The ending ruined this film (spoilers)
As I was watching this film I just kept thinking, "this really could be a modern masterpiece, but we'll have to see where Reygadas takes it..." During the scene where Esther is crying in the rain, I felt sort of like I was watching a no-hitter in baseball, everything was falling in to place for a perfect film. And then.... well, she wakes from the dead. Now this alone wasn't the problem, but rather it felt so utterly out of place in this film. It felt forced, nonsensical, comical even. I just didn't see it coming at all, nor would I have ever expected it. In "Ordet," which Reygadas definitely pays homage to and on which he structured this resurrection sequence, the resurrection actually makes sense. "Ordet" is a film completely about faith. It's a film based on Kieerkegaard's conception of faith, and this is evident right from the opening scene with a "madman" preaching the bible in the sand dunes. "Ordet" walks the line between reality and surrealism. And so the ending of that movie fits -- it's the natural conclusion of the theme that runs throughout the film. In fact, the viewer finds themselves wishing for it to happen.
In "Stellet Licht" on the other hand, the movie is completely steeped in realism. Never once during the film is there a single scene that hints at any sort of surrealist ending or metaphysical activity. There were some vague and underwhelming allusions to spirituality and religion, but if I was supposed to be viewing this film as a crisis of faith, then there needed to be a few more script revisions. Maybe I just started down the wrong track from the beginning, but to me this film was about relationships, personal choice and consequence, obligation vs. following the heart, etc. The comments between Johan and his father about the devil just seemed to illustrate some of the internal forces that were making this decision so hard for him. I really cannot believe that this was a film about a crisis of faith in the more strict meaning of the phrase.
And then in the end, the Dreyer references are so thick that I found myself struggling to overlay the two films. Was Marriane Jesus incarnate? Did Johan just not have enough pure faith to bring her back to life? For such a simplistically real and beautiful film, I'm depressed that I'm even asking myself these questions.
Unfortunately it just seemed like Reygadas didn't quite know how to end this film, and so he chose to pay homage to his favorite filmmaker as a sort of way to avoid giving the film it's own natural conclusion. And so he "cut and pasted" across two films that really should not have been intertwined. He forced this ending, and I honestly have no idea what he was trying to get across. The best I can come up with is simply, "Esther just needed someone to show her true compassion and love, and this would give her her life back." But if this is it, why make such a message steeped in religious overtones and references? Either the film needed to make faith and religion a stronger theme in the beginning, or make it a lesser theme in the end. The two just don't mix otherwise. Bummer, I really was hoping for something with this film.