The first emancipators In the interview I got, the director does not tell anything about the Spanish Inquisition in the XVI-XVII centuries, as if his story has nothing to do with real historical events. But he talks about the image of the witch – how well it combines with the current feminist revolution, that the witch is a symbol of “cultural diversity”, “freedom”, that we are talking about the struggle of the “Enlightened” (yes, with a capital letter!) with obscurantism, etc. It seems that the terms "woman" and "witch" are identical in this film. Only a patriarchal system keeps women within the bounds of decency, and when social regulators weaken (men go to sea), women show their true, that is, witch nature.
Behind the Inquisitor of Rostega and his evil desire to see the witch essence is in fact the director himself, who decided to tell everyone what she really is – a woman. So before the viewer is not so much the history of oppression or emancipation, before the viewer the ideology that is now moving Spain (and is trying to do the same in other countries) in a certain direction - to the destruction of any hierarchical structures of power, one way or another connected with the patriarchal tradition and images united by the director in the chain of God-king-father-husband.
Although we almost do not see Christianity in the film (except for a local priest concerned about abortion and the influence of infidels on the local population), the proposed “witch-inquisitor” bundle attacks the Christian tradition, the Christian ideal of a woman – the complete silence of the Virgin Mary as an alternative to the “Enlightened Weaver” in the film is very revealing. The Inquisitor becomes nothing more than a key to revealing the essence of a witch woman. And, in fact, it is clear why such a type appeared in Catholic Spain of the late Middle Ages - in a country where the "ecstasy of St. Theresa" was taken for something supernatural, inevitably prompting the researcher to turn to the opposite pole of such carnal experiences, putting Teresa and the conditional witch on two scales. So the director is essentially right that the witch hunt has become the cornerstone of modern Spanish society – not because it has sown fear and prejudice, but because the inquisitors were the first emancipators, instilling in women thoughts that they themselves would not have reached their minds.
2 out of 10
Original