November.
November (2017) is an acclaimed Estonian folk horror film written and directed by Rainer Sarnet, based on Andrus Kivirähk’s best-selling novel Rehepapp ehk November (“Old Barny aka November”). It is a tale of unrequited love and untamed violence populated by possessed machines (kratts), spirits, werewolves, plagues, and the Devil. In general, critical acclaim focused on its stylistic qualities, particularly the peasant scenes in vast landscapes reminiscent of Pieter Bruegel’s paintings, and the alluring black-and-white cinematography by Mart Taniel, which received the Spotlight Award from the American Society of Cinematographers. These combined features create a haunting atmosphere that matches the existential angst permeating the film, not unlike that found in Béla Tarr’s post-1988 cinema.
The film can be easily read through the prisms of religion and politics. Sarnet’s social portrait mixes Estonian paganism, the rooted beliefs of peasants, with Lutheranism, the Christian denomination brought by German aristocrats. Yet Lutheranism is also understood and lived in peculiar ways by the rural population—e.g., the pastor is described as “the hand that feeds”, but also as someone who must be turned “stupid” by dark magic. The narrative takes place in the nineteenth century, when Estonian national identity began to emerge in the region between the Baltic Sea and its easternmost arm, the Gulf of Finland—what is called the Estonian Age of Awakening (Ärkamisaeg). At the time, the land was known as the Governorate of Estonia, a province of the Russian Empire where the peasantry was ruled by the German aristocracy. The film connects the emergence of Estonian identity with the popular rejection of a small foreign elite, the German upper class, which lives in a decadent manor where a large table is successively set for banquets that are never shown while the peasants starve outside. It is not just the small farmers who suffer. Class exploitation extends indoors to the housekeeper, who steals dresses from the baroness to sell them, as well as to other servants at the manor. “Capital is dead labour, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks”, wrote Karl Marx in Capital, Volume 1, chapter 10, section 1. November draws on the tradition of Gothic Marxism exemplified in this passage by employing syncretic religiosity along with supernatural elements to render the dying days of feudalism and the rise of capitalism.
