In case you’re in any doubt as to how you should respond when your hitherto mild-mannered husband announces plans to lead a religious sect — the answer is to run, very fast and very far — the Swedish drama “Raptures” should prove both engrossing and instructive. Even if you aren’t, writer-director Jon Blåhed‘s film remains both those things, though the trajectory of its fictional narrative isn’t altogether surprising. Focused on a principled Christian woman in a remote northern village in 1930s Sweden, losing grip on her marriage and her social standing as her husband becomes an abusive cult guru, Blåhed’s script was inspired by the Korpela movement that spun off from a particularly pietistic branch of Lutheranism in the 1920s, eventually devolving into misogynistic hedonism — facts to which the film adheres with minimal luridness.
Still, “Raptures” indulges enough morbid fascination with its characters’ unhinged behavior to draw a curious arthouse audience, who should also be attracted by the less provocative pleasures of the film’s elegant craftsmanship — with its remote, dazzling Scandi locations captured in sumptuous widescreen images by DP Mimmo Hildén. If the film’s serene handsomeness sometimes seems at odds with the ugly misdeeds and confused spiritual turmoil of its characters, it’s easy to argue that’s by design, reflective of how the stately exterior aesthetics and rituals of many a church can lure in new, insecure congregants. After winning the top prize in Rotterdam’s more populist-inclined Big Screen competition, “Raptures” shouldn’t have trouble finding believers in the distribution realm.
Though the film is classical in technique and construction, it boasts one key linguistic novelty: It is the first feature ever to be written and performed in Meänkieli, a minority Finnic language that currently boasts only 40,000 native speakers, mostly along the valley of the Torne River, where the film is set. (Blåhed himself was born and raised in the region, and the film’s gaze duly never feels touristic.) It’s a critical detail in a story that rests on the insularity and defensiveness of marginal rural communities; dialogue alternates between Meänkieli, Swedish and Finnish, with significant implications about the power balance between characters in each switch. Subtitles are color-coded (in white, blue and yellow, a cute local touch) to denote what is being spoken when, and while some viewers may lose track of these subtleties, it’s not at the expense of narrative coherence.
Straitlaced schoolteacher Rakel (Jessica Grabowsky) is fluent in both Meänkieli and Swedish, a bilingualism that raises suspicion among the earthy, uneducated locals in the small village where she has settled with husband Teodor (Jakob Öhrman) and stepdaughter Elsa (Maria Issakainen). Bluff, handsome and community-minded, Teodor is better-liked — a status that serves him well when Toivo Korpela (Samuli Niittymaki), real-life founder of the aforementioned movement, visits the village to spread his particular gospel, and eventually departs, leaving an eagerly converted parish in need of a leader. Teodor swiftly steps into the breach; Rakel, thrust into a supportive preacher’s-wife role that is increasingly at odds with her job as a local educator, grows skeptical that he’s really motivated by spiritual devotion. By the time he’s openly initiated sexual relations with most of his female acolytes, it’s safe to say her fears are founded.
Dramatically, the buildup to this state of unchecked dominion is more taut than the fallout, largely because Grabowsky’s fine, watchful performance contributes much of the tension as Rakel’s sheer powerlessness begins to dawn on her. The cult itself is dramatized in fairly broad strokes, as the film wrings some comedy from the locals’ performative demonstrations of possessed religious fervor — although, with the focus principally on Rakel, there’s little psychological or theological exploration of quite what drives this modest community toward such extremist behavior. And while there’s a forcefully rugged menace to Öhrman’s performance, Teodor’s inner life is ever more locked behind a glazed, hollow stare.
As a period piece, “Raptures” is vividly immersive regarding its distant time, place and austere way of life — much credit is due to Vilja Katramo and Okku Rahikainen very rustic but anti-cottagecore production design and the stiff silhouettes and bristly textures of costume designer Viktoria Mattila’s Nordic workwear. But there’s a timely chill to its slowly spiraling demonstration of how easily communities can thrill to any man brazen enough to declare himself closer to God than others, and toxic enough to reap the benefits of that trust for himself alone. Be it in religion, politics or simply the household, cult dynamics are never obsolete.
