Ordet is a deeply moving religious drama, provided we can settle into its slow, formal conversations. Carl Theodor Dreyer makes faces and rooms worth sustained attention, though the speeches sometimes test that patience.
Ordet asks us to spend a long time listening to people talk about faith, and makes that a more affecting experience than the prospect suggests. Carl Theodor Dreyer has made a fine, demanding drama whose slow pace is worth accepting, although the stiffness of some exchanges takes getting used to. The religious disagreements keep directing our attention back to the people doing the talking. We need not share their beliefs to recognise how much they need to be understood.
Henrik Malberg as Morten Borgen, Emil Hass Christensen as Mikkel Borgen and Preben Lerdorff Rye as Johannes Borgen give the discussions different kinds of urgency. The performances make little concession to conversational ease, and anyone waiting for brisk, naturalistic exchanges will have a difficult start. That formality can be wearing, but it also makes each face unusually important. We begin looking for responses that the speeches cannot supply, and the film gives us time to look.
Henning Bendtsen’s black-and-white cinematography is the strongest invitation to stay. The camera glides through the interiors without making its movement feel like relief from the talking; it gives us time to study how people occupy the same room. Erik Aaes’s production design keeps those rooms spare and tangible, so the religious language never quite carries us away from walls, furniture and bodies. The light gives the faces a solemnity that the dialogue sometimes presses too hard, but the images remain absorbing.
Edith Schlüssel’s editing lets the long takes determine the pace, and the conversations are not hurried towards their next point. That gives the actors room, although it also leaves the more rigid exchanges exposed. Poul Schierbeck’s music has less hold on our attention than the voices, a balance that suits a film so dependent on listening. At 125 minutes, this is not a film we can recommend for an evening when concentration has already gone.
We were moved by Birgitte Federspiel as Inger Borgen, whose warmth gives us someone to care about when the religious talk grows heavy. Her performance makes the concern for ordinary human feeling persuasive without making the surrounding formality disappear. Yet Inger Borgen deserves more room beyond what she brings to the other characters. Birgitte Federspiel makes her worth watching, but the writing does not always give her equivalent freedom.
The screenplay, also by Carl Theodor Dreyer, is less sure when it lays out the competing positions. Some of the disagreements become too neat, as though a speaker has been assigned a belief and must make certain we have understood it. We become conscious of the speech instead of wondering what the person might do. That is where the theatrical manner becomes a limitation, and the pace gives us plenty of time to notice.
Within religious drama, the film’s insistence on sustained attention distinguishes it: we cannot skim the speeches and expect the faces to do everything. It is demanding company, even when the warmth comes through. Set aside a quiet evening for it, and leave time afterwards before choosing anything else.
