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Rating: In Massachusetts, in the town of Salem, a group of women is caught dancing at night in a forest and accused of being witches; they are put on trial. They try by all means to shift their accusation onto others by making the judge believe they are driven by the devil.
The Crucible, directed by Nicholas Hytner and released in theaters in 1996, is based on the great work by Arthur Miller. The film starts off tangled, in the complicated attempt to give an appearance of truth to a story intertwined with betrayals, witches, and the devil. Precisely because of the accusations, two other characters are also tried: one is John Proctor (a always formidable Daniel Day Lewis) and the other is his wife Elizabeth (Joan Allen). Both united by mutual love, both still divided by his adultery with the beautiful Abigail (Winona Ryder).
Nicholas Hytner directs an ambiguous film: a complex story in which the director is unsure where to head due to the intertwining of the past romantic affairs of the protagonists, the trial in the town court, and the rumors about witchcraft and the devil. The result is a "period piece" portrayal of a city representing much of America at the time. A country that in 1692 was not yet fully Catholic and rejected the strict impositions of the law on "esoteric" rituals.
The film flows smoothly, despite the heaviness of some passages, and reaches its positive peak in the last twenty minutes. Minutes in which Proctor becomes aware of being cornered, of being betrayed by a God he never loved, of having a name that will weigh on him, that praying is not enough...
"The Crucible" gives the impression of being a "misplaced" and very self-contained work, with topics that are certainly not current. However, the film must be seen from the perspective of over three hundred years ago, when it was difficult to convince a court in the face of crimes "condemned" by the Church.
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