Errementari

"a comic where a happy mother and son can frolic through the forest chasing butterflies and the readers are sweating buckets with each panel"

- top reader comment on page 1105 of Wilde Life (mind spoilers on surrounding pages)

 

 

Errementari's one of those pan-European film productions which manage the unexpected on a low budget by pooling resources, adapting one of Western culture's oldest (if not most popular) folk tales. The low budget certainly shows in its special effects' stiffness, but these are used creatively enough to enhance demonic otherworldliness, as are the Foley slaps and other exaggerrated sound effects. The acting's a bit harder to defend. Even across the unusual Basque language barrier many lines come across as stilted, not helped by an over-reliance on child actors. But, in creating a somewhat alien storybook atmosphere, it can be hard to tell where the incompetence ends and the stylistic brilliance begins.

 

While George R.R. Martin's marketing success adapting Game of Digressions has primed audiences for darker fantasy themes than they accepted twenty or even ten years ago, it's still relatively rare for modern takes on old folklore to capture the nerve-jangling uncertainty of our ancestors' daily lives and imaginations. Whatever the pulpit-pounders might say, humans' general attitude toward the magical creatures they imagine has rarely held these as agents of superlative good or evil, but as inherently dangerous independent actors. Danger is opportunity. Deals may be struck. Trust may be broken. Death lurks behind every pair of eyes beyond the campfire... but may be restrained to lurking if proper precautions are taken. Wilde Life manages it to the point of making its readers tremble at heartwarming family scenes for fear of what may be hiding just outside each frame. Errementari manages a similar effect by instead making you question each character's motivation, gullibility and dedication in every scene. The dangers are obvious... but will they come into play?

While the movie may be based on a moralistic version collected by a priest, the basic story (of a craftsman trapping and tricking a malevolent spirit to escape the costs of a dangerous bargain) is rooted in the neolithic, millennia before some rebellious rabbi got posted between two thieves... and it shows. This is folk Christianity, light on theory and heavy on fear, not a stentorious proclamation of absolute truth but a wary question on your lips about the undiscovered country. It's great-grandma telling you to cross yourself for the priest's accusing eye, but also throw some salt over your shoulder when he's not looking and throw the fairies a few drops of milk just to keep your options open. It speaks of a millennium and subcontinent's worth of societies which understood the church as powerful but unreliable and a whispered rumor worth more than a sermon, where the faith was not neatly inscribed upon gold foil within a tome of ancient "wisdom" but a half-remembered mumble of a poorly translated prayer, desperate sinners tearing scraps from the robes of the holy, a rusted century-old chunk of clever metalwork or your grandfather's stick cross rotted through. The priests offered "salvation" but "saving" yourself was still understood to depend on your own wits and will and if promises were not dependable, prophecies and psalms were even less so.

After all, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.