Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Anchoress Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman September 27, 2022

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as a part of All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror.

All the Haunts Be Ours advertises itself as "the most comprehensive collection of its kind", which may initially beg the question as to "kind of what?". But the release also comes with a front cover sobriquet proclaiming it "a compendium of folk horror", which may then beg the next obvious question as to what exactly "folk horror" is. In that regard, this set begins with a fascinating and diverse documentary which has its own subtitle referencing folk horror, Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror, which provides a veritable glut of clips from international films which director (and this entire set's guiding light) Kier-La Janisse has assembled to help define the genre, but perhaps the best answer is to simply echo a certain Supreme Court Justice named Potter Stewart who was trying to decide a case involving supposed pornography, and who famously opined, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it. . ."

While it's completely understandable why Anchoress has often been compared to The Passion of Joan of Arc, probably due to the vagaries of my personal review queue, this absolutely striking and rather provocative examination of religious zealotry reminded me rather strongly at times of Devi, a fascinating Indian film from 1960 by in the inimitable Satyajit Ray. The very fact that Devi is translated as The Goddess provides a tether to Anchoress, because the perhaps just as less known title term in this film refers to a kind of quasi-holy young woman who is walled off from society because of her perceived divinity.

Christine Carpenter (Natalie Morse), a simple country girl much like Joan of Arc in fact (and like Joan culled from actual history), and one whose very given and surnames might hint of a certain Christian sensibility, is seen venerating a statue of the Virgin Mary in some opening scenes that actually reminded me more of Bergman than Dreyer, to cite iconic masters of film. Christine's devotion is so intense that despite the reservations of her parents William (Pete Postlethwaite) and Pauline (Toyah Willcox), Christine is literally walled off from the village so that she can spiritually unite with the Virgin Mary and therefore provide blessings for everyone. It's a patently odd belief system, but it's evidently based in real life history, though it is perhaps understandably little remembered these days.

This is an austere and kind of remote film, one that doesn't have the Hollywood gloss of "girl visionary" outings like The Song of Bernadette, and instead has a stark, almost rustic, quality that frequently reminded me of Bergman, especially his kind of unique combo platter of florid emotionalism with acetic reserve. This is kind of like "your Middle Ages history on drugs", and as such also reminded me of a 1998 oddity by Meredith Monk entitled Book of Days.

Anchoress Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Anchoress is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films with an AVC encoded 720p transfer in 1.70:1. Severin's insert booklet states this was "mastered in HD by the British Film Institute". The absence of any provenance in terms of what kind of element was utilized may be a bit of a warning sign, as should the somewhat unusual resolution of the presentation, though quite a bit of this film's really lustrous black and white cinematography still offers considerable strengths. As can be seen in some of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, presentationally Anchoress can verge on the near hallucinatory at times, and some of these stylistic choices definitely lead to a diminution in detail levels. In more relatively "normal" moments, detail levels are often very good, and in selected close-ups, excellent. Perhaps due to the source element or resolution, or a combination of the two, grain frequently looks pretty mottled to the point that it can take on the appearance of macroblocking. My score is 3.25.

Anchoress Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Anchoress features a nicely expressive DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 track. Despite the ultimately claustrophobic confines Christine finds herself in, the film has a glut of nicely rendered ambient environmental sounds or "manmade" effects like clanging church bells, and those help to establish a nicely vivid soundstage. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout, though rather large swaths of this film can play out without much speaking, and with the soundtrack simply awash in ambient environmental effects. Optional English subtitles are available.

Anchoress Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Lockdown 1329 (HD; 14:04) is a short by Chris Newby.


• A Short Trip to Shere (HD; 2:27) offers a brief travelogue.

Anchoress Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is a really interesting film from any number of angles, and one of those is the way it kind of achieves something like the same intensity of emotion that underlies more florid depictions in Dreyer's telling of the Joan of Arc story, though in manifestly different ways. Visually this film is a real stunner, and some may find the video presentation here lacking, though I still found it more than serviceable. With that caveat noted, Recommended.