It is much better than I thought. It may be the best silent film I have ever watched. The carnival paragraphs of the third and fourth chapters can be taken even 100 years later. The heretical tribunal paragraphs as the highlight is more refined than the same type of Dreyer movies. Compare the first and second chapters. In the medieval people’s imagination of hell, even the dull viewer can come to the conclusion that “the exorcist is the devil himself”. Does the repeated ridicule of pious priests and doctors in the film set the precedent for the Scandinavian self-deprecating spirit of apocalypse? This Scandinavian self-deprecation reached its extreme in the scene of enchanted nun carnival. I don’t think it is necessary to entangle whether this film is also an expressionist movement. Just like their extreme metal, Nordic films are not extremely crazy but never outdated. The Scandinavian mind and abnormality are not farther away than they are. The North Pole is much farther. Letting today’s fans watch "Haxan" is equivalent to letting today’s teenagers listen to Bathory, Celtic Forest, Opeth, Amon Amarth, Madruk, they will be shocked but not fascinated, but if they listen to Shining and Entombed, they will answer The next 20 years will be in the stage of clinical madness.
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