Product Description

As one of Carl Dreyer's most celebrated forays into the sound film, Ordet deals directly with the spiritual theme first put forth in The Passion of Joan of Arc: personalized faith versus organized religion. Whereas Borgen the farmer believe

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18760 in VHS
• Released on: 2000-06-13
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Formats: Black & White, NTSC
• Original language: Danish
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 126 minutes

Amazon.com
One of the most powerful and profound films about faith ever made, Carl Dreyer's Ordet (which translates to "The Word") turns a Romeo and Juliet story into a passionately spiritual drama of love and acceptance. Young lovers in a rural farming community are kept apart by the religious differences of their parents. But although the parents appear strict and ascetic, Dreyer gives them tender moments of unspoken love and a quiet dignity, revealing them as thinking, feeling people with deep beliefs who need a crisis to make them face their conflicts. They find unexpected guidance from Johannes, a mad young man who believes he is Christ, preaching love and forgiveness in a sad, hoarse voice as he wanders the fields and pads around his sparsely furnished home. "They believe in the miracles I wrought 2,000 years ago," he cries, "but they have no faith in me now."

Dreyer strips his austere vision to essentials: simple dialogue, a quietly gliding camera, and lovely but unadorned images. Windswept fields of grain and stark homes lit by cold light suggest a chilly existence, but Dreyer reveals a rich, if restrained, emotional world that explodes in feeling at the film's climax. It's a moment of utter cinematic simplicity that resonates with pure love and joy and faith. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Beautiful, spiritual film by a master film maker!
This is one of the most spiritual and uplifting films of all time. It is shot in the same, sparce, beautiful manner that Carl Dreyer employs in so many of his films. There are long lingering camera shots that allow us to look at a person as we might in real life...not like many Hollywood films where the camera angle jumps about every other second.

The story is a kind of Danish "Romeo and Juliet" about two families divided by religion. However, "Ordet" never becomes a tragedy, because of a miracle. Do you believe in miracles? How about the miracle of forgiveness and how it heals human relationships? This is a film to teach us all about that.

One of the greatest spiritual cinematic masterpieces.
This film deserves 10 stars. Both in direction & the cinematography we are dealing with one of the greatest masters in the history of cinema, Carl Theodor Dreyer, a cinematic giant. Every film by Dreyer is a masterwork, but my favorite of all his films is ORDET (meaning The Word in Danish). This film might also have been titled THE MIRACLE. The acting is perfect, understated, naturalistic, without any thespian hystrionics or typical soupy music to pump up the scenes. Religious delusion can be viewed by some as great faith, and great faith can be viewed by others as religious delusion, & this film asks you which of these two views is what is happening. What is a miracle? Is it something special that only Christ or God or a Buddha can effect, or is it something which can happen at any time going against the laws of nature? This film opens such questions. The black and white imagery is not a lessening of the effect, but a heightening of the effect, for if this film had been in colour it would have lost something essential from its strong mysterious message. This film deals with bigotry and religious prejudice, as well as forgiveness and trust, but it never preaches, instead it opens the heart of the view to the profound mystery of Life & Death. It has the perfect inexorability of fate like a play by Euripides or Sophocles. On DVD or on tape, this is a film which anyone who loves the art of film must have. This is one of those films you cannot do without in your personal film library. I also recommend DAY OF WRATH and JOAN OF ARC by Carl Dreyer.

Resurrecting Faith
"It was Soren Kierkegaard." Mikkel Borgen

It's refreshing to view a film that not only has religous faith as its subject, but also has the insight to grasp the crux of belief and the fervour it generates. 'Ordet' displays faith and all its flaws, but in the end, you may find your faith revived, or you may just find faith. 'Ordet' is that powerful.

The plot rehashes the 'Romeo and Juliet' archetype, with two lovers bordering fundumental fences. Their fathers don't see eye to eye on religious views. There are a few other major characters, most notable being the reincarnation of Jesus.

While all the characters are quite round and easy to sympathize with, their rudimentary fuction is to allow Dreyer to ponder faith and its paradoxes. The film is basically all talk with very little action, which may be one of Dreyer's points. The characters argue about what constitutes faith, but you get the feeling that they find opposing arguments hollow. Only in the film's final scenes does any real "action" occur, when everyone stops arguing and turns the other cheek.

Perhaps only Dreyer's own 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' is a stronger meditation on the subject of faith. Whatever your denomination, 'Ordet' probably covers you. The film's strength lies in its presentation of religous ideals, and the conflicts which can arise from those ideals. Religious faith, like any other ideal, has the tendency to make people stubborn, in that only one ideal can exist. At the end of the film, Dreyer also seems to believe that only one ideal exists, one that requires a tremendous leap of faith.