Fake History Hunter

Yes this is yet another annoying film review by history addict who pays much too attention to little details.
This time I’m reviewing ‘Black Death; (Imdb page) from 2010.
Here’s the trailer:

Advance warning, I love Sean Bean, so I’m totally biased and will probably not be very critical if he does anything wrong. I mean, it’s Sean Bean!

Here we go. Ah, always nice to know exactly when the film is taking place.

That’s a lot of light from such a small fire. Film people often are scared of having a bit of darkness in their shots, but come on, did we really need to see that wall or that chap’s feet?

RANDOM TORCHES! NOOO! Why is that bad? Read here: Medieval Myths Bingo.

This I actually like, I mean not the dead guy but the lights and the sticks so they don’t have to touch the dead man:

h look, it’s 8 year old Eddie Redmayne:

Oh no… please lat that just be a man with a very very long nose and not what I think it is…

Nice paved street:

I’m not going to complain about people and streets being dirty because during the Black Death pandemic society sort of collapsed in many places, so I’m ok with people not washing their faces or cleaning streets in the middle of the apocalypse.
Mind you in several cities they responded very differently, the plague arriving resulted in extreme hygiene precautions, sometimes the King himself had to get involved to threaten those in charge to keep streets clean.
They didn’t know how the plague exactly spread but thanks to their believes in the Miasma theory they connected filth & bad smells with disease.

Lots of candles everywhere, great, but it’s a bit odd to have them in a room where you don’t seem to actually need them. Remember, candles were quite expensive back them. If the cameraman dared to have darker scenes, the candles would have made more sense:

SEAN! Finally, the film becomes interesting. Perfect outfit and just the right amount of candles in that shot. Shut up, it’s Sean.

Eddie seems to be as imprest with Sean as I am. Hands off Eddie, Sean is my bird.

Ok hang on, this is not THE 17th century plague mask we know, sure it’s clearly based on it but it’s still quite different. Is there any evidence of such masks being around in 1348? No, it’s still silly, but at least it looks a bit original.

Oh no. They’re burning a witch? In 1348? I’ve seen this scene done better and more convincing by the Monty Python team. They literally shout “burn the witch”, which wasn’t much of a thing back then…;

And of course all the peasants wear drab raggedy rags and are all dirty.
Medieval people loved colours, wore dyed clothing, bathed, washed, etc.
Look, they literally had the make-up debt make his teeth dirty. Even though teeth were relatively clean back then: Medieval Myths Bingo:

Same chap, same scene, different teeth! Yes, I also do continuity errors 😉

A few words on witch burnings: During the middle ages the church officially didn’t believe in witches & burning was for heretics. Proper witch hunting, trials & murdering was more of a post-medieval thing.

Those tree stumps look like they were the result of someone cutting down a tree with a chainsaw, if you use an axe or hand saw they look different I think.

Is he using a rubber shield?

The village looks nice, I especially like the wooden streets, quite handy, keeps everything from getting muddy, wooden medieval streets & pavements are still being dug up by archaeologists!

Lord Percy! Shall he show our heroes some precious Green?! Tim McInnerny is great.

Oh great, another Dutch actor and it’s once more one I don’t like. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. You can see me give her a dirty look in ‘Black Book’, if you pause at the right moment, I was an extra 😉

As always, when Dutch people get involved with films, suddenly people get naked 😉 As a kid growing up in the Netherlands in the 80s, we used to joke you could tell a film was Dutch if it had nudity:

The whole story is based on there being a town untouched by the Black Death.
Which is a bit silly as that wouldn’t have been unheard of, entire regions of Europe were spared, especially isolated places with no trade or ‘tourism’ were fine.

Nice, a big feast in a long house, they dare to go a bit dark and I see oil lights, much more accurate & atmospheric than there being candles or stupid torches;

Twig wall looks a bit sad for the main building where they have feasts but the table looks nice, decent earthenware and a little oil lamp, nice.

Not this again! We can see through the walls to the outside. It’s the wattle without the daub.
Wattle & daub walls were wooden woven twigs covered in mud, manure, straw, etc.
Good isolation!
Forgetting the daub is going to drive you mad when it’s cold and windy, think of the draft! Daubing a wall is cheap, easy, doesn’t take very long, looks nice, isolates & stops draft. Why skip it?!

Nooooo don’t trust the Dutch woman! Fatal mistake! They’re all necromancers!! Before you get angry, I’m allowed to say that. I’m a Dutch woman.

Here’s another extreme in how medieval peasants are sometimes portrayed, nice to see both examples in one film. Here they’re all wearing very light clothes, faded, soft… not very practical… and still no real colours!

They put a lot of effort, time and money into making sure everyone in this production had historically inaccurate teeth.

Oh no, Sean… no… I can’t ignore this… I love you but this… oh no. I won’t say what’s wrong here, out of respect for the man I love but I reckon you can spot the slightly VERY inaccurate little thing in this shot 😉

Sigh. Another witch burning. Oh well, at least some of the onlookers have clothes with a bit of colour.

The end.

What a silly film. 4/10.

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