Film #10 — 1/4 Films Based on Novels (or Books); 5/9 Decades
Also filed under: A-One
By C. Ramsay
Though it might be cliché to quote Shakespeare’s “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here” as the truest sentiment this film embodies, there’s no closer description of the nearly two-hour frenzied descent into sacrilegious hedonism that it presents. Set in 1634 France and following Urbain Grandier, a priest who has temporarily inherited control of the fortified city of Loudun from its deceased Governor, as well as Sister Jeanne des Agnes of the city’s Ursuline convent, the film intertwines the country’s conflicting religious fanaticism with an outburst of mass sexual deviancy.
Featured throughout are colossal but stark sets, their architecture illustrative of the people most commonly frequenting them—rounded and enveloping for Sister Jeanne, jagged and commanding for Father Grandier, all of it cavernous and empty. The streets of Loudon, the space of the masses, are where the excesses are found: an orgiastic cacophony of visual opulence that in detail is built of disease, rot, and poverty, swelling to consume all who wade through it.
Grandier, though first introduced as a crude and seemingly dishonourable man, takes his position seriously in helping the masses of his city, faltering on a selfishly individualistic level where all others wielding power are wholly self-serving and seek opportunism in the suffering of the meek. Religious decree, at this time blended symbiotically with state affairs, is used to conceal political maneuvering. In the wretchedly overwhelming chaos of Loudun, political dissent is labeled religious, stripping away influence by damning the accused to a narrative that for them has been pre-determined.
Star rating (/5): ★★★★★
Recommend?: Yes!