Review by Beatrice On 27-Jun-2023
A western epic, Old Testament, the story of Liz and a devilish preacher.
Liz is a mute woman, living with her husband her daughter and his son.
When the new preacher arrives, her life is inevitably turned upside down and revealed.
Liz was a wanted prostitute and substitute for a now deceased friend of misfortune.
She is haunted by this psychopathic tormentor, avenging fanatic, manipulator of souls as well as violent murderer, on whose life all the most atavistic male misogyny since the advent of the great monotheistic religions is revealed.
Through the apocalypse and Liz's exodus we trace the religious culture that sees in God, the one and irrefutable male.
The Old Testament Bible attributes the first sin to woman, making all of Eve's daughters suspect, thus voting them, from birth, to a mark of infamy. Eve, as well as Liz and all her sisters, must submit to the will of man because they are their property, like the servant, the ox and the donkey.
It is because of the woman that sin began, even though it is perpetrated by man, who is authorized to rape, rape commit incest, and kill by virtue of a power given to him by God.
All kinds of harassment will have to be endured by Liz with all her sisters because the man humiliated by being "the son of woman" must redeem himself.
Liz is a survivor and must save her daughter before the preacher possesses her and before someone declares as in Genesis, 19:8 " I have two daughters who have not yet known man, let me take them out to you and do to them what you like, as long as you do nothing to these men, because they have come into the shadow of my roof."
Liz is a woman with impressive strength, she does not give up in the face of the horror of a culture that abuses her, erasing any identity and possibility of redemption, and just when she seems to have freed herself of her tormentor the nemesis permeates through the mask of the law.
To make a Western film while managing to create something unique and particularly original would seem impossible, but instead Koolhoven, by virtue of his adoration for this genre has managed to make an extra ordinary work.
Violence is the structure of the film as it is of the Old Testament to which the narrative constantly refers.
A European production, Dutch directing, a western with a religious sauce, and the plight of women seem the best mix, for a film in competition at the 73rd Venice Film Festival, despite the plethora of critics frightened by so much artistic energy.
Again, despite the original recourse to the Old Testament, western society is presented as something governed by codes of honor rather than law, so much so that the characters usually have no wider social order than the community in which they live, their family or themselves. In such narrow circles, the reputation of individuals is based either on generosity that creates a dependent relationship in the social hierarchy-in fact, the coming of law and progress is often portrayed as inescapable and negative-or on violence, as in this case, perpetrated on the female gender.
The female condition is still taboo, talking about it annoys...evidenced by the plethora of critics frightened by so much artistic energy....
Today, the management of female sexuality is political, and under the apparent liberation from religious dictates, emancipation has taken the form of a worse but well-disguised oppression.
The real liberation of female nature would be the end of its artificial fabrication. The glorification of female character implies the humiliation of anyone who possesses it
Long live the cinema that makes art of it: the past does not pass away.
This alone is denied to God: undoing the past
27-Jun-2023 by Beatrice