As we settle into Lent, let me recommend a good film about sin worth watching: Sven Nykvist’s 1991 film The Ox. The film is set in 1867 Sweden. Mid-19^th century Sweden was not like wealthy, 21^st-century Sweden. There is a reason Minnesota and North Dakota have as many Swedes and Norwegians as they do: northern Europe in the mid-19^th century was poor. Crops sometimes failed and work was scarce. This film is set in the middle of a famine.

The Ox looks closely at two people: Helge and Elfrida Roos. Helge is a contract farmer for Svenning Gustavsson, a local land owner who has two oxen. It is just before Christmas and hunger gnaws at Helge. At a certain moment, he sees one of Svenning’s oxen standing in the field, rushes out, and kills it. He butchers the carcass and hides the remains.

Elfrida is at first repulsed but, eventually, also partakes of the forbidden meat. All the farm families then go together to the local Lutheran Christmas service and, afterwards, to the Gustavssons’ for a meager Christmas meal and modest presents. It is during the meal that Svenning notices the missing ox and everybody — including a Helge that goes through the motions — heads out in futile search for it. He seems to have gotten away with his deed and maintains the pretense for some time. The whole thing falls apart, though, when later in the season he decides to head to a local market to make some last money off the animal’s skin. He takes a roundabout route so as not to run into anybody he might know but, along the way, his path crosses his pastor’s. The pastor doesn’t understand what Helge is doing so far off the beaten path and, eventually, Helge confesses by showing him the skin. Good Protestant vicar that he is (which means good state employee), he talks Helge into turning himself in to the county magistrate in the market town. But whereas they both thought Helge might get a fine or even some jail time, the local judge — taking into account the famine — sentences Helge to life imprisonment after being flogged, the latter with many allusions to the scourging (except here the victim is with sin).

Spoiler alert: If you want to keep the remainder of the plot unknown to you, skip the next three paragraphs.

The Vicar is shocked and resolves to do what he can to help Helge, but his petitions for clemency fall on judicial deaf ears because Svenning, the primarily aggrieved party, won’t sign. Long story short, Helge spends several years in jail, in part just trying to survive amidst a population with several far more hardened criminals than him.

But Helge does not bear the consequences of his sin alone. Elfrida and daughter Anna are reduced to penury, forced to scrounge for berries for food (think of that next time you order IKEA lingonberries). Eventually, driven by hunger, she is sexually abused by a railway worker in exchange for some sausages and becomes pregnant. The Vicar, who regularly visits Helge in prison, knows but never tells him.

Svenning eventually relents and Helge is released. He makes his way home to find an unexpected child in the house. Feeling disgraced and humiliated, he’s ready to emigrate to America when the Vicar talks some sense into him. He reminds him that, just as he wanted others to forgive him, so now he could forgive Elfride, not knowing how difficult were her circumstances while he rotted in jail. He also reminds him the boy did not ask to come into the world but now needs a father. The film concludes with Helge returning to his cottage and a moment of reconciliation that opens a new page (and later several children) in the Roos family.

While the readiness of the minister to collaborate with the state authorities was rather Protestant, the film itself offers a lot of general Christian perspective on the psychology and consequences of sin. Like the Old Testament’s golden calf, the juicy Swedish ox beguiles a hungry Helge, reminding us that while man might not live on bread alone, he is a sensory creature whose stomach also makes its voice known. Like Adam and Eve, the Roos family at first tries to hide the deed and themselves from the owner of it all, though it eventually falls apart. There is a point where the initial taste of the stolen meat causes them to throw up, making it clear that the desired fruit can also taste ashen. And sin has its consequences, demands some measure of atonement; what the evil one puts into motion has its effects, both seen and unforeseen, desired and undesirable. Sin and Satan foster an illusion of control while quickly showing the sinner just who is master. And forgiveness does not always come as easily as one hopes, at least from one’s fellow man.

Yes, Catholic theology recognizes that the goods of the world exist for the welfare of all and a certain kind of “Robin Hood liberation theology” might try to justify Helge. The film makes clear that doesn’t work. Yes, Helge and family are hungry. So is everybody else. Svenning and family are also in hard straits. Even if his extra money seems helpful, money can’t buy what isn’t available.

Director Nykvist does not moralize. That doesn’t mean he approves of behaviors. He depicts them. He shows what happens without commenting on it, leaving the viewer to draw the often self-evident conclusions.

A sidenote: One of Nykvist’s great visual achievements in this film is his use of light. The chronology even suggests it. The sin of killing Svenning’s ox takes place just before Christmas, among the shortest days of the year. Helge’s return home occurs at Midsummer (witness the dance he’s in on his way home), among the brightest days of the year in Scandinavia.

Sin itself is rarely the subject of film, certainly not in the usual Christian sense. But The Ox provides a stunning overview of every sin, using one particular sin to illustrate it. Evil, after all, is — as St. Augustine reminds us — not something as much as the lack of something, an absence of something that should be there: good. Nothingness cannot be creative; it can only continue the same corrosive hollowing out in the usual ways. Pride, envy, avarice, anger, gluttony, lust, sloth — all these poke their heads into our wrongdoing, based on our personal proclivities, and all show up to a greater or lesser measure here. A film likely to provide grist for meditation, The Ox is good Lenten viewing. It’s available on Amazon Prime Video or for purchase.

[Further commentary on The Ox can be found here.]