The Sin Eater

The other night I watched a film on television called The Sin Eater (known in the US as The Order - not nearly such a good title in my opinion). Two things drew me to it, despite a fairly mediocre rating on the Internet Movie Database: it starred Heath Ledger, whose acting I enjoyed in Brokeback Mountain and I'm Not Here; and it was about Weird Religious Stuff (TM). It also, as it turned out, starred a rather delicious German actor called Benno Furmann as the eponymous Sin Eater, and the lovely Shannyn Sossamon, whom I last saw as a vampire in the late, lamented Moonlight. Good enough recommendations for me!

By a strange piece of synchronicity, earlier that day I had heard a radio talk by Margaret Attwood, part of a series on debt, in which she discussed debt as a religious issue, and specifically whether Jesus was referring to financial debt when he said, 'Forgive us our trespasses' in the Lord's Prayer. Apparently the church she attended as a child rendered this phrase as 'Forgive us our debts', which is interesting, given the Jewish custom of debt forgiveness at New Year (I think that's right - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). She also mentioned the custom of 'sin eating'.

According to Wikipedia (that fount of all knowledge!):

'The term sin-eater refers to a person who, through ritual means, would take on by means of food and drink the sins of a deceased person, thus absolving his or her soul and allowing that person to rest in peace. In the study of folklore sin-eating is considered a form of religious magic. This practice was said to have been practiced in parts of England and Scotland, and allegedly survived until modern times in Wales. Traditionally, it is performed by a beggar, and certain villages maintained their own sin-eaters. They would be brought to the dying person's bedside, where a relative would place a crust of bread on the breast of the dying and pass a bowl of ale to him over the corpse. After praying or reciting the ritual, he would then drink and remove the bread from the breast and eat it, the act of which would remove the sin from the dying person and take it into himself.'

And this is basically what the film is about. Heather Ledger plays Alex Bernier, a young priest who belongs to a secret Roman Catholic order called the Carolingians, whose purpose is to hunt down and get rid of demons and other non-human evil influences. When the head of the order dies in Rome, apparently of suicide, Alex and a colleague, Thomas (played by English actor Mark Addy, whom I last saw in an enjoyably bizarre TV comedy series called Bonkers) go to Rome to investigate, along with a young artist called Mara (Shannyn Sossamon), on whom Alex once performed an exorcism, and who is clearly in love with him.

When Alex discovers strange marks on the body of the dead priest, he believes they are the marks of a sin eater, a renegade who offers absolution, last rites and therefore a path to heaven outside the jurisdiction of the church. And he's not wrong! Through a series of events that I found a little hard to follow, he finds and confronts the sin eater, who has lived since the time of Michelangelo, when he first unwittingly took on the role. After all this time, he is desperate to pass it on - which he had tried to do with the head of the Carolingians, who thwarted him by killing himself before the transfer took place - and tries every trick in the book to persuade/cajole/force Alex to become his successor.

It was a fascinating idea, and if they'd just just left Mara back in America - or out of the film altogether - rather than attempting to use her as a completely unnecessary love interest for Alex, the film would have been considerably better for it. The parts that address the conflict between Alex and 'William Eden' (the current identity of the Sin Eater) are great! They're well acted, and brimming with dramatic energy.

Altogether, not the best film I've ever seen, and a bit choppy and hard to follow in parts, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It was well-acted and atmospheric, and I learned something new about one of the more arcane aspects of religion - never a bad thing in my book!