Des Teufels Bad

Ich wollt einfach weg von der Welt.
I wanted to be gone from the world.

Without having read about the film and what inspired it first, I found it incredibly difficult to locate this story set in rural Austria in terms of its time period. This is in no way criticism of the directing team Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, who did ample research, asked their actors to live in the farm houses during shooting, and recreated costumes and farming vernacular from the period. It’s more of a reflection on rural Austrian life itself, I think: the film is inspired by events from the 18th century, but in terms of how these daily lives unfold, it’s hard to detect how they differ from what they would have looked like 400 years earlier. Viewers are used to tracking historical eras by lavish costumes and technological innovations, but both would not have been available to the rural population that the film is depicting. If anything, that feeling of temporary dislocation adds to the horror of the film: much of it shows the daily toils of the community, fishing and farming to eke out a living, arranged in tableaus that resemble Renaissance paintings of rural life. These chores make up life, and they are demanding enough that they strictly regiment the day, leaving very little space for anything else – and the sense of timelessness increases the feeling that there is no way out, that this is how it always has been and always will be, that there is no escape from the drudgery.

The film is framed by two moments in community life that do break up the daily routine: a wedding and an execution, two events that look eerily similar in how they are celebrated joyfully with music and dancing. Agnes’ (Anja Plaschg aka musician Soap&Skin, who also contributes music to the film) wedding to Wolf (David Scheid) sets off the events of the film. It’s a hopeful affair: she is excited on her big day; she enjoys the playful ritual of the wedding, she is desperate to have a child. As soon as the festivities are over, things go wrong: her husband, who seems to be a stranger to her, takes her to a house in the woods that he has purchased for them without asking her. It’s far from her family, and close to his mother (Maria Hofstätter). The passage from life with her own family to being married begins with the realisation that her husband is not affectionate or loving, but seems to consider her not too dissimilar to the animals on the farm: useful for their purpose, but nothing beyond that. Agnes’ natural inclination is curiosity and fascination with nature – she frequently wanders off the paths, getting lost, investigates, instead of finishing the long list of tasks that she is now required to undertake to make her husband (and god – “The Lord won't like it if you don't cook for your husband.”, as her overbearing and constantly present mother-in-law says) happy. Instead of tenderness and support, she finds hardness and blame, and in her isolation, she only finds solace in prayer.

Religion is as present as the hard work required. Frequently, the workers of the community are confronted with ill omens that they attempt to ward off, or interpret, mixing religion and superstition together. The opening sequence of the film – a woman, despairing, killing her baby, then immediately confessing the killing before being executed – turns into a constant presence in Agnes’ imagination when she stumbles across her exhibited corpse that serves as a reminder to keep people in line, the nature of her crime explained in an illustration for all to study. In addition to disciplining through exhibiting the result of committing a crime, the locals also use parts of the body as good luck charms – Agnes received a finger from her brother, as a wedding present. This dead woman is a haunting presence that Agnes is deeply fascinated by, especially as she begins suffering from depression that the local quacks attempt to solve with bloodletting and sewing horse hair through the back of her neck that she is meant to use like worry beads. Agnes – already regarded by both husband and mother-in-law as an ill-functioning piece of machinery that refuses to do the work it is meant for – further deviates from societal expectations, unable to leave her bed, or take care of herself, much less the animals or her husband (many horrible things happen to animals in this film, as a further reminder of the brutal reality of rural life in the 18th century). An attempt to flee to her family ends in a terrible return to her husband – there is no escape, no hope of change, no way out. She witnesses what happens to those who seek the last desperate resort of escape, a young man who has hanged himself, who is refused a burial by the church, having committed a crime that the priest calls worse than murder, because he could not confess before he died. In her imagination, she sees the man’s body rotting in a field of bones, ungrieved and without reprieve even in death.

The film is based on research into the historical practice of “suicide by proxy”, committed by people aware of the church’s taboo against suicide, who instead commit a crime that will lead to execution. What Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz utterly succeed in is creating a fictional context in which all other pathways out become unthinkable, while the situation itself is so unbearable that the idea of a woman – who we have seen as deeply devout, loving, and yearning for a child of her own – committing suicide by proxy becomes thinkable. In Agnes’ mind, there is no other way out of a world that has become unliveable. The depiction of depression – misunderstood entirely by everyone who surrounds her, and bleakly horrifying in how debilitating is without anyone showing compassion or caring to help – is the true horror of the film, while it is contextualised in an environment that is abundant in everyday violence and a sense of deep superstition that misinterprets reality. Agnes, tortured and with no way out, leads a young boy to a shrine where they pray together, and then stabs him to death. She goes to confess – just like the woman did in the beginning – and is later beheaded, in a ceremony that ends in a joyful celebration not unlike her wedding, as if it didn’t matter what kind of event breaks up the daily toils of rural life – and its depiction is even more effective for how it breaks up a film that is bleak, how it contrasts Agnes’ suffering with the celebratory nature of her death. The community drinks schnapps or beer to celebrate a wedding, and Agnes’ blood to ward off melancholy after the execution, the violence seamlessly integrated into their daily lives.

2024, directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz, starring Anja Plaschg, Maria Hofstätter, David Scheid.