Black Death

Year 18, Day 24 - 1/24/26 - Movie #5,224

BEFORE: I forgot to mention that the other night, Thursday, I helped a guy get off the subway tracks. It wasn't like he fell down there or anything, he went on the tracks by choice - and he wasn't crazy, he could see a $10 bill or something had fallen down there, and he wanted it. I was sitting on a bench nearby, it was just before midnight and I heard him say, "Well, I guess I got no choice..." before lowering himself down to the tracks, and he put the money on the platform, and then realized he couldn't pull himself back up to safety, the platform was too high - there's a good lesson in there somewhere, like maybe "Don't do this."  I knew there were at least 8 or 9 minutes before a train was scheduled to come by, but you never know. I asked him if he needed a hand and I got up and offered to pull him up - kind of forgetting that my knees aren't what they used to be. What I SHOULD have done was walk over to a girder and hold on to that so I wouldn't fall down myself, but I didn't think of it, I just planted my feet and pulled him up. Thank God I outweighed him, and thank God my knee held up, because as I felt his weight, I thought for a second that maybe I'd just written a check that I couldn't cash. Also, I was coming off a shift so I was probably more tired then I'd care to admit. Good news, he was pulled to safety and I avoided being pulled on to the tracks myself. I didn't take a minute to think of a better plan, I just kind of acted, because if he had been hit by a train then I would have been a witness to that, and both paperwork and nightmares would follow, plus there would have been an investigation and the C/E line would have been shut down, and I wouldn't have been able to get home. So I guess I did the right thing?

Daniel Steiner carries over from "The Phoenician Scheme". In that film, he played an arsonist and in this film he plays a monk. I will freely admit that when building the January chain, I really only got as far as "The Phoenician Scheme" without stopping, and then I looked at what film I wanted to watch on February 1 and worked backwards from there, until I got to THIS film which happened to link up with the Wes Anderson film - maybe a lot of films would have, but this is the one I found. 

THE PLOT: Set during the first bubonic plague outbreak in England, a young monk is given the task of learning the truth about reports of people being brought back to life in a small village. 

AFTER: This film is set in 1348 but it was released in 2010, well before COVID, there's no way they could have known that the world would go through another pandemic in the coming years. But I'm sure things like AIDS and ebola might have factored into creative decisions here, the ideas behind plagues and epidemics have been around for a while, if nothing else the Spanish flu from the early 1900's is something we might be familiar with. The final tally on COVID was a confirmed 7.1 million deaths, but estimates that include the non-reported cases range between 18.2 and 33.5 million, that's a lot of people but still it's only the fifth deadliest pandemic in history. Coming in at #4 is that Spanish flu from 1918-20, in the #3 spot is the Black Death (1348-1353) and in second place is HIV/AIDS, with about 45 million deaths. The top spot is held by the Justinian plague, which was bubonic plague like the Black Death, only 800 years earlier, with up to 100 million deaths. 

So the Black Death was no joke, it's possible that 60% of the European population was lost - not a great time to be alive, but if you managed to survive the plague, you maybe at least stood a chance of buying some real estate, because a lot of people didn't need land any more except to be buried in. Just trying to look at the bright side here. And we don't think this is likely to happen again, but you know what, why don't we stop cutting the federal requirements for vaccines to shreds, because why tempt fate? If we've got vaccines for more things, we should be giving them out rather than letting them sit somewhere and go bad, because what purpose does that serve? We know the COVID vaccine works, so exactly what has RFK Jr. got against all the other ones?  What happened to trying to reach herd immunity on some of those diseases, which is kind of just one step away from eliminating them altogether? 

