Review Season of the Witch | poetslandscape

MPAA (PG-13) CNS/USCCB (O) Roger Ebert (2 stars) Fr. Dennis (three stars)

IMDb listing -

http://www.Imdb.Com/name/tt0479997/

CNS/USCCB Review -

http://www.Usccb.Org/films/s/seasonofthewitch.Shtml

Roger Ebert's Review -

http://rogerebert.Suntimes.Com/apps/%.Dll/article?AID=/20110105/REVIEWS/110109993

Season of the Witch is a length piece written by means of way of Brahi F. Schut and directed with the aid of using Dominic Sena set at a few stage inside the latter a part of the Crusader technology and at the beginning of the spread of the bubonic plague. The tale is set around the friendship of crusader knights performed by manner of Nicholas Cage and Ron Perlman who at the start of the film love their jobs of killing the enemy as a minimum as a good buy because the Spartans did inside the movie 300. However, after 10 years of killing Saracens (Muslims), and regularly sufficient, the Saracens? (Muslims?) ladies and youngsters, the 2 had enough. So they desert and head for domestic. It is then that they run into European cities devastated by using manner of the plague.

It is regularly hard for us to expect the horror and desperation that the great plague prompted the humans of Europe. The humans have been horror and had no idea what induced it or the manner it spread. Even these days, ?Historic alien theorists? Muse over reviews of the time of ?Demons? Appearing at the outskirts of cities and villages and spreading the plague through ?Mists.? Today we apprehend that the plague become unfold through micro organism carried within the intestines of fleas carried about via rats. It took years for the humans of Europe and the rest of the area to determine that out. In the intervening time, all kinds of scapegoats were blamed, murdered and/or destroyed in reprisal. Jews have been murdered for definitely now not ?Becoming in? (and therefore come what may causing the plague). Similarly, ?Uppity? Girls (or girls who, again, someway did now not fit in or tragically annoyed the incorrect/vindictive man or woman/humans) were denounced and burnt as witches. The Church even in massive part destroyed its private church buildings. The iconoclast controversy which had raged and been settled through Church Council a few centuries in advance resurfaced and panicky Church officials actually whitewashed and destroyed an entire generation of spiritual paintings throughout Europe out of fear that the images of Jesus, the Holy Family, Angels and Saints have been being taken as ?Idolatry? By using a vengeful God punishing the arena for its multitude of sins. The panic modified into near total.

Hence how would one technique creating a movie set in this period and why make it in any respect while it is able to offend such numerous humans ? Muslims, Jews, Feminists, even the Catholic Church itself which has apologized and sought to make amends limitless instances for the ones and other sins genuinely made regularly with fervor however additionally out of lack of expertise?

Well, the makers of the film regarded to try to simply placed the film?S characters into the arena of that time have them live as carefully as possible constant with the assumptions that they could have made on the time and invite the target market to sign up for with them. Hence, I do assume that the movie does quite successfully permit the audience to appearance the area of that factor from via the eyes of crusading knights.

If I had been Jewish nonetheless reeling from the Holocaust that with a bit of luck turned into the remaining chapter of an _awful_ millenia prolonged data of Christian persecution of the Jews, or a Feminist clearly _appalled_ by using the Medieval trial and burning of _apparently_

Hence through The Season of the Witch, one gets to appreciate some of the terrors that all people felt back then. When the two returning knights are given the task of providing escort for a priest and assistant taking woman accused of witchcraft (the woman played quite well by Claire Foy) to a distant monastery for trial, they pass through a dark wood, where the party gets attacked by wolves. Today, such a fight would be a mismatch. However back then, a pack of 12-15 wolves fighting two men with swords and a squire armed with a pike had a good chance of winning the fight.

And then anybody annoyed by the supernaturalism of the movie ought to be consistent and definitely avoid movies about demons and possession set in the world today. Afterall, it was in times such as that in which the Crusader knights lived that such things were deemed not only possible but quite common.

So what would be my verdict on this movie? I grew up enjoying Dungeons and Dragons. I have been a lifelong history buff. I can appreciate that all kinds of people could have serious difficulties watching this movie. At the same time, I do appreciate the invitation to walk for 2 hours in the world of the time of the Crusades and Black Plague. I would not want to stay and would certainly not want to return with a lust for killing or hurting anybody. But I do appreciate the possibility of sojourning for those 2 hours with those Crusading knights in a world that otherwise I’d have difficulty imagining. As such I’d recommend the movie to the similarly adventurous but also make the reccomendation with the reservations I give above.

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