The Potter's Field

This is a very complicated plot. You will never guess what is going to happen next.

It starts with a man leaving his wife of 10 years and joining the priesthood. He is obsessed with the question of whether it is God or the Devil drawing him to do this. From our perspective, it is neither. It is himself, but why? Is he gay? Is he sick of his wife? Is he just tired of being a potter, and wants to goof off all day with prayers and chanting? We have no clue.

Some of the loose ends:

Why does young Sulien claim he saw Generys alive when he did not? Why does he lie about how he came into possession of her ring? Why does Sulien confess to the murder?

How did Ruald's (the husband's) cross come to be in the grave?

Perhaps if I watched again, it would make more sense. There are medieval motives like ensuring burial on hallowed ground and protecting the reputation of one's family that have almost no pull for us today.

Why did Generys hide valuables in the wheel as she was dying? Should they not be there already?

The religious people have a short-circuited sense of justice. It there is any clue at all that points to the culprit, they want to hang right away. They love hanging, so can't wait to do it.

Whoever did the makeup for Peter "the hedgepig" should get an Oscar. He was covered in boils. He teeth were hideous. He was so repulsive you could barely look at him. It was as though you could smell him through the screen. It was completely believable.

There is a scene where Sulien gets blood on his hands and tries to wipe it off with leaves. This somehow magnifies the horror.

It is a good job that Brother Jerome is not the resident sleuth. There would be no one left alive in Shrewsbury. All executed due to circumstantial evidence.

The reality probably was that justice was dispensed with the Brother Jerome school of reasoning in those days.

A body of a woman is found in a potter's field. It is thought to be of Generys, whose husband Ruald left her to become a monk in the monastery.

Generys was upset about her husband leaving her and she later found comfort with the local gentry, Lord Blount whose wife is infirm.

Lord Blount later died in battle, his son has also become a priest and all of them along with her husband are suspects.

A change to the usual Cadfael formula with some excessive use of flashbacks to tell the story.

The townsfolk at one point try to lynch Brother Ruald for his wife's murder. They should had got him for leaving such a passionate woman in order to spend more time with Brother Jerome and Prior Robert.

Derek Jacobi makes an excellent Brother Cadfael. I cannot Imagin anyone else playing the part.

So much mystery, so many solutions, and your guest wrong. Yet Brother Cadfael stays with it until all is revealed. In the process, we all must think and learn something about ourselves.

This may not be the book, but the film has depth in its own right. It was directed in 1997 by Mary McMurray, the same person who directed Miss Marple: At Bertram's Hotel in 1987.

The potter Ruald heard the call of God and to the consternation of his wife takes the tonsure. While tilling the field that was left to the abbey some monks find a body. Their first assumption is that it is Ruald's wife.

Normally these Cadfael episodes are rather predictable: rich man does something which upsets a lot of people, then dies, some poor soul is pointed at as being the culprit, then the monk fished some plant from the body which only grows in this specific spot, and therefor proofs it was someone else who did it.

This episode is far from that: a long flashback at the beginning showing a climax, the death only occurs halfway through, no really obnoxious characters offending others, and the victim more or less pointed at the real killer, instead of Cadfael doing that.

Contrary to the comment above, I see no loose ends, just a red herring-sidetrack (confusion over the body's identity):

• Young Sulien claimed he saw Generys alive, simply because he wanted to save Ruald's life - it fits into his soldier-protector character. - He lied about the origins of the ring to offer proof for that lie (alas, thereby attracting suspicion upon himself). - And in the end he certainly confessed in order to protect his father's reputation. - It is clearly shown how the cross ended up in the grave, and even explained why. It wasn't meant to point at its maker, but served as a cross. - The valuables ('savings', they're called in the episode) were hidden at that spot well before the drama, and were there already - only the 'weapon' was added by Generys when dying. Why? Either to point at what had happened (no-one would be able to erase that pointer) or to hide what had happened.

This episode of Cadfael begins with a body being uncovered while someone is plowing a field. The body appears to be that of a woman--dead about a year. But who she is and how she got there is a bit of a mystery.

At this point, the show does a flashback. The couple who lived on this land a year ago had an odd breakup of their marriage. The husband announced that he had received signs from God that he was to abandon the marriage and join the monastery. While this seems highly dubious, nonetheless, the friars accept him and show a pitiful amount of passion for his wife. And, it is now thought that the corpse they discovered was this wronged wife. What's next? Well, see this one for yourself--just understand that it might not be a murder mystery at all but more a mystery about how the body came to be buried there in the first place.

I like this particular show because it's tough to predict what's happened. There is no evil rich person who deserves to die (the typical victim on the show) nor is there a real bad guy in the film (aside from the husband who joined the order). It's nice to see that the shows are not falling into a predictable rut with this one. Well worth seeing.