European Films

Henker (The Headsman/Shadow of the Sword) from Swiss helmer Simon Aeby is an English language, Austrian-Swiss-German-Luxembourg-Hungarian-British co-production set in 16th century Tyrol and starring a Dane, an Irishman and a Paris-born half-Irish, half-American lass in the main roles: a prime example of Europudding if ever there was one. Unfortunately Henker is also as shaky as said pudding, despite an intriguing premise and an excellent technical package.

 

Martin and Georg are two orphans who forge a lifelong connection despite their different careers: Georg (Peter McDonald, the Irishman) is a rising star in the ecclesiastical world whilst Martin (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, the Dane) has become an army captain. When Martin falls in love with the daughter of the local headsman (Anastasia Griffith, the half-Irish, half American lass) –whose family are treated like outcasts by virtue of his job– Georg cannot dissuade his friend to marry her in secret, become an outcast himself and, eventually, taking over the unthankful job of executing those brought to justice when his father-in-law passes away.  

 

Vladimír Smutný's cinematography, with its effective use of revealing close ups, leads the excellent technical contributions to the film. Martin and Georg’s 16th century Tyrol was meticulously recreated on locations in Austria and Hungary by production designer Christoph Kanter and is a marvel of period grime. Tyrol was also the hotbed of the Anabaptists, a religious order that did not recognise the Catholic Church and who were recklessly pursued by the religious authorities.Initially they seem to offer little more than couleur locale in Aeby's film, but as the plot thickens they come to play a more central role. Their initial marginalisation is but one of the problems of Susanne Freund’s screenplay, which takes its time to set up something that seems akin to an epic a la Lord of the Rings only to realise after 90 minutes that there will be no sequels to this film and that there is littleactual time left to draw all the disparate story elements together.

The title of the film would indicate that the focus would be on Martin as portrayed by Coster-Waldau in a performance that veers back and forth between the rugged manliness of Viggo Mortensen in Lord of the Rings and the charming teenager that Orlando Bloom personified so well in Pirates of the Carribean. But in the light of the film’s obsession with the religious split it would have been more appropriate had it focused more on Georg, who is a man of the church and is faced with some tough decisions. However, when the blood-soaked finale rolls by (featuring – how could it be different? – an execution as its centre piece), the truth is finally revealed about the titular headsman: he sure knows how to put on a good hack job. No wonder, because he stars in one.