Destiny

"Destiny" is surely Fritz Lang's most unusual and memorable silent film, standing out from his very different commercial successes with popular themes about crimes and intigues in films such as "Spiders" and "Dr Mabuse" - and of course, his most renowned classic, "Metropolis". But "Destiny" is a world away from these, and in fact, it has a completely other-world atmosphere throughout, from its medieval-style European village setting, unusual and mysterious characters, and the frequent transitions from the real and present world to other dimensions. Described as a gothic fantasy, it is also a profound love story, and tugs at the heart and soul of all viewers because it addresses a universal fate and question: death, and whether our lives are destined to end at a certain time.Along with visually enthralling scenes and haunting images, perhaps the most poignant part of this special film is the young woman's deep love for her fiance, whose life was taken much too soon. Determined to reclaim his life somehow, she firmly believes that "love is stronger than death" and sets about making a deal with the mysterious dark stranger who represents Death who dwells in another dimension, in a dark room full of many burning candles, each one representing a human life. It is his unenviable job to extinguish a candle's flame when God has decided someone's time to die has arrived, but the man called Death has grown tired of this chore and the suffering it causes people. In the course of making this deal with Death and Destiny, the desperate young woman is transported to three separate realities: old-world Persia with the charm of the Arabian Nights; Renaissance Venice and ancient China with all its rich traditions, but each setting contains the same tragic fate of lovers separated too soon by death which she cannot prevent, no matter how hard she tries. Fine attention to detail, costumes and exquisitely designed sets give these three other worlds extra vibrant beauty, and the superb musical score by Rodney Sauer and the Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra heightens the beautiful, poetic and mesmerizing atmosphere of the film.Destiny is far more than a ghost or horror story, or a fantasy with supernatural themes; it is a beautiful work of art, crafted by a master of cinema, whose work continued to excel in later decades in the United States in the Film Noir genre, but reached its creative zenith already in the silent era of Germany in the 1920s.

A young couple, very much in love, stop off at a tavern in a small 19th century German village. A gaunt, grim faced stranger joins them. Just recently the stranger had purchased a 99-year lease on a tract of land adjoining the village's cemetery. The stranger had built an impregnable, `without door or gate', wall about the estate. The stranger, of course, is Death, and within the walls of his `garden' reside the souls of the newly dead and the innumerable candles whose flames melt the tallow of all human life. Death attends the young man he is about to claim. The woman leaves the room for a moment, and when she returns the stranger and her beloved are gone. The woman gives chases, sees the shade of her beloved pass through the impassable wall to Death's garden. An old apothecary finds the distraught woman and shelters her in his pharmacy. The woman drinks a potion from an ancient bottle and is again in front of the walled garden - although now there is a door opening to a steep staircase. The woman enters and meets Death of the staircases. I want to go where my beloved is, the woman tells him. Death strikes a bargain - if the woman can save the life of just one of three whose candle has grown short, he will return her fiancé to her. I liked Fritz Lang's DESTINY (Der Müde Tod) a lot. Death's bargain plunges the movie into three episodes, as the actors playing the loving couple and Death reenact endangered love stories in Arab, Italian and Chinese settings. Lang employs primitive, and effective, tricks - camera angles, double exposures, etc. - to show the dead filing past the living, to make carpets fly and to transform pagoda into elephants. Underpinning it all is the fascinating struggle between Death and Love. It's Lang's meditation on this struggle that I enjoyed the most. After that poignant scene on the staircase I was hooked on the woman's quest for reunion. The musical underscore is appropriate, tasteful and unobtrusive. The print is in good condition, watchable with flares and scratches. Although this disk is a little pricey, it contains no extras of any kind.

The story is interesting - a bargain with Death, to restore the loved one take from her. She is assigned three tasks ...Well, I won't spoil it for you. This silent film captures a lot of its era, not always for the better. Dramatic faces and makeup carry a lot, and the optical effects were state of the art almost until Harryhausen's day. The story's end leaves a thoughtful ambiguity, too: who actually won, Love or Death?On the less favorite side, one of the three tasks takes place in some anonymously Arabian country, and another in China. I understand the need to invoke immediately-understood icons to orient the audience, especially in a silent film, but that can easily degenerate into stereotype and caricature. But, in fairness, one era's popular culture is another era's culturally offensive slur, as seems to be the case here. Looked at that way, it captures, like a bug in amber, xenophobic attitudes that we are well rid of.Enjoyable in itself, if you can accept the antiquated idiom, it's also a fascinating look at the popular culture of that time and place.-- wiredweird

Very happy with the Blu-ray wonderful quick service