Well, technically, painting with light.
Dazzling photo direction.
From the pitch black of unknown depths, from acherontic biblical nothingness, from black void teemingly multiplied, to bursting coruscating comet tails of solar-eruptive lamplight.
Out of nothingness, Creation - a ship, one side sharp-white streaked with grime, the other side, impenetrable black nothingness.
It's the duality of nature - hard-fought virtue versus vice.
Maloin walks back and forth between absolute freedom from responsibility and aimlessness (ship) to grounded one-track direction (train). The windows are murky, his vision and morality are clouded.
Tarr's tenebristic lighting strokes the screen with radiating, eidetic blackness of nothingness, juxtaposed against blinding comet tails of electric light.
A struggle ensues in the unknown occulted blackness. So black that you can feel the chill of the night air fossilize your bones. The wavelets sound so crispated you can feel their knifey coldness icify your soul.
Maloin descends the watchtower, his body gliding through a shapeless contourless nightline, as hot white halated lights in the distance remain stationary, their blinding halation balefire kept back by the cold, unable to penetrate the pitch black nothingness of night.
The chilly atmosphere sharpens and heightens sounds as Maloin noctivagously walks towards you, the burning lamplight bathing his departing figure in a triangular glow.
Sounds are all distorted to perfection - Maloin is outside of himself looking at his environment, looking in, and from that psychological distance, sounds are distorted. Lips move but you don't hear. Normal sounds like the tapping of a cue ball echo through your eardrums. Normal shouting sounds like caterwauling.
The café is calm, the lighting is normal, Maloin is relaxed in his pitch black jacket. Burnt out bombed out pearly grey buildings. Two parallel rooftops become triangulated, the triangle of the skyline is overcast, whatever is hovering omnipotently above is too opaque to penetrate through the confusion, clearly defined and limited angles collide with boundless expanse of sky; Tarr is a master at telescoping architecture and skyspace and light together as a unified narrative device.
Maloin is bathed in the fiery centrifugal comet light of hope, he walks in multiple triangles and diagonals of light; his wife glides into a solar eruption emanating out of Maloin and through the window into the room; as she disappears into the solar prominence, she extinguishes the light, and in that split-second of her eclipse, thin diamond rings of light flash through the slats, the heat cools, the contours of the room become the ice cold black of premundane primordial nothingness. She is being blamed for extinguishing his dreams.
Dinner. A portrait of an impoverished exhausted family. A portrait of an empty and spent marriage.
Single boat. Black nothingness. The dust of comet tails. Maloin pulling the levers of his mind.
The autothaumaturgist Inspector arrives.
Mr. Brown's demise is Maloin's demise. Her husband: theatre ultra-bright, everything in blackness, box office in shadow, money taken. Maloin: train light ultra-bright, everything in blackness, watchtower in shadow, money taken.
Out of sync dubbing and catacoustics - when we are tormented, confused, asea, sounds are amplified, marginalized, distant. The kicking of the ball and the chopping of the meat and the click click click of cue balls are the nagging agonizing heartbeats of conscious. The squalling of the wife sounds otherworldly, the mouths move but the sounds we hear are distorted because our mental states are destroyed.
The Inspector's face is lit up white. Maloin knows Mr. Brown's life is in his hands.
Maloin sits on bed, bright light from window casting bright rays on floor; Maloin walking, sky pearled bright white; Henriette's job; a swathe of light stretches diagonally; butcher chops.
Interlude, joy.
Maolin buys himself a pipe, and his daughter fur. Pitch black behind register, camera pans to window framing sky mirroring lovely silvers and greys.
Maloin standing in bright light, wife upset over fur. Her anguish is distorted caterwalling. She sits at rest, portrait of peasant poverty.
And Maloin's piaculation begins...
The night is dark; light and spirits will become it well....
Spills blood of the human, by the human his blood will be spilled...
And the Viewer's piaculation begins...(I think he killed him and I wanted him to get away with it and I wished he killed the Inspector [man from London] whom I did not trust at all, so blacken me guilty).
Brilliantly shot and brilliantly paced and brilliantly mixed (sound) and brilliantly acted by Tilda Swinton and Miroslav Krobot.
Bravissimo Bela Tarr, and never stop directing.
10/10
reply
share