AFTER HIS PROMISING DEBUT JAPON, AND THE SCANDALOUS SEXUALITY OF BATTLE IN HEAVEN, MEXICAN MAVERICK CARLOS REYGADAS TAKES A QUANTUM LEAP FORWARD WITH THIS BREATHTAKINGLY ACCOMPLISHED TALE OF SPIRITUAL FERMENT IN A CLOSED RURAL COMMUNITY.
Religious outcasts from Old Europe, these Mennonite families speak the Plautdietsch dialect at home and trim their lives according to the most austere Protestant precepts. Breaking into tears at the breakfast table however, farmer Johan (Cornelio Wahl Fehr, like the rest of the cast a dauntless non-professional) is clearly in the throes of a personal crisis. His affair with another woman is no secret to his spouse, but the push and pull between his heart, his desires and his astringent faith are becoming too much to bear.
Johan’s troubles intensify in the course of the drama, which is staged and shot by Reygadas with a sure sense that his painterly widescreen compositions and contemplative pacing will achieve a cumulative emotional intensity of striking potency. Here is tragedy, love and redemption rendered with the sort of command which wouldn’t shame Terrence Malick, or old masters Bresson and Dreyer, and wholly persuasive in its implications of spiritual mystery. Thanks in part to a remarkable sound mix which almost allows us to hear the grass growing, Reygadas imbues the film with an authentic sense of wonder, not only in the controversial finale (if you’re going to borrow from the best, Dreyer’s Ordet is a fine place to start), but in the sublime opening sequence—a night-sky eliding miraculously into dawn before our very eyes. It’s quite something to behold.—Trevor Johnston.