Anyway, in this story Osgard is a young monk during the plague years, and he's got a thing going with Averill, a young woman who sought refuge at the monastery. That sounds like it's probably against the rules, but, you know, a man has needs and sometimes God just isn't willing to see to them. He convinces Averill to leave because the plague has reached the monastery and it's not safe for her there - but they set up a meeting point and she says she'll be there every day at dawn for a week, after that, she's moving on. Yeah, great girl, but her love is conditional, what does that mean? Osgard prays for God to send him a sign that he should also leave the monastery - does God look like Bill Murray in this one? It's unclear. BUT a group of knights turns up at the monastery and asks for a guide to take them into the marshland, to find a village that hasn't been affected by the plague. The bishop has sent these knights because of rumors that a necromancer runs that town, and is bringing dead people back to life. Osmund takes this as a sign from God that he should escort them, also this will give him a chance to meet up with his lady friend as planned. 

The group is attacked in the forest and a couple of them die, also Osmund finds Averill's cloak, stained with blood, so naturally he assumes she's dead. They reach the village in the marsh, everything seems rather chill and plague-free, only Osmund watches a ritual at night where Langiva, one of the town leaders, brings his dead girlfriend back to life. Meanwhile the knights are given food and drink which is drugged, and they're all captured to be sacrificed in rituals designed to keep the plague from reaching the village. Langiva blames the church for the plague, and who's to say she's wrong? The church has missionaries and envoys sent all over the known world, they might be the ones spreading disease, in addition to rats and such. The church certainly didn't have the knowledge or the power to just make everyone stay home for a few years while the plague dies down, people still had to go to the market and the butcher and work their farms and clean the town streets.  

So, yeah, if the plague was caused by Christians then the solution is simple, just sacrifice a few holy knights and that should keep people from coming to the village and bringing the plague with them. It makes sense, except it doesn't, because if you kill the bishop's envoy he's just going to send another envoy team to find out what happened to the last one, and so on and so on. The knights are given a choice, either renounce their faith and be saved, or maintain their faith in God and be sacrificed on a cross. Please note that being "saved" includes death by hanging from a tree, so really, there's not that much of a choice here. There seems to be a differing opinion on the semantics of what being "saved" means. 

Osmund renounces his faith, but only so he can get close to the revived Averill and kill her again, because he thinks she's a resurrected zombie and therefore a holy abomination. Sure, sounds like a great plan until he learns the truth about whether she was ever dead to begin with. Whoopsie. But a couple of the knights manage to escape their water-filled cells and start killing villagers, the main knight Ulric is scheduled to be drawn and quartered, but even though the other knights can't reach him in time, he's still got a few tricks up his sleeves. Literally. 

Bad news, Langiva escapes and Osmund is brought back to the monastery, eventually he gives up the life of a monk (that was probably never going to be a good fit anyway) and becomes a knight himself, spending his days searching for Langiva in every small village he can find. Well, it's a living at least. The notion is raised, by the pagans, that there is no hell or heaven waiting for us - ALSO the possibility, raised by the monk that we are already in hell, due to our sins in a previous life. It seems unlikely, yet when life really, really sucks, our natural tendency is to consider this, so perhaps it's worth a thought.

Directed by Christopher Smith

Also starring Sean Bean (last heard in "Wolfwalkers"), Eddie Redmayne (last seen in "The Good Nurse"), John Lynch (last seen in "Paul, Apostle of Christ"), Tim McInnerny (last seen in "Gladiator II"), Kimberley Nixon (last seen in "Easy Virtue"), Andy Nyman (last seen in "Jungle Cruise"), David Warner (last seen in "Scream 2"), Johnny Harris (last seen in "Dorian Gray"), Emun Elliott (last seen in "6 Days"), Tygo Gernandt, Jamie Ballard (last seen in "A Brilliant Young Mind"), Carice van Houten (last seen in "Race"), Tobias Kasimirowicz, Keith Dunphy (last seen in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story"), Marianne Graffam (last seen in "Spencer"), Ines Marie Westernströer, Nike Martens, Peter Wolf, Alex Tondowski (last seen in "The Voices"), Thorsten Querner, Gotthard Lange (last seen in "The Book Thief"), Emily Fleischer (last seen in "The Phenom"), Andrea Ummenberger

RATING: 5 out of 10 members of an angry witch-finding mob