In some places, an interesting conflict, the struggle of people for their survival. But otherwise, a primitive production, a drawn-out melodrama with an overabundance of pathos. The film has a very long plot, in which we see how a student, athlete, Komsomol arrives from England. Esther is unique in the seventeenth century. She sails alone across the ocean without her husband to prepare for his arrival in the colony (the Puritans have always been famous for their flexibility of thought). She read her husband’s entire library and apparently memorized it (women had plenty of free time in that era). She has her own opinion on everything, which she throws in the face of everyone in place and out of place, including the men with power. In general, it came to the shores of New England from the pages of feminist treatises of the twentieth century. The failure of the filmmakers in an era of catastrophe. It is impossible without laughter to watch the Puritans seriously express heretical ideas. What’s the joke “I’m a witch”? Seriously. In the seventeenth century. In modern times, this would be tantamount to a man joking about his propensity for zoophilia or coprophagia. In the second half, the movie constantly switches between melodrama and thriller. The last part is the most interesting. It would be very bad without her. Also, the film clearly did not benefit from the massacre of white Indians. That's too much for today, let alone 1995.
Scooped a couple of points for focusing on the fate of a child in the flow of human madness. Without this line, everything would be bad. By the way, in the genre the closest analogue of the “Scarlet Letter” is “Django liberated”. Only on the feminist side. And the Scarlet Letter came out seventeen years earlier. Both films suggest: let’s fantasize that in dark times a hero emerges and, on behalf of the oppressed, challenges the system by defeating it.