I watched this movie because I really like the composer of the soundtrack Imants Kalnins. Fortunately someone had uploaded it to Youtube with English subtitles, or I don't think I ever could have found it.
The movie is a bit difficult to review. Everything that happens in the plot could be summed up in a paragraph, but that doesn't seem to be the point of the movie. The movie seems to be about showing what life might have been like in pre-Christian Latvia. People seem to do and say quite a lot of things because those are their traditions, and these aren't explained such as a girl climbing up a ladder to put a small fir tree on the roof of a building, or a guy trampling a broom. If these things were in the background rather than front and center, I think the movie would be more realistic. I'm sure we do and say all sorts of traditional things in our society that would be a bit inexplicable to people in the future, perhaps a handshake might be and example, but when I do them, I don't think about them much, and I wouldn't make long sequences of the movie devote to one after the other.
That's not to say it's totally uninteresting. It's quite strange some of the time, and as simple as the plot is it can be a bit difficult to follow because the characters' true feelings aren't on the surface. Quite often you're left wonder if the characters are playing or truly menacing one another until quite later in the film. That gives you some things to think about while you twiddle your thumbs through seemingly endless folk songs and dialogue that reminds one of church litanies.
Once about two thirds or three quarters of the movie, the traditional stuff lets up and the story is pulled forward. The music improves here (though it repeats a bit much) but it manages to carry you along with the characters and worry about them.
I would say this is in the same genre as Kristin Lavransdatter and Virgin Spring, but quite a bit simpler and without philosophical impact of those films. However if you like that sort of thing perhaps you might enjoy experiencing in Latvia rather than Scandinavia.
