A mystical lady archaeologist tries to keep a rabid neo-Nazi dame from using an ancient Celtic amulet to open a portal to another dimension.
Plenty of awesome Irish landscapes, fascinating olde castles, all seeped in enticing historical dialogue.
A pleasant movie with a gripping story line that keeps you on the edge of your seat until the very end.
This is the modern day equivalent of the invasion of the British Isles by Christians. They spread Christendom by making Irish holidays Christian feast days (Easter, Christmas, All Saints Day) and by carving sacred obelisks into Celtic Crosses.
The Nazis, fanatical occultists, tried to do the same. Now a ruthless German lady wants, once again, to use the awesome Celtic spiritualism for personal means.
On a grander scale, most ancient religions around at the time of Christ were nature based. The early Christians made nature out to be evil so they could win over pagan converts.
Most Christians still believe nature is evil, and deep spiritual traditions like the Celtic culture are satanic, or worse. How perverted is that, for people to hate the very world that created them?
The premise of the film, at least for me, is fascinating. A revival of an ancient spirituality with a new perspective on God.
Everything about this film reinforces the deep Celtic allure — the characters, the land, the vagabonds who live well and happily off the land (here in America they would live in filth under bridges), the spooky ground fogs, the rocky old castles, the language (ceremonial Gaelic with English subtitles), the indomitable lady archaeologist, and even the evil German lady who often speaks to her muscle bound thugs in German with no English subtitles.
The choice of a German antagonist immediately conjures the notion of Nazi. That’s too facile. I would have preferred the evil lady to be a rich American so that the theme could emphasize the Christian (and American!) obsession with obliterating all forms of spirituality except their own.
The final enactment of The Ritual itself could then be made into a kind of demented Black Mass, contorting a spirituality predating Christianity by a hundred centuries into a bastardized worship of the all powerful, pagan crushing, spiritual thug Jesus Christ.
With all the problems man is causing our environment we’ll never make any progress until we get rid of this vile Christian principle that nature is evil.
In this regard, modern man will be just as reviled as the Nazis by future generations.
