Black Death (2010) Blu Ray
Tagline:
“Repent”. There's a longer one but it's wank. Repent nicely fits
the film. Great poster, too.
Premise:
Set during the first outbreak of the plague, or “Black Death”,
in England, Ulrich (Sean Bean) leads a small group of soldiers and
miscreants to find a village rumoured to be free of the disease. For
some reason they're joined by a young monk, harbouring a secret.
Delivery:
Having watched the terrible Outlander,
and unable to find Ironclad, I settled on rewatching Black
Death to sate my medieval bloodlust. Was I sated? Like a monkey
in a zoo*. Black Death has no right to be as good as it is, a sort of
road movie- action- horror it has a magnificent cast for a smallish
budget film: Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Johnny Harris, Carice van
Houten, Tim McInnerny, Andy Nyman, Emun Elliot... The list goes on.
The director, Christopher Smith, also made Creep and the very funny
and gory Severance, but this is by far the best of the three.
As
the plague destroys society in London, for reasons not made too
explicitly clear, a monk is asked to join Sean Bean and his cronies
on a journey to a small village north of the city, where the plague
has mysteriously not reared its puss filled armpit. The church are
naturally suspicious, this being a time of witchcraft and sorcery,
they want to maintain their monopoly on the supernatural. Eddie
Redmayne, in his breakout role, plays the young devotee, Osmund, who travels with them. He
has his own reasons for going north. The journey is, of course,
fraught with danger, not least the insidious disease which is
throttling the country.
Sean
Been has been bastard hard since 1993 (Sharpe), but in Black Death
he's also a bit of an actual bastard, which throws a spanner in the
works of what would normally be some heroic situations. I rather
enjoyed that element. Osmund flounders horribly in this brutal world,
a young man of ideals and unapplied morals and virtues, some harsh
lessons come his way as the group ambles towards the village. Tim
McInnerny is brilliant as the leader of the weird little enclave, and
I'll stop there, because you should really see this film.
Black
Death is brutal, believable and belies its modest budget. The film
makers have kept it lean, holding it together largely with strong,
committed performances and excellent writing. The film's real depth
of meaning, the rot that hatred can cause in the absence of love, is
delivered with a lightness of touch in contrast to the rest of the
film. It left me wanting a sequel. Also, it's a well trodden path,
the brutality of medieval weaponry, but if the Misericorde doesn't
creep into your consciousness, then you haven't been watching
properly.
Bedsit
it? Yes. If it sounds like your cup of tea. It's not Braveheart,
it's smaller scale and much darker, but I have now watched it three
or four times and Black Death's score has not wavered. 8/10
*Nope,
me either. It just sounded right.
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