Movies

... but you wouldn't know it. The spectrum of religious belief explored through the eyes of rural Danish families in 1925 - a tricky birth, falling for the wrong girl and a son who thinks he's Jesus sets the scene. Nothing to make you smile, except for the end which, depending on your own dogma, may allow you a brief smirk.

First, I must say I don't write in English very well. I study English, a little bit, in the school. I speak and write usually in Spanish and Basque. Well, I think this is one of the best movies I've ever seen. Johannes is a magnificent character and two scenes with Johannes and his nephew, talking about nephew's mother... are great. The story is about life, dead, love, faith and a lot of "people's problems" At the end, is a story about the meaning of life. I like movies. Love stories, westerns, "film noir", adventures films... but occasionally you can see a movie like this that makes you love this art too much. You're not seeing a film, you're living the film. Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

The classic status of Carl Dreyer's Passion Play has weathered years of change in attitude and taste better than the film itself: a stiff, theatrical meditation on the fundamental conflict between religion and faith. The opposing creeds are represented by a pair of sturdy, rural Danish households engaged in a polite theological rivalry, the flames of which are fanned by a Romeo/Juliet romance between the youngest son of the more humanistic family and the daughter of the puritanical clan down the road. The point is well taken: a healthy appreciation of life is more important than a dogmatic pursuit of an afterlife. But in what many believe to be his finest film Dreyer approaches the story like an undertaker to a corpse, carefully arranging each scene in a static tableau and embalming the script in the formal delivery of each line of dialogue.