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Carl Theodor Dreyer's "Ordet"
By Stef Loy | It is very hard to be objective about Ordet. Dreyer's masterpiece has the potential to be so subjectively powerful that you can literally build your own worship experience around it. Made nearly 50 years ago and set in the mid-twenties, it is still very transcendent and capable of packing an insightful wallop if one remains open to its dynamic spiritual overtones.
I recently sat for the second time and gleaned from this powerful tale of a Danish family's trials and joys on the farm that sustains them, "Borgen's Farm." It is rich with life, lessons, and several morals that the director will offer as "truth filtered through an artist's mind." To this reviewer the experience felt like an interaction with the spirit world — the film being a tool that helps to channel our thoughts in a proper way to better see the beauty of a God whose ways we do not fully comprehend.
But this is not a contrived, Billy-Graham-published salvation experience production. It is first and foremost a great story, a classic that works on several levels. At the core of its heart are themes of love, loss, confusion, doubt, anger, reconciliation, and ultimately, redemption. You may have seen these qualities portrayed in film before, but you've not seen them portrayed like this. Dreyer's approach is to introduce us to characters so fully developed that we completely identify with each of them and what their differing views represent. He then throws us into a situation where we feel there can only be one outcome, and whether or not we agree with the conclusion, we exit having been forever challenged and potentially changed.
At the time he made Ordet, Dreyer was already a strong director, known for his ability to tackle some very tough issues. In both the silent The Passion of Joan of Arc and in Day of Wrath he boldly confronted the church's ideology of religious intolerance by showing them a previous establishment's thirst to turn infidels into martyrs. Here he shows us point-blank the difference between the weight of religion and the simple faith of a child.
When the faith of one small child enters Dreyer's world, the false images of God that have been erected in the name of religion are put to the test. The child's simplicity points out the hypocrisy in anyone who cares more about proving God right than letting him be right. Jesus called the little children to himself. There must have been good reason for that.
Granddad Morton Borgen is one of those who has become stubborn in his faith and has allowed his beliefs in God to isolate him from others. He does not want his son to marry the tailor's daughter, for she is of a different faith than the Borgens. What the differences in those belief systems are is so miniscule that the casual observer might not even care. But the point of the story is not so much the differences in and of themselves, but the struggle that both families will go through in trying to figure out whether these two are right for each other.
Another of Morton's sons, Johannes, has "lost his wits," walking around thinking that he is Jesus Christ, prophesying of things to come, both seen and unseen. The family believes that his study of Kierkegaard, mixed with speculation and doubt, turned inward, has driven him from his sanity. He prophesies in the beginning of the film,
"Woe unto you hypocrites... For you lack faith... You don't believe in me, the Risen Christ, who was sent to you by him who created the heavens and the earth. Verily, I say unto you, judgment is at hand."
The words serve as a foreshadowing of the events to come. And yet, even later, is a much more stark prophecy:
"A corpse in the front living room! To the glory of my Father in heaven..."
Dismissed as a lunatic on the fringes of a heresy-imbedded faith, Johannes is the most isolated character in the film. And yet, "a prophet in his hometown is rejected." Perhaps Dreyer, who stumbled in and out of institutions in the mid-1930s, understood this rejection even better.
Granddad Morton's third son, Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen), is the representation of the agnostic who wants to believe. He has lost his faith in having faith, but he has not lost his goodness, or his love for the family. His role is crucial, and perhaps the most emotionally draining by the time the credits roll. His fatigued face and torrential tears are those of sorrow as well as joyful adoration. He is the embodiment of the rediscovery of a lost love. Once he rejected feelings of worship and adoration, but by the time the last frame has played, he has been the main character that we can identify with in coming to terms with our own grief and repentance.
The character of the film that we will delightfully celebrate is Mikkel's wife, Inger (Birgitte Federspiel). Her presence is richly rewarding — she is the counter-balance to Johannes' madness — the sane voice of wisdom and tenderness. Her love for her husband is uncompromising, even by his doubting spirit. Her belief in prayer is stupefying — she believes in answered prayer, whether worked out by God in great and glorious ways, or "in the secret." Inger resonates with all that is beautiful about faith, regardless of her circumstances.
Other characters that add to the symbolic structure of the film: the Doctor (science), the Pastor (religion), and Peter the Tailor (the opposing view). Each of these must see a miracle before they really understand the field in which they work.
A few final quotes that sum up the awesome power of Dreyer's greatest work:
"What is madness and what is reason?" — Granddad Morton
"He has the power to redeem you of disbelief and delusions." — Peter, the Tailor
"It lives with God." — Mikkel
This is a film about testing, trials, perseverance and holding out for the miraculous. Ordet has the potential to be a deeply moving experience, and should be seen by all who are willing to take time and set their eyes on "the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things unseen."
"Ordet" is available on DVD from the Criterion Collection in the Carl Theodor Dreyer Special Edition Box Set, which also contains "Day of Wrath" and "Gertrud," as well as Torben Skjodt Jensen's excellent documentary on the life of Dreyer, titled "My Metier."
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