***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** A widescreen black and white 13th century Middle Ages drama that, with a few spoilers here, opens with a wedding A shy young boy offers his gift of flower petals to the bride, but underneath are bats, so his father, in a rage, literally throws his son against a brick wall, promising to offer this child to God if he survives. Later, the boy is seen joining the Order of the Teutonic Knights, befriending one of the brethren there by lying naked in the cold sea together, nearly numb from the cold as the waves continuously roll over their bodies, concluding `One must suffer to find God.' Oddly, they remain friends, but develop differing religious views, which pits one against the other. The boy returns home to his village after his father dies and develops an attraction for his step-mother, which evolves into one of the best sequences in the film. There is a procession of children singing and chanting, a sign of complete innocence, while the boy, now a young man, assumes his father's position and takes hunting dogs out into the countryside where they release a young deer, then let the dogs give chase until they consume the deer. This is juxtaposed against the scenes of the children, while the step-mother enters a private room that resembles a dungeon, removes her garments above the waist and flagellates herself, but the young man catches her in the act. She rejects him, claiming `I am your mother,' but then in the next scene, leads him out into the woods where she proclaims they can be married, and lo and behold, they are lovers, only to be spotted by the other brethren from the Order, who has maintained his religious zealotry, and feels the need to stop humans from behaving like dogs. So of course, the prominent scenes in this film are scenes of humans being mangled by wild, hunting dogs, who were thought of as werewolves, possessors of evil, supernatural powers. The contrast of this kind of paganism and a more ordered, structured religion, both equally intolerant, both causing a great deal of suffering, frames the story, while outside the Order's walls, the ocean is ever present, timeless, and never ceases to cleanse man's sins away.
Review of The Valley of the Bees
