Stark, overexposed compositions of the endless treetops against a vacant sky burn black and white, yet the morality unearthed in this story of the strange visitor remains shrouded in grey. This saturating sparseness absolves the family of the clutter and complexity of the quotidian; trudging through the harsh wilderness brings the characters closer to their isolating environment. Even in this life the most essential aspects of our continued existence, survival and sex, remain the cardinal impetus for deep self-reflection. In extreme conditions, where luxury is an unknown and staying alive is a challenge, fringe behaviour becomes frightening and evocative. Alexi’s silent shout is a challenge to reality, simultaneously a beacon of endurance and a protest against his struggle. Wails of despair, frustration and strife fill the dead air more than dialogue. As ghostly figures float inside a cloud they ward off depression and emptiness with strained love and affection. Tender, silent moments are crafted to be just as encroaching as the earlier seizure. With each swing of the axe there sparks a dichotomy of violence and determination, anger and contentment. Chopping wood is a tiring job full of instinctual pleasure. It is a task that must be completed, an accomplishment worthy of adoration. The two men give it their all, acutely aware of its significance, its therapeutic release and crucial purpose. After the work is done they share a drink and smile, laughing under the fresh falling snow. A rewarded exertion of force, as in sex, brings happiness. With so much action shown and so few words spoken I begin to make assumptions regarding the internal state of the characters. This is based partly on projection and partly on a familiarity gleamed from their nuanced facial expressions and unnatural body movements. Grandrieux’s channel transmits in both directions.

I cannot fathom how but I swear that Ruiz always has the sun exactly where he wants it. His lighting is a miracle, whether indoors or outdoors, natural or artificial, day or night, there is definitely something going on that gives it a dreamlike, elegant, surreal, picturesque ambience. Meshes of living colour paint each shot, often changing at will to signal a shift in disposition or figurative landscape. Here the palette is made up of everything from the costumes to the foliage, with plenty of aesthetic tweaking going on over the top, teetering on the edge of being garish. Under all of these stunningly weaved images there are grander notions gestating than just those that the plainly taken narrative divulges at first glance. After submerging itself into the waters of a psychological and philosophical work of art horror, all the pieces rapidly fall into place. Everything from the discomfited first act had its purpose. Cannibalism has been normalised in a new world of pseudo-religion spurred insanity. Now that the unthinkable, weird and inhuman has happened, how can it be dealt with? Confusion flourishes as the mental collapse of each character manifests itself in their physical actions and abrupt change in composure. Stories surrounding the making of this film mention a few interesting occurrences, such as Wim Wenders borrowing the cast and crew to use for himself, Roger Corman producing via telegram, a dangerous dwindling of necessary funds, and Jon Jost filming a documentary at the same time that focused on Ruiz. Still, it was completed unharmed and the ending provides a genuinely potent, juicy and unexpected twist, while managing to squeeze in the strongest dramatic performance of it all as a final treat.

Alonso’s second film, Los muertos, begins in much the same fashion as his first. The twirling camera, the abundance of nature, the bird noises, but this time around it is all darker. The sunlight is blocked and there are bloody bodies on the ground. Everything is out of focus and the atmosphere is one of dread. We move inside and find that this time our protagonist, Vargas, is part of a society. He is in prison, which presents quite a shift from the ‘freedom’ awarded through the expansive forest in La libertad. The contrast is clear, yet the similarities are also plentiful. Both lives are slow and full of routine. Vargas is released and, fittingly, heads towards the jungle, the endless green escape. His family ties are prevalent, with the focus resting on his search for his daughter. This is a much dirtier film, in both feeling and content, although Alonso’s approach remains consistent, with the same medium distance, drifting framing and calm editing. Despite his questionable past, Vargas is far more amiable and outgoing than the lumberjack. He sets off in a canoe and as he rows I feel the built up stress evaporate from my head. Back among the peaceful trees man and nature are free to work on each other in a harmonious exchange. Vargas drifts further down the river as we ease into its tempo. There is an honesty to be felt in the portrayal of his journey. Nature is very evocative, particularly when given such space to breathe and swell. It is the use of the river that takes Los muertos to a higher echelon of meditation than La libertad was able to achieve. As we witness the killing and gutting of a goat, it is emphasized no more than the rowing of the canoe. It is just another part of life, of the world, of this journey. With this I am reminded of the opening scene, of the dread. Animals are shown being killed in each of Alonso’s films, like darkness bubbling to the surface. Los muertos ends abruptly; it is not circular, but rather unsettling.

