By the time the prince comes to witness the test, however, the boy is cowering under the scaffold, his confidence gone. Boriska directs the operation by raising his fists and then bringing them abruptly down, like a conductor.

The monastery grounds become an industrial camp of ropes, cranks, and pulleys. The bell is cast, and an army of townspeople gather to raise it on a scaffold, for a test. When the furnace fires are set, he grins with savage joy, and bends over the molten metal as though to listen. A diffident boy becomes an aesthetic tyrant, rejecting inferior materials and demanding more from the prince’s coffers. At times, though, he exudes a demonic fury. Aware of what might happen if the project fails, Boriska chews his nails, mutters prayers, and sleeps in the casting pit. When Boriska finds the right clay for the bell’s mold, he writhes ecstatically in the mire. Rainstorms create an elemental landscape of earth, water, fog, and mud. Boriska picks a spot for the casting and digs furiously with his hands, pulling up a root from a nearby tree. The work begins outside the walls of a monastery in Suzdal, northeast of Moscow. When he was dying, he passed it on to me.” Reluctantly, the men take Boriska along with them: if they return empty-handed, they will face the prince’s wrath. As the prince’s men turn to leave, Boriska says, “My father knew the secret of copper for bell-casting. When emissaries representing the Grand Prince of Moscow arrive to commission a new bell, they find that only the founder’s son-a gaunt, sullen teen-ager named Boriska-has survived. It is 1423, in Russia, and the Black Death has laid waste to a village where a master bell-founder and his family reside.

Black death movie cast