Dreyer's unique style is at its strangest in Ordet

Carl Th. Dreyer's film Ordet (The Word, 1955) is strange even measured against Dreyer's out strange movies - very few, over the course of many years from the silent era into the 1960s, but each in Dreyer's unique cinematic style: Long closep-ups, many slow panning shots, mannered and extremely slow and deliberate dialog, simple sets and settings, mostly shot in interiors (though the few exterior shots become all the more striking), beautiful lighting so that each shot could be a still or portrait in the style of a Rembrandt or Vermeer, very few "cuts," and an archaic look throughout - little or no technology, for example. Ordet is set on a small family farm in Denmark in 1925 (it's based on a play, about which I know nothing); the farm family, the Borgens, face 3 crises: one son, Johannes, is suffering from a delusion and thinks he is Jesus returned to earth - he wanders slowly in and out of many scenes, muttering some pseudo-Biblical words and staring into the distance, zombie-like; another son, Anders, wants to marry the daughter of the village tailor but both families strongly object because they are not of the same church (one seems conventionally Christian and the other a strange and austere Christian sect - in some ways perhaps they're not all that different, so we're seeing a case of narcissism of small differences; I also wondered whether this was a cryptic way to get at the issue of anti-Semitism and inter-faith marriage); the third son's wife is pregnant: She, Anna, is the only woman in the film w/ a significant role. Her pregnancy and delivery become the dramatic highlight of the film. All viewers will be puzzled by the surprise conclusion, and I for one do not know what to make of it - but will note here that the whole film is about the examination of faith, whether faith is a solace for the hardships of life or an obstruction that keeps people apart and destroys communities remains an open question that Dreyer raises but does not resolve. So much the better - Ordet will, or should, hold the interest of any patient viewer: It's not at all modern, and is closer in style to a silent film than to any other films being made in the 1950s, even Bergman's (obviously influenced by Dreyer, but much more "contemporary" in look and feel, even when set during the Crusades, for example); worth seeing, especially alongside Dreyer's other and strikingly similar works about faith and redemption, such as The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath.