Oliveira went to Carulha, a village in northern Portugal, to film the annual performance of the Passion Play by the village peasants. He begins with a vérité approach-including footage of himself filming and villagers preparing for the performance. The film then switches to an intensely poetic and hypnotic focus on the chanting, wailing amateur performers, and the lust for the violence promised at the event's conclusion. Sweeping, graceful camera movements pace the action. In emphasizing the form of the Christian ritual, this version takes on a strange force which is both religious and erotic, "mixing Western and Eastern modes in a way never shown before" (John Gillett, NFT).