ORDET

Prepare yourself for one of the most powerful and profound films about faith ever made.

On an isolated Danish farm, a devout patriarch struggles with his sons’ conflicting beliefs, including those of Johannes, who believes himself to be Jesus Christ. When a difficult childbirth threatens the family, arguments over religious doctrine give way to the terrifying immediacy of love and loss. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s ORDET finds overwhelming emotion in the simplest gestures, its luminous black-and-white images and patient camera movements making a farmhouse feel like an entire world. By its extraordinary final scene, the question of faith has become inseparable from the desire to hold someone you love in your arms again.

“What drove me nuts about the film as a teenager is far from unconnected to what makes me consider ORDET one of the greatest of all films today. The experience of the film demands a certain struggle, regardless of one's beliefs, and the fact that it can't be easily processed or rationalized or filed away is surely connected to what keeps it alive and worrying.” - Jonathan Rosenbaum

“By the time he made ORDET, the modern had become classical, and Dreyer had stripped his style of angular expressivity in favor of a still yet furious clarity that seemed to see through things to reveal their transcendent essence. That achievement is an even greater miracle—and it's appropriate to the radical Christianity at the heart of this movie.” - Richard Brody