A few more thoughts on Black Death

One of the most striking things for me is that the film seems to set up and rely on a lot of common "hero" tropes but then never follows through with them. At first it looks like the hero might be the young monk struggling with his faith, Osmund. Then Ulric rides into town and perhaps it is him. But Ulric's fanaticism and his idea of mercy being a knife to the gut instead of a burning takes him out. By the end, Osmund has broken (quite spectacularly) as well. If there is any "hero" in the movie, it's probably the narrator, Wolfstan. And, in a way, he's kind of the "everyman," right?

That said, if there is any sort of moral point to the film, it might be that blindly following anything is dangerous. Christians and pagans are used to make this point but it's probably much broader than that. In uncertain times people will follow leaders on cruel paths. They will burn women, they will crucify strangers. The real devastation is not wrought by the plague but by the wickedness and cruelty of ignorant men.

Brandon, are we really meant to be on the side of the Christians? I guess, probably, since we are following along with them. But how is what the pagans are doing any different than the burning of the witch we encounter early in the movie? Both groups are guilty of the same ignorance and cruelty.

I think the reason that I find Osmund such a compelling character is because of his uncertainty. Am I reading too much into his character and finding more nuance where there isn't any? I like the fact that he does not really know where he stands and just wants to do what is right, which is so very, very hard.

The scene where Osmund kills Avrill is interesting and more complex, I think, than you give it credit. It draws parallels to the earlier scene where Ulric killed the woman in the forest as an act of mercy. Is that what Osmund is doing here - sparing her pain? He was horrified earlier. What has changed inside of him since then? The necromancer tricked him into something that he can never take back. Where he had doubts about his purity before, it is lost forever now. The Abbot was right: the outside world changed him. Perhaps that is why he reacts so harshly at the end of the film.

I really love the landscape changes throughout and the influences that a horror director brought to this sort of morally ambiguous journey film. I'm just too tired to write anything about them right now.