“The Divine Order” Divines the Truth

Release Date：Oct/27/2017

Genre：Drama

Director：Petra Biondina Volpe

Cast：Marie Leuenberger、Maximilian Simonischek 、Rachel Braunschweig 、Sibylle Brunner 、Marta Zoffoli  

Viola's Rating：7.8

Every year at the Oscars, Best Foreign Language Film section is full of feature films that discuss important issues, and each country tries their best to be nominated. The Swiss entry for this award this year is “The Divine Order”, which is about feminism, and was released on October 27, 2017.

Based on the historical event of Swiss referendums in 1971, “The Divine Order” depicts how Nora and her friends advocate for women's suffrage and the whole movement. Nora is a young housewife and mother who lives with her husband, their two sons and her father-in-law in a little village. Here, in the Swiss countryside, little or nothing is felt of the huge social changes that the movement of May 1968 has caused. Nora's life has been unaffected as well; she is an elegant, quiet and retiring person and is liked by everyone until she begins to campaign publicly for women's right to vote, a topic that will be put before the male voters on February 7th, 1971.

Nowadays, we see a bunch of feminism campaigns such as “Free the Nipples”, but the history of feminism should be remembered, too. Therefore, Swiss director Petra Biondina Volpe wants to focus on the Swiss referendums in 1971, and in the film, she points out the difference between the development in city and countryside. The main characters need to go to Zurich to attend big parade and classes, and the best part is that they took what they learned back home to start the campaign which later leads to Women’s suffrage.

Something unique is that Nora and her husband, Hans, are living a happy and wonderful life, which helps to create a situation that people at the time would doubt about Nora’s intention of starting the campaign. However, the core value of feminism is about equality, not that as long as there’s no unhappiness, there’s no problem. This antinomy displays the importance of women awareness pretty well.

While describing the process of the campaign, “The Divine Order” has a subtopic at the same time, which is “true happiness”. The protagonist Nora and Hans are happy while others in the story are not. Thus, the flick presents the change, the problem and how they deal with it and find their original lives back.

As a somehow “costume drama”, “The Divine Order” shows the atmosphere and environment during 1970s. How people dress, what the trend is are depicted in the motion picture clearly, and because of the historical newspaper clips and pictures, the movie itself seems like one from the exact time instead of one made in modern days.

Overall, “The Divine Order” is a very positive picture that describes how Swiss women fought for their rights and the truth they believe in. It may not be exciting, but if you’re someone who loves works with an old ambience, this is for you.

Picture Credit: Rottentomatoes