The Reckoning [DVD] [2004]

There are still problems in the film, including a couple of weak performances (the usually reliable Ewan Bremner and a flat and disinterested Matthew McFadyen in particular), and the impressive set still looks more like the Spanish mountains than the Yorkshire Dales, but there's still much to admire in this tale of a priest on the run who falls in with a group of travelling actors only to find a chance for redemption when, while performing a play about a child murder in a village, he discovers that the deaf and dumb healer sentenced to hang for the crime is clearly innocent. Paul Bettany is fine in the lead, although Willem Dafoe inadvisedly succombs to the siren call of attempting a Yorkshire accent and ending up with something very odd indeed (previous victims include Donald Sutherland in 'Revolution'), and you can even spot 'Shaun of the Dead's Simon Pegg in a brief bit as a gaoler. Despite being a little too fond of overhead shots here, Paul McGuigan's an interesting director with talent to burn who has yet to make an entirely successful film, but this is still well worth a look.

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Nicolas (Paul Bettany), a priest who must flee after being caught in the act of adultery, joins a company of players headed by Martin (Willem Dafoe). Martin's father has just died and Nicolas is able to join the troupe because they need somebody to play the bit parts. But when Nicolas is able to give Martin's father a Christian burial (they cannot afford to pay for the rites), a bond is established between the two men. However, the miracle plays they perform are no longer drawing the crowds or the money they need to survive, so Martin proposes they give the people what they might want to see. A dramatization about the murder of a local boy by a witch who has been sentenced to death. The players find out enough about the case to be able to present it to the town, but Martin and Nicolas have suspicions that the woman has been falsely convicted, and when they perform the play it becomes clear the townspeople know more about the crime than anyone is saying. The murder of the boy is but one of several in recent years.

What the players have done is dangerous. Tobias (Brian Cox), the oldest of the players thinks that simply dramatizing something that is not in the Bible oversteps the line. The King's Justice (Matthew MacFadyen) pointedly tells Nicolas to drop the matter and leave town. The truth is out there, but learning it and revealing it could be a death sentence. But for Nicolas it is not just that the girl, Martha (Elvira Mínguez), is innocent and that she has a name. My performing their play Martin has given her hope, and that brings with it an obligation to see the matter through, no matter what the cost to body and soul.

The story told in "The Reckoning" moves along at a nice clip and ultimately the whodunit part of the story overwhelms the lessons of theater history, but the performance of these medieval dramas is quite fascinating (I have seen such a play performed live, "The York Crucifixion," but as theater comes today being able to do so is rare). I also liked that the story is set so far in the past that knowledge about such simple things as what happens to a body when it is hung or after death are vital clues. Nicolas does not know everything, but as a priest he knows more than most people, and seeing a murder mystery in which the clues are so basic at a time when Patricia Cornwell and "CSI: Las Vegas" make forensic investigation cutting edge science was rather refreshing.

Paul McGuigan did this film before he directed "Wicker Park," and he recreates the squalor of peasant life at that period. The final performance of the morality play not only takes place at night by torchlight, but as snow begins to fall. Bettany and Dafoe play well off of each other, representing idealism and practicality that bring out the best in each other, and Mínguez as the mute Martha has a quite effective scene when she is questioned about the murder. However, the casting of this film also gave away a key part of the mystery because the Lord De Guise is played by Vincent Cassel, who played Gilles de Rais in "The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc." The latter was a French aristocrat and national hero who was later convicted of torturing, raping and murdering hundreds of children. Seeing Cassel in the role of De Guise suggested an instant connection to me, and while I know my interpretation is idiosyncratic, it did effect how I enjoyed the film. Regardless, this was a captivating film and it easy to see why the talent was drawn to the script.

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