Krzysztof Penderecki, Die Teufel von Loudun (1969)

This is based on a book by Aldous Huxley, The Devils of Loudun. Penderecki revised the score in the years following its first performance, but the only filmed version, this teleplay, is based on the original. So there you are.

It takes place in the seventeenth century, amidst the Spanish Inquisition. There's a womanizing priest, Father Grandier, involved with several parishioners (and man, a priest having sex with consenting adults? Given what we now know about the Catholic Church, that seems extremely benign). Several nuns believe that they're being possessed by demons, and in the course of their exorcisms, they point to Grandier as the agent of the Devil. He's arrested and tortured (rather graphically, at least in this version), but he refuses to confess. Then he's burned at the stake.

Welp. It is what it is, and it annoys me that I can't say that anymore without conjuring images of President Shithead dismissing Covid deaths. The drama does become...sort of gruesomely compelling in the end, but in general, I didn't find this overly gripping. And so my mind wandered, as it does, to thinking about how human history is largely made up of people inflicting the most unspeakably vicious cruelties on one another, and then I felt dispirited. I mean, it's meant to be dispiriting. Obviously. But do I need to be more dispirited at this time? Opinions vary!

The music is...well, it's very clattery and atonal, but more than that, a lot of the time it's barely there: just this kind of humming in the background. Predictably, nothing like arias here. Did I like it? Hmm...not overly so, no! As you might have guessed. But what do I know? What, indeed, do I know? His most famous work, I guess, is his "Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima," and while I can't deny his talent, I can't say I find that especially compelling or listenable either. So: it's definitely just me. Go ahead! Watch this! You will one hundred percent definitely love it! That is my ironclad guarantee.