Victor Kossakovsky
Germany, Netherlands, Argentina, Chile | 2011 | 104 min
Languages : English, Russian, Spanish
Subtitle : English
The world seen from opposite extremes. A bridge over an unknown stream in Argentina at the antipodes of a great viaduct in the city of Shanghai; a hut in the African bush versus a house besieged by lava in Hawaii. In a waltz comparing and contrasting diametrically opposed points on the Earth’s surface, Victor Kossakovsky composes an (apparently) simple and fascinating elegy.
The world seen from opposite extremes. A bridge over an unknown stream in Argentina rhymes with a great viaduct in the city of Shanghai; a hut in the African bush corresponds to a house besieged by lava in Hawaii… Finding unexpected similarities between such distant places, Victor Kossakovsky takes us on his unusual world tour. If human adventures, their social effects and political consequences have no part in the film, it is because the Russian filmmaker concentrates on aesthetic matters. How to convey the beauty of the world without making it opaque? How to move from the human to the inorganic without changing register? To what extent is cinema still a tool for analysing the world?
In a waltz comparing and contrasting diametrically opposed points on the Earth’s surface, Kossakovsky revisits some great moments in the history of cinema (from Pudovkin to Chaplin) and manages – in the age of Google Earth – to express all the grandeur of our presence in the world.
Carlo Chatrian
Translation BMP Translations