouldn't know it. The spectrum of religious belief explored through the eyes of rural Danish families in 1925 - a tricky birth, falling for the wrong girl and a son who thinks he's Jesus sets the scene. Nothing to make you smile, except for the end which, depending on your own dogma, may allow you a brief smirk.

(Some Spoilers) Simple but powerful film about faith and how it can not only bring two warring families together but even bring someone back from the dead. If the belief in God by those close to him is strong enough.

Having lost his faith in God a long time ago Morten Borgen, Henrik Malberg,attends church services more out of tradition then belief. Morten also seems to have influenced his older son Mikkel,Emil Hass Christensen, over the years with his semi-agnostic ideas as well. Being married to Inger, Brigitte Fedenspiel, Mikkel is a sweet and loving husband and father to both Inger and their little daughter Maren, Anne Elisabeth. Still he gets very up tight when talk about religion comes up at home. Mikkel also very upset and embarrassed about his younger brother John, Preben Leerdorff Rey,who's suffering from burn-out. That resulted from his time in college studying religion writings and theories.

John has become convinced over time that he's Jesus Christ and goes around the house and countryside quoting phrases from the Bibel like an Old, or New, Testament prophet. Morten's youngest son Anders Cay Krisiansen, has fallen in love with the local Tailor's Peter Skraedder, Ejner Federspiel,daughter Anne, Greda Nielson. With the help of Morten's daughter-in-law Inger there's a meeting arranged between the two fathers to get Peter's permission to have Anne marry Anders. the meeting turns into a total disaster with Peter wanting nothing to do with Morten and his son Anders.

The two, Peter and Morten, have been having sharp differences on religious issues for years and they really came into focus later on in the movie with Inger who was pregnant at the time. With Morten at his home Peter gets a call from Mikkel about Inger being very ill as she's about to give birth. Peter starts to feel that now his friend Morten will be tested by God like the Biblical Job. By having Inger die and having him accept what happens to her without any show of anger on his part to show his complete faith in God's work which is to test Morten.This unfeeling statement by Peter causes an angry and outraged Morten to almost clobber, and end up on nonspeaking terms with, him and end their friendship. At first Inger seems to be coming out of danger but later, after losing her baby, she just closes her eyes and stops breathing and peacefully passes away.

Inger's death causes Peter to feel a deep guilt by practically telling Morten that he hoped that she'd dies. At the same time Peter leaves Morten so depressed in almost wanting to die himself. Mikkel also is at the point of having an emotional breakdown at Inger's wake not wanting to leave her side and preventing her coffin to be closed so sher could be buried in her eternal resting place.

John, who was gone all this time, appears and with only young Meren believing him in his assertion that faith in God is the only force that can bring Inger back to life. If those who are now grieving for her showed that faith during her illness, instead of faith in modern medicine, this tragedy would not have happened. John then not only does the impossible but shows everyone there that he wasn't the unstable and irrational parson that they all thought that he was all these years. In fact he was a man of deep faith and conviction in God who never wavered in his strong and unshakable beliefs. No matter how hard they were tested by the events spinning around him.

Slow paced film that has an underlying and invisible force to it that doesn't really show itself until well into the movie. John who we all thought was somewhat mad is the person brings everyone in the movie together by making them realize that there is a God and the real proof of his existence is all around us. If we just take the time and effort to look.

So I finally arrive to the famous Ordet.

Three women are central in Dreyer's last three films, one every decade. In Days of Wrath she was trapped in a loveless marriage and looking for love she had been denied by a cruel turn of events. Here comes the second woman, in a loving marriage to one of three sons of a powerful father figure, radiant, kind, and eager for that love to flourish and spread in the household. The younger son has found love, she petitions the father to give his consent.

God stands between the two households which are locked in dispute about marriage, god implying a whole view of how the world is put together. The pater famiglia in the farmhouse believes in god as embracing the fullness of life, the tailor down the village espouses a mortifying god that rejects this life for the next. None of them is ready to give ground.

This disputation about god takes an even eerier shape; there's another son who has gone mad by an inner search for god and believes himself to be Jesus; the father's wish for someone to wake up mankind, a desire for a living voice for god, but that has given him a broken son, from his own pov, who is looked on with pity as an invalid. The father hopes against hope that he might come to his senses.

So, unable to set aside their ego in favor of loving- kindness, the woman who had embodied love falls to die. The father hastens back, a long, hard night of the soul follows as childbirth goes awry and her life hangs in the balance.

Okay now we have most of the parts; the whole is filmed in austere flows, almost entirely setbound in the two houses, as sparse as the god of these people. Dreyer is clearly on the side of the farmer, for a living god; you'll see this in how eager he is to sketch complex human beings, this is a man who takes pleasure in the brushing and slow reveal of human character, therein lies the richness. The scenes with the little girl and her mad uncle are some of the most heart- aching.

The parts in which Dreyer ruminates explictly on god and faith in a faithless world I pass by without much interest, I simply don't know what use I have for them, for example when the father is asked by a doctor if science saved his daughter-in-law or his own faith. I simply don't perceive them to be the matter of real spirituality, or in any way a road that leads out of a stifled soul. God will never make himself known in the way that tormented piety expects so it's moot to agonize, no? The world is always aglow with spirituality so long as the eye, the heart, remain effortless, able to let each thing mean itself.

Now we come to the famous ending with the miracle; one of the most famous in cinema probably.

It's possible, for Dreyer, that our ability to accept it or not is a test of our faith in the possibility of transcendence, it might be a case that to reject it out of hand is to already have a heart that is hardened. I don't know how much stock I would put in this view. For one, accepting it at face value, suspending disbelief, does it abet an eye that sees in fresh light something fundamental about how the world is put together?

Another IMDb reviewer makes a great observation, the woman looks eerie when she comes to, almost vampire-like. It's no accident that Dreyer has her almost bite her husband, cling with mouth agape, eyes unfocused, muttering "life" as if unable to remember kind of thing it is, joyous occasion or horrible ordeal.

No, I think let's blow the lid on this, let's deserve a Dreyer who isn't just a pastor preaching god. (He's not)

Dreyer is not a transcendental filmmaker (Tarkovsky is), he's a purist like Ozu. He's not shuffling walls of despair until they give way to light from above, he's distilling everything down to a pure view of the house. With the miracle, he's being existential, not spiritual.

Having said this, now we can go through the whole. If god, meant broadly as what we call that, is the fullness of life, it has to include the inevitable end of life and the suffering, this too no less a part of the fullness that needs to be embraced.

Dreyer seems to ask, why have you brought her back, now that you have? Is it just to cling on her as your only way to happiness?

Above all for me, it's the the way we wander around the house where now and then an afflicted son prophesies or repudiates, how we wait and come to, that makes this indispensable viewing. Bergman and Tarkovsky both begin here, each one pursuing a different strand of Dreyer.