White Ladies

A young mediaeval woman fights the patriarchy with a little help from some forest witches in 2024's Heresy (Witte Wieven, "White Ladies"). It's unimaginative and it's derivative. Despite only being about an hour long, it's also dull and hard to get through.

A lot of people compared this movie to Robert Eggers' VVitch. As much as I disliked that movie, Eggers at least knew a little bit about the period he was portraying. All the makers of Witte Wieven seemed to know is that men are all evil and women are all pure. It's amazingly consistent. Frieda (Anneke Sluiters) lives in a miserable little hut with her mediaeval husband who berates her for not getting pregnant. So she follows the gloomy old wisdom of the village and pisses into a miserable wooden bowl and buries it to see if grimy, grey little worms show up in it, thus signifying that she's barren. Everyone trudges through the mud in their grey and blue world for another miserable day. Then, in the gloomy, miserable forest, Frieda encounters shapeshifting, giant white forest women with crimped hair. Perhaps because Frieda's hair is also anachronistically luxuriant, they bond.

When the miserable menfolk discover Frieda's gotten miserably pregnant despite the miserable worms in her miserable bowl of piss, they scream about her being the devil. Only the other miserable young woman in the village sticks by Frieda. Everyone's miserable.

So this is not the movie to see if you're curious about history. However, if you're curious about vague, uneducated, contemporary impressions of the Middle Ages, this movie's illuminating.

Heresy is available on Shudder.

Sonnet 2004

Concealing smiles trapped the imp in space
No time was right when clocks were jammed with toast
Remember thoughts when scanning ev'ry face
Or otherwise you'll think each man's a ghost
Connecting miles sapped the plane in air
No rhyme was wrong when socks were jammed with feet
Remember seats assigning ev'ry chair
Or otherwise you'll dream each butt's elite
Condoning styles raised the trade to art
No dime is lost when stocks were bought in bulk
Remember threats when throwing ev'ry dart
Or otherwise you might become the Hulk
No fine excised the ships from out the bay
Forget the thoughts and choose a thing to say