Seven years ago, writer/director Brian Helgeland came across the term “Sin Eater” – a person who would take in the sins of a deceased person. The sin eating ritual, Helgeland learned, involved placing salt and bread on the deceased, reciting an incarnation, and then consuming the salt and bread – thereby the sins – into the Sin Eater’s soul.
The concept caught Helgeland’s attention, and he became fascinated with the implications and ramifications of eating sins. “The Sin Eater originated during medieval times when the Catholic Church was extremely powerful,” Helgeland explains. “If you were dying and had been excommunicated and couldn’t receive last rites, they would send for a Sin Eater, whom they believed would absolve the sins of that person. He would take the sins right into his soul.”
Helgeland traveled to Rome to conduct further research – including a meeting with that city’s chief exorcist. While the Sin Eater is not an exorcist – and THE ORDER is not about exorcism – Helgeland found his meeting particularly interesting. “I learned there are exorcists in Rome and in New York,” he says. Another priest was intrigued by the script’s notion that without evil (which the Church is often reluctant to discuss), there’s no reason for the Church to exist. “All the priests liked that part of it,” says Helgeland.
THE ORDER marks a reunion for Helgeland and actors Heath Ledger, Shannyn Sossamon and Mark Addy, who successfully teamed for the rousing medieval adventure “A Knight’s Tale.” “I am often asked why I reteamed with this group,” Helgeland says. “I always reply that it is for the same reason I go home to the same family for the holidays.”
Ledger, Sossamon and Addy rearranged schedules in order to once again join Helgeland on a movie set. Ledger says, “We all feel the same way. We embrace any opportunity to be with Brian, and with each other.”
In THE ORDER, Heath Ledger is Alex, a conflicted priest who cherishes his church’s holy tradition against the onslaught of modernization. Shannyn Sossamon plays Mara, a troubled artist with whom the priest shares a turbulent past. Their consuming relationship generates a passion that rivals Alex’s love for God, and is told against a backdrop of inscrutable mystery.
Mark Addy is cast as Thomas, Alex’s best friend, spiritual colleague in a near-extinct brotherhood, and sleuthing partner in a detective story. Benno Fürmann has the role of Willaim Eden, The Sin Eater, sated with centuries of consuming sins and gaining knowledge of sinners’ evil, and now weary of immortality. Peter Weller creates the role of powerful Cardinal Driscoll, whose convoluted dogma mirrors life’s perpetual dance of good and evil.
A puzzling, horrific death brings these disparate characters together in Rome, where they inhabit a neo-Gothic world tucked away in the 21st century. Alex, Mara and Thomas soon discover that the strange demise may be the work of The Sin Eater. The trio of amateur detectives is quickly caught up in the dark mystery of the immortal being, thought to be long extinct. Their stay in the Eternal City grows increasingly complex, frightening and deadly as they face moral dilemmas and inch closer to illuminating dark truths that should not see light.
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