"There is a music of time, an ebb and flow in our lives and in our relationships with one another, as mystery shows itself and withdraws. It is like the ebb and flow of the tide," John S. Dunne has written about the spiritual rhythms of life. The award-winning British writer and director Ben Hopkins has fashioned what he calls "a magical story in the tradition of the Yiddish fairy tale." It convincingly makes a place for the opposites that clang together in the human community — darkness and light, sorrow and joy, selfishness and generosity, cruelty and compassion.
The setting for this drama is a Polish village in the nineteenth century. Simon Magus (Noah Taylor) is a pariah in the Jewish sector where children make fun of him as he sits in his hovel. Seen as an evil magician, he is blamed for the failing crops and given the odious job of cleaning out the latrines. A lover of ritual, Simon is not allowed to join the rabbis in prayer; he's told to go and sit with the women.
The future of the village rests in the hands of the entrepreneur who can build a railway station and tap into commerce with other towns. Dovid (Stuart Townsend), a young Jewish scholar, makes an appointment to see Squire (Rutger Hauer), the wealthiest man in the area who owns the land by the railroad. He's a sophisticated poet who wants nothing more than a wider audience for his verse. Dovid yearns to bring the rich and the poor together in his ambitious project.
When Maximillan Hase (Sean McGinley), a wealthy Christian merchant, hears that he has competition for the railroad station, he decides to use Simon Magus as a spy. As payment, he feeds him luxurious chicken dinners and has the local minister tutor him in the Christian faith. Of course, along the way, Simon is also given marching orders by the Devil (Ian Holm) who appears in several horrifying manifestations.
The brief Biblical account of Simon Magus depicts him as a Samaritan magician who tries to purchase his way into the circle of the disciples after the death of Judas but is turned away by Peter. In this phantasmagorical tale by Ben Hopkins, Simon is a holy fool who eventually serves as the catalyst to bring all the members of the community together including Leah (Embeth Davidtz), the widow Dovid loves, and Sarah (Amanda Ryan), an educated young woman who develops a crush on Squire based on his poetic sensibilities.
This multileveled drama scores some telling points about the sources of anti-Semitism, the process of scapegoating, and the genuine conflict between tradition and modernism. In one of the most vivid scenes in the film, Simon's first view of a train at night is like a glimpse into hell. It is actually a vision of Jews aboard an Iron Horse carrying them to the death camps many years later. Another scene, that captures the mystery of grace, shows a bartender's glass filled to the brim by God.
The poetic finale of Simon Magus is a lyrical tribute to the mysteriousness of life and death where Jew and Christian, young and old, the good and the wicked, the rich and the poor are drawn together in the wake of a spirit's last walk through the village. These spiritual images of unity are carried into our consciousness by the photography of Nic Knowland. The exquisite music of composer Deborah Mollison carries these images directly into our hearts.