blog

A beautiful film that is ultimately let down by not knowing what it wants to be and by trying to explain itself.

Let me start by saying this film is beautiful. Imagery, sound design and soundtrack are stunning. You may feel like I did that there are maybe a few too many drone shots, but they also all are beautiful. It is a film that definitely is worth seeing on the big screen with a good sound system. And yet …

The film starts with a prologue showing buildings in Ukraine destroyed by war. These are haunting images. Blocks of flates, in what we can tell typical utilitarian Soviet architecture style. Ripped open. Floor over floor, missing. Maybe just a meter or so off the wall still there, seemingly almost untouched. An old TV that looks ready to be switched on agaib. A wardrobe, hard to tell if doors are gone or never were there, but clothes ready to be worn again. Yet the shots are devoid of humans as if the places have been abandoned. But there are also buildings untouched, the destroyed or damaged standing in the middle of others that escaped. Arbitrarily chosen, no purpose apart from causing destruction for the sake of terror. Two churches next to each other, one largely destroyed, again the other untouched. Hit by weapons from a country whose leaders themselves like to demonstrate closeness to their church. Their version of a holy war not hesitating to destroy the places of worship of those once close to them, annihilated by those professing a belief in a God who is worshiped in the places they tear apart.

The theme of destruction is repeatedly revisited going forward, yet we are dealing with a different dimension of destruction here. The creation and destruction of what humanity builds, we refer back to it later when we see buildings being torn down en-mass or crumbling due to the passage of time or as a result of forces of nature. But this is ultimately completely different, wilful human destruction for the sake of destruction itself and nothing else.

We move on to images in slow-motion of the aftermath of a blast in a quarry. The blast itself is not shown, we see stone tumbling down, flowing almost like water, slowed down images and sounds, transforming this ultimately violent event into a beautiful ballet of smaller and larger rocks. This accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack. Only later do we really grasp the violence of what is occurring, see substantial pieces of rock tumbling down, ultimately coming to a halt after exerting their impact on their environment. Only later do we see the scars created in the landscape fully which initially seem like elegant tracks. Only later do we see that a whole mountain has been basically exterminated, hollowed out .

This is interspersed with footage of architect Michele De Lucchi building a circle in his idyllic garden, using stones specially selected from a quarry. As we later find out, that circle is meant to mark a space in which humans are not meant to enter after its completion.

In between crumbling stones, there is also footage of a tree being felled. And concrete being poured. 

A blast in the quarry is shown tearing us from the contemplation of the beauty initially shown in the flowing rocks into the violent act of breaking stone from the landscape, and we see the huge scar created in the mountains. 

For me this all is largely a reflection on impermanence, n a way also showing how in that impermanence there can be beauty. To build something new eventually the old has to pass.

So far this is beautifully shown; shots including the drone footage are stunning, sound desin and soundtrack are exquisitely done.

Where ultimately I have an issue is with the film being classed as a documentary and with its epilogue. For me it is so far an essay, then the epilogue starts asking direct questions and making implicit and maybe explicit value statement by the way of those questions. To be fair, the questions are interesting, valid, important, even though I personally find them partly flawed and do not agree with conclusions.

Kossakovsky asks why we build ugly buildings considering that people have always known how to build beautifully. Why do we build only for 40-50 years when the ancients have built for eternity. De Lucchi states that concrete is a dead material and questions why we, actually including himself, build ‘boring’ buildings with it. This all seems to invoke a nostalgia for something that hardly ever existed. Yes, the ancients built for eternity, but only a small amount. The reason Pompei is so valuable is that it is one of few examples of everyday buildings being left. Yes, some temples remain in more or less preserved form. But it is a questionable assumption that there was a substantially different attitude across all that was created. 

The question of what is beautiful is also fraught. Who is defining what is beautiful, by whose standard, using which measure? How long should what we build, what we create last? Certainly not thousands of years. Trying to just preserve what has been done or is being done for what from a human perspective is eternal ultimately will result in stagnation and exterminate creativity, which always requires something to make space if something new is to emerge.

De Lucchi’s view of concrete is similarly flawed. Yes, it is a controversial material. It can be visually displeasing. But is it not down to what architects use it for? Blaming the material seems to be too easy an excuse. 

Lastly is this a documentary? Likely not. There is nothing wrong with it not being one, but I am wondering if by classing it as such we end up with the director feeling such an epilogue is needed. This as well as the director’s statement for me ultimately take something away from the magic of this film. It suddenly tries to come to conclusions as a film where I wish it would allow the viewer the freedom to reflect on what is shown without feeling almost forced int a specific view.

A beautiful film that could be more by being less.