This ethereally beautiful film transports the viewer to another, wholly unfamiliar, world. You don't know what on earth is going to happen next, but there is a coherence and logic to it, since the world is based on the folk tales of a particular country, Estonia. Estonia did not become Christian until the 13th century, and the belief system of the peasants portrayed in the film is essentially pagan with a very thin veneer of Christianity. For instance, the priest's servant is caught stealing and protects herself by violently tearing out some of the priest's hair, which is then used by the local witch - successfully - to turn the priest into a docile moron. Score one for paganism.
I was surprised that some other reviewers found the film funny. Certainly there is plenty of incongruity and a lot of human folly on display. But you can't afford to laugh at the beliefs of these people because they are all coming true in front of your very eyes. The film gelled for me when the ghosts take their sauna on All Hallows Eve. (The dead are supposed to walk, so here they are, looking like themselves in life but dressed all in white, enjoying a meal and a sauna.) A character had earlier remarked that she had peeked into the sauna on one of these occasions and saw human-sized chickens. The camera goes inside the sauna and - lo and behold! - human-sized chickens. Nothing is too absurd to happen if these people believe it.
The film is set in the 19th century, but I wasn't surprised that some other reviewers thought it was set in the Middle Ages. The peasants' clothes, tools and squalid living conditions are timeless. You have to look to the clothes of the Baron and his household for a fix on the period, but these are often old-fashioned and/or locally idiosyncratic.
It's perhaps explained in the book, which I haven't read, but the village is oddly short of young people. There is one baby, but otherwise the three characters in the love triangle are the only young people. The elderly villagers are really struggling to keep their smallholdings going and also do the forced labour demanded by their German overlord. And yet they can summon a woodland demon (it doesn't seem to me to be the Devil of Christian teaching at all), create robotic workers, and use magic and potions to turn themselves into animals, avert the plague, or even cause a person's death. Why aren't they rich and powerful? The scope of their pagan powers seems very circumscribed, as is their lives. Hans can reasonably ask for a girl to fall in love with him - but not for the Baron's daughter to fall in love with him.
The black and white photography is staggeringly beautiful, and the peasants' weather-beaten faces are mesmerising. I was very happy that I had the good fortune to see this in a cinema, but I will be buying it on DVD to watch over and over again.
I was surprised that some other reviewers found the film funny. Certainly there is plenty of incongruity and a lot of human folly on display. But you can't afford to laugh at the beliefs of these people because they are all coming true in front of your very eyes. The film gelled for me when the ghosts take their sauna on All Hallows Eve. (The dead are supposed to walk, so here they are, looking like themselves in life but dressed all in white, enjoying a meal and a sauna.) A character had earlier remarked that she had peeked into the sauna on one of these occasions and saw human-sized chickens. The camera goes inside the sauna and - lo and behold! - human-sized chickens. Nothing is too absurd to happen if these people believe it.
The film is set in the 19th century, but I wasn't surprised that some other reviewers thought it was set in the Middle Ages. The peasants' clothes, tools and squalid living conditions are timeless. You have to look to the clothes of the Baron and his household for a fix on the period, but these are often old-fashioned and/or locally idiosyncratic.
It's perhaps explained in the book, which I haven't read, but the village is oddly short of young people. There is one baby, but otherwise the three characters in the love triangle are the only young people. The elderly villagers are really struggling to keep their smallholdings going and also do the forced labour demanded by their German overlord. And yet they can summon a woodland demon (it doesn't seem to me to be the Devil of Christian teaching at all), create robotic workers, and use magic and potions to turn themselves into animals, avert the plague, or even cause a person's death. Why aren't they rich and powerful? The scope of their pagan powers seems very circumscribed, as is their lives. Hans can reasonably ask for a girl to fall in love with him - but not for the Baron's daughter to fall in love with him.
The black and white photography is staggeringly beautiful, and the peasants' weather-beaten faces are mesmerising. I was very happy that I had the good fortune to see this in a cinema, but I will be buying it on DVD to watch over and over again.