The rock music that plays during the opening of Alonso’s third film, Fantasma, suggests that he may be going in a different direction with this feature. Gone are the earthly connections of the trees and the river, replaced instead with the cold interior of a building. Still, the aesthetic approach remains true to its predecessors, and thematically it stabs once more at the heart of the wandering man. This modern societal context is now familiar to me. More than ever we are invited to move with the camera, as if just below the frame extend two possessed legs that carry us. There is grave evocation of alienation and detachment in the way Argentino Vargas moves and examines his surroundings, as he passes the time before attending the première of Alonso’s Los muertos, in which he is the star. Humanity appears to become even more segregated and alone the closer it is forced together through built up cities and formalised events. The sounds, which are prominent in all of Alonso’s works, have changed. The ambient hum is now of city life and the birds have been replaced with mechanical chattering. Straight lines define the interior visual space. It has a sterile consistency to it, a callousness that diverges greatly from the sporadic and innocent construction of nature. Now the focus has shifted away from the people themselves and onto the wavering tension between them and their environment. We enter the empty cinema and view Alonso’s previous film. As clever, maybe cheeky, as this is, it does not to me entail any pretension on the part of the director. The valuable exploration lies outside of this meta-injection and inside the people who float about this world as forlorn spirits. As a film lover there is a certain mystical appeal in absorbing a screening second-hand through a lens. It generates a profoundly shared yet jarring experience. Coupled with this is the palpable disconnection between the characters and their surroundings, where even direct interactions are stilted by mute confusion. They do no better talking between themselves than they do operating an elevator.

In a bizarre step, Alonso’s forth and most recent release, Liverpool, begins with two characters utilizing technology efficiently. Each of his films so far has increased the complexity of its world in this direction. Once again the interior framing is built around harsh lines, but the style is now more textured, detailed and considered. The medium distance camera still tracks and tracks, one shot after another. It does not matter which scenario we are placed in, as the act of observation remains unchanged. Being now on a boat separates the handful of men from the bustling city backdrop that rumbled just outside the windows in Fantasma. Here they are surrounded by the ocean and free to move from interior to exterior with ease. It does not feel as closed off as the deep cold stairwells and oversized empty rooms in the cinema complex. Without delay we recognize that the aimlessness of man continues out at sea, because despite the limited room to meander, the space to think is unlimited. The sailor Farrel leaves the ship, almost silently and without personable interaction. He marches alone into the cold winter night. His jungle is made of concrete and covered in snow. For the first time as a director Alonso takes us onto a city street and then into a restaurant. It is nothing special. Even a brief interlude to a strip club does not interrupt the pensive style that he has refined over his previous three films. The wandering man is an intimate personification; his struggle is deeply internal and is explored via the world that he passes through. We travel on the back of a truck, which is a defining, characteristic scene for Alonso. It is a provocative mode of transportation; to be so vigilant of the area yet without control of the destination, having no choice but to go along for the ride. It speaks volumes about the lives of Alonso’s subjects. You can sense the fear in Farrel’s bleak search for meaning, with its various detours and long bouts of inactivity. The deeply rooted connection between man and nature has never been as clear as when put against the majestic snowy landscapes. Still, everything feels so empty, and this is reinforced through the reflection on past and family, two things that Alonso is recurrently interested in. As Farrel walks slowly into the foreboding distance the human soul continues its steady self-destruction. The symbolism of the title, Liverpool, is particularly potent, and tops off a decade’s worth of cinematic searching that has only increased its own belief in hopeless solitude.

Silence trailed by noise; tranquillity followed by movement. This is the rhythm of all living things, with it eventually finding a balance. Editing is of unparalleled importance, bridging together a narrative of loose causality through remote exposition and surreal imagery; the atmosphere is that of a floating dream. One moment we are among the rich at a lavish party, the next our protagonist is stripped of it all, walking haplessly along a dirt road, spouting vulgarities. Passionate, expressionistic passages constructed through layered images capture a fevered detachment from reality and present grand illustrations of desire. Bódy’s camera is often distant, stagnant, but always finding unique angles from which to come at the action, provoking a fantastic curiosity. It is this curiosity which has landed Psyché in trouble so consistently, as she is always inquisitive and willing to involve herself, even in the face of opposition. The sex scenes, of which there are many, often feel whimsical and heavenly, yet dirty at the same time. Captured in these excursions is an exploration into the nature of pleasure and sickness, health and disease. Rodents surround the act of intercourse, symbolising the transmission of illness. Later it becomes kittens, perhaps softening, even resolving this notion. By this point, however, the characters have already gone through so much torture at the hands of human frailty and the brutality of medicine, which is depicted as a gruesome but necessary part of life. The film’s overall aesthetic is one of great versatility, and relies heavily on a distinctive lighting style which casts much of the frame into darkness, highlighting just the subjects of interest. This creates a theatrical sensation, adding to the larger-than-life mythology which sits permanently atop the film. The story is so infused with energy and franticness; it propels itself with such a massive scope, yet remains driven at heart by the personal issues of Psyché, and her many tribulations with her own femininity.

