Sugar on the Bitter Pill

After 97 years, HÄXAN remains a discomforting, even angering film, because it refuses to find any consolation or smugness in its distinction between medieval sadism and the modern treatment of mental illness. Of course a psychiatric hospital is vastly more humane than a trial by the Inquisition, but as the film points out, conditions at a clinic often depend on how much money the patient has; the rich have better options than the poor. The film also makes clear that our supposedly enlightened modernity goes along with a persistence of magical thinking: people today are no less likely than those of the past to believe in supernatural powers for good or evil.

This "doubled" perspective gives the film an unsettling mood. For all of the astonishing imagery in the fantasy segments, HÄXAN takes a clear, sobering look at the everyday techniques and implements of a totalitarian society that murdered human beings for the sin of being human. Sequences of devils cavorting in midnight forests are balanced by close examinations of what a torture device can do to bones and flesh. Impressive shots of witches flying over medieval rooftops are matched by a detailed look at how the Inquisition functioned, and even worse, perpetuated itself, through lies and tricks, good cop and bad cop routines, forced confessions, and an absolute refusal to question its own brutality.

Even if we disregarded the implications of the film, we could appreciate HÄXAN merely for its technical achievement. From double exposures and what might be rear-projected backgrounds, to stop-motion animation, reverse photography, elaborate make-up and costumes for monsters and devils, the film seems to use every visual effect available in its day, all in the service of bringing to life the subjective world of medieval witchcraft. For many viewers, the imagination and detail of these fantasy sequences will become sugar on the bitter pill of HÄXAN's point.