Volume 22, Issue 2
An Old Film in a New Light: Lighting as the Key to Johannine Identity in “Ordet”
by Richard Goodwin
Abstract
In his essay on Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Ordet, P. Adams Sitney draws a parallel between the protagonist, Johannes, and John the Evangelist, author of the fourth gospel. He suggests that the delusional Johannes’s sanity returns upon the recovery of his own name, turning on the invocation of his biblical namesake, John the Evangelist. Compelling as Sitney’s is, however, I argue that we arrive at a more helpful interpretation by attending to an aspect that has been largely overlooked in critical discussion of the film: lighting. Careful analysis of the lighting yields a perspective in which Johannes is understood to be modeled not on John the Evangelist, but rather on John the Baptist. It does so, in part, by alluding to John 1:6–8, in which John the Baptist is described not as the light itself, but rather as a witness to the light of Christ. This alternative account of Johannine identity uncovers new meanings in the film, all revolving around the prophetic. Perhaps most intriguing is the possibility that Johannes may be understood to be a kind of stand-in for Kaj Munk, the prophet-like playwright of the original play of which the film is an adaptation.
Terrence Malick Beyond Nature and Grace: Song to Song and the Experience of Forgiveness
by Elisa Zocchi
Abstract
In The Tree of Life Terrence Malick poses the question of the relation between the order of grace and the order of nature in the cosmos and in human existence, a question presented through the relation of mother and father in the O’Brien family. The aim of this article is to analyze this issue and to present the role of glory in The Tree of Life as the transfiguration of nature operated by grace. Specifically, the example of forgiveness as one strand of this glory seems to be an helpful tool to understand the movie. Forgiveness, already present in The Tree of Life, becomes particularly important then in Song to Song. I will present this movie as an exemplar analysis of the human soul and of the capacity of forgiveness to draw the soul close to the eternal, as already happening in The Tree of Life. Underlining the relationship between forgiveness, sacrifice and glory will help to understand both the continuity between the two movies and the specificity of Song to Song.