Some films are better when you know nothing about them before hitting play. November is one of those films. Rainer Sarnet’s Estonian folk-horror drama drops you into a strange, beautiful, almost dreamlike world and takes you on a journey that is poetic, darkly magical, emotionally raw, and impossible to forget.
Based on Andrus Kivirähk’s 2000 novel Rehepapp ehk November (Old Barny aka November), the film takes us to a 19th-century Estonian village where life is harsh, poverty is everywhere, and stealing from your neighbor is hardly considered unusual. Superstition is just as much a part of everyday life, with villagers using magic, strange creatures called Kratts, and even making deals with the Devil to get by. At the center of all this is Liina (Rea Lest), a headstrong young woman hopelessly in love with Hans (Jörgen Liik). The problem is that Hans has fallen for a German baroness (Jette Loona Hermanis), while Liina’s father, Rein (Arvo Kukumägi), wants her to marry a crude farmer she doesn’t love. As Liina and Hans keep chasing a love that seems impossible, the bizarre world around them only gets stranger.
In the film’s opening scene, a weird-looking, three-legged, cranking, bone-and-metal, skull-headed machine approaches a toolshed, shackles a cow, drags her outdoors, and then carries her like a chopper before releasing her at its owner’s property. That’s when I thought I was in for a surreal journey, and I was about to witness something truly remarkable… and the film never let me down.
The world of November is unlike anything I’ve seen before. It’s a harsh, superstitious 19th-century Estonian village where pagan folklore, Christianity, and the brutal business of staying alive all exist side by side. And that’s the strange beauty of it: nobody seems particularly surprised when something supernatural happens. A Kratt walks into the room? Fine. Someone makes a deal with the Devil? That’s just another way to get through the winter. If something can help you survive the winter, you use it. That’s how this world works. It’s weird, funny, unsettling, and somehow completely believable within the film’s rules.
Liina turns into a werewolf and roams the forest at night, while the locals build crude machines called kratts from farm equipment, bones, twigs, animal skulls, and scraps of metal. To activate them, they sign a blood pact with the Devil (who appears in human form), exchanging their own souls for a soul that brings the kratt to life. Of course, the villagers are too wily and frequently deceive the Devil by using blackcurrant sap instead of blood. Once brought to life, the Kratts are put to work stealing all sorts of things, from livestock and goods belonging to other villagers to crops, food, and anything else they can get their hands on. The plague is another strange presence, appearing at different times as a human, a white goat, and a pig, claiming victims. Even here, the villagers resort to trickery to outwit the plague and escape from its grasp.
On All Souls’ Day, the villagers get to spend time with their dead relatives, who appear in white-clad clothing in the woods. They can talk to them, bring them home, feed them, and even have casual conversation as if they were still alive. That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the strange world November creates. The living and the dead exist side by side, and nobody seems particularly bothered by it. The villagers steal, deceive, bargain, and do whatever they can to survive, while the film lets them be who they are without turning the whole thing into a moral lesson. Its bizarre folklore is treated in exactly the same way: this isn’t some fantasy world to them. This is just life. And honestly, that’s when the film really got me. After a while, I became so absorbed in this strange little place and the people who live there that I stopped caring about the plot. I just wanted to watch them live, scheme, screw things up, and see what bizarre thing they would do next.
Of course, once Sarnet spends his time constructing this world, the film focuses on its core plot: Liina and Hans’ one-sided love story. Liina loves Hans, but Hans prefers the German baroness. Liina’s love for Hans is one of the most adorable and genuine expressions of longing I have seen in recent cinema. The quiet intensity in her gaze, the selflessness of her actions, the depth of her unspoken desire all combine to form a truly touching emotional core. But Hans’ love for the baroness never really struck a chord with me. It feels more like an instant crush than something that has grown into real love. But honestly, it didn’t ruin the experience for me because there’s so much else going on. The story keeps pulling you deeper into its strange, haunting world right up until its genuinely heartbreaking finale.
Mart Taniel’s cinematography is a marvel and the film’s highlight. The deliberate use of black and white enhances the film’s dreamlike, timeless quality. Taniel uses a RED Epic camera and Zeiss Ultra Prime lenses to create a high-contrast monochrome palette, ranging from deep, sooty blacks to overexposed, silvery whites. Frozen lakes, snow-covered forests, and those foggy woods look incredible, but the ghost processions are something else entirely. The lighting is so stark and deliberate that some shots could easily be pulled out of the film and hung on a wall. For his bold work and command of visual language, Taniel won the best cinematography award at the Tribeca Film Festival and also the prestigious ASC Spotlight Award.
I adored Rea Lest’s performance as Liina, another one of the film’s highlights. She gives a quiet yet expressive performance, conveying most of Liina’s emotions through her eyes, whether it’s grief, love, or desire, and brings a genuine tenderness and restrained intensity to the character. November is a bizarre little film, but I mean that as a compliment. It’s weird, funny, tragic, melancholic, and strangely beautiful, with images that stuck with me long after the credits rolled.
November (2017) movie links: IMDb, Wikipedia, Letterboxd
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