A double-edged 1970s vibe permeates “The Pledge,” a dramatization of a real-life 1818 rural encounter between a stigmatic nun and the devout writer sent to document her beliefs in a book that eventually became the inspiration for Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ.” That footnote may gain the pic fest invites, with smallscreen sales and faith-driven ancillary to follow.
“Reformed libertines are usually boring,” someone observes of philistine-turned-devout-Catholic Clemens Brentano (Misel Maticevic). Poet has been dispatched to westernmost Germany to transcribe ecstatic visions of Christ’s life by Anna Katharina Emmerich, who refers to him as “Pilgrim.” Their encounter proves tempestuous. Stilted delivery style may have been deliberate on the part of helmer Dominik Graf, but the strategy wears thin over time. Tech package is more successfully evocative of 1970s stylistic flourishes, from lenser Michael Wiesweg’s slow zooms to the weird electronic score by Sven Rossenbach and Florian van Volxem, half of experimental band “Victory of the Better Man.” Pic was shot entirely in the North Rhine-Westphalia region. (Berlin fest documentation lists the title as “The Vow,” though “The Pledge” is what appears on the print).
