THUNDER (2023) - Mark Reviews Movies

Thunder, Dekanalog

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 26, 2023

The conflict at the heart of Thunder is between those who can see the beauty of the world and those who take it for granted, in the hope of some unknowable, divine promise beyond it. It would be simple to call this the story of a repressed young woman's sexual awakening, but such a description would also be disingenuous.

The only sex here is the description of it by another character—one whose death prompts her younger sister to question everything she thought she knew about everything and everyone. To be sure, there's the strong suggestion that Elisabeth (Lilith Grasmug), a novitiate at a remote convent who returns to her family's farm to help after the sister's death, is in a sexual relationship with at least one of three young men in the area, but even if that's the case, there's a much stronger relationship for Elisabeth to explore in writer/director Carmen Jaquier's film.

It is, essentially, how Elisabeth sees and experiences the physical world around her. Jaquier has made an inherently sensual film—a word that, again, might wrongly come across as loaded with sexual intent. No, this is more in the realm of the warmth of the sun on a naked body, the way that mountains in the backdrop make our protagonist look almost meaningless against the landscape, and even the pain of allergenic plants being rubbed all over raw skin.

For all of the implications about the nature of the relationship between Elisabeth and those young men, it's telling that Jaquier only portrays something akin to sexual ecstasy when the four cover themselves in irritating leaves and let the rashes break out all of their flesh. It would be easy enough for the filmmaker to show this quartet in a variety of combinations and positions, but in actively refusing to do so, the director tells us that, no matter how much the story and these characters might make us think about sex, it's not nearly as important as something else, something deeper, and something of real natural wonder to be found here.

After all, there are so many things for one person to witness and feel in this world, so many mysteries it has yet to reveal, and so much life to live in the company of others. Why do some treat all of that as something ugly, sinful, and of which to be ashamed?

That's certainly the case with Elisabeth's mother (Sabine Timoteo), who refuses even to speak the name of her eldest, deceased daughter on account of all the rumors about her. The village locals, including the parish priest, describe the dead woman as evil and a spawn of the devil. They almost seem relieved or to revel in the fact that this young woman, who lived her entire life and grew up among them, is dead, no longer a problem, and in hell.

Elisabeth, who has lived in the convent for years, only knows of the sibling as her best friend, who taught her to climb trees to be closer to the divine, named a pair of angels on a religious icon after the two of them, and was closer to Elisabeth than anyone else she has ever known. How can both of those notions of her be true?

Obviously, it's a matter of perspective, which means Elisabeth has a choice: to accept the accounts and opinions of her family and neighbors or to try to understand who her sister really was, what she believed, and why she died the way she did. She chooses the latter, which upsets her mother, makes her a person of suspicion around her younger sisters, and starts some rumors about her in the village—well before she says or does anything that could be considered untoward.

It also brings her closer to a trio of young men. They're Pierrot (Noah Watzlawick), Joseph (Mermoz Melchoir), and Emile (Benjamin Python), and for the most part, they're interchangeable figures here, as well as a collective of confusion and curiosity—if an early scene of the three pleasuring themselves behind a wall is any indication. In terms of characterization, there isn't much. An older brother of one was one of the multiple lovers Elisabeth's sister enjoyed, and another spends as much time away from home as possible, lest he incur the wrath of his father.

This isn't really a film about specific characters, though. The main point is that the three young men are as uncertain and inquisitive about the world and their place in it as Elisabeth is, so they begin exploring it—and each other, by way of kisses and caresses and lying naked together in the forest or the tall grass of the hills. Elisabeth's mother, as well as some other parents and that priest, insist that there's nothing natural or virtuous in such pursuits, with the mother forcing the second youngest sibling to repent to the Virgin Mary when she becomes a woman. Such things are what their religious faith has taught them.

Watching the four, though, among and so attuned to nature, themselves, and each other tells an entirely different story. While it's neither deep nor particularly developed in terms of characters or ideas, there is an abundance of simple beauty in this minimalist tale, notably helped by Marine Atlan's cinematography, which makes this region of Switzerland look like some heavenly vision (except when it's among those other characters, when it looks drab and, during one village celebration, haunted). Thunder gives us a sense of wonder about discovering the world—a vital thing that becomes too easy to forget.

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