Packed full of philosophical depth and substance, together the characters and the narrative explore a breadth of thematic territory, which is compulsively stimulating and equally confounding. There is a strong link to poetry to be found in the dialogue, structure and imagery. On the surface this is often harsh, even critical. However, on deeper inspection it blends into pure fantasy, becoming an elevation of imagination through lyrical creativity, leaving behind the earth and all its mortal binds. There is an articulate concern with the segregated aspects of love and sexuality, especially for women, and ponderings on how both purity and impurity find their place in art. Psyché is distinctive in that she is able to traverse the rigid social ladder with ease, experiencing all degrees of the spectrum over many decades. Harnessing this is what allows the film to explore so many aspects of civilisation, across countless locations, while always maintaining for the viewer an intimate voyage. As characters discuss the symbolism of man, woman and nature, it becomes apparent that Bódy has been exploring this already, without the need to pontificate openly on the matter. As we near the end of the narrative, Nárcisz transforms into a far more complex character, achieving an almost divine level of enlightenment. His every word is laced with questioning significance. He has finally attained a position of some power, in many ways inversely mirroring Psyche’s journey. He seeks to immortalise himself through art, believing that to be the antidote to his weakness. As all of this transpires there is, lurking in the background, an electronic system of mysterious design. Its purpose is unclear, even frightening; it seems unrelated to the main storyline, but thought provoking nevertheless. Nárcisz és Psyché is a mesmerizing work, full of striking colourations, glimpses into complex psychology, deep commentary on the essence of living, and a dramatic scale filtered down through one wilful young woman who experiences it all. It is such a pity there is not a better transfer available.

The unique framing is immediately apparent, as the majority of shots are composed extremely off balance with regards to what is traditionally expected. Actors find themselves relegated to the edge of frame, often with their bodies cut off completely from the neck down. The rest of the screen can then be filled with an expanse of ceiling, or used to showcase the futuristic architecture, which generates a lot of vital, stark, existential imagery. High contrast photography builds on this, even through costume, by blinding us with white and then drowning us with black. Geometric shapes appear endlessly, lines, circles, squares and curves, many of which form compositions within themselves, separating out characters and crafting a surrealistic take on physical space, where locations are free to transpose and evaporate with a single cut. Eerie music builds atmosphere when necessary, but sterile silence achieves this even more effectively. The past is just a memory that has become a mosaic, defying causality to blend and morph freely. Cold, unnatural acting is able to shed some light on this edifice, as self-aware dialogue comments on the manipulative nature of perception and of cinema itself. Cameras record inside the film and projectors project the falsified footage. Eventually the splintered narrative begins to create a perceptible web, and is from then on able to reference past, unrelated events, objects, words and concepts all by itself. Fetishism plays a subtle but recurring role, with elements of bondage and sadomasochism being brought about through the daughter. This is the inner workings of the mind, with a frightening lack of linearity, yet a captivating ability to fuse new ideas from nothing. After all, this is coming to us through the father, the husband, an electrical engineer remembering his youth. He is the source of the sex and the politics, the muddled structure and the symbolic extravagance. When a character demands to know what time it is, they do not receive a satisfactory answer. The same can be said of all the answers in Heroic Purgatory, for the real thrill is to be found in only knowing the questions.

Charlotte Gainsbourg’s performance as the unnamed woman is harrowing and steeped in gravitas. There is a great deal to be learned from simply watching her movements, which exploit her entire body as a means of unspoken expression, adding a level of depth to her character that could not have been conveyed in any other manner. Willem Dafoe’s character, also unnamed, is up against her at every turn, deluded by his role in their relationship and unable to come to terms with this. The ferocious battle between these two personalities becomes the dynamic and complex heart of the twisted narrative. As is common with von Trier’s work, Antichrist‘s aesthetic is an eclectic mixture of the ethereal, the intimate, and the disorientating. Gorgeous, glowing slow motion sequences of majestic beauty and form are juxtaposed with rough, jarring handheld work that thrives on abrupt zooms and cuts to unexpected angles. The balance between these two disparate styles is delicate but handled well, delivering enormous visual impact when needed and presenting an effective dichotomy with regards to the articulation of depression as an experienced state of mind. While there are a number of moments that would earn Antichrist a place within the horror genre, it is beside the point to digest it as such. The violence, the darkness, the torture, it all comes from within, from a struggle that, as the film so adeptly shows, echoes back to nature itself.

I was lucky enough to view The White Ribbon in its original digital format, which provided the cleanest, sharpest cinematic experience of my life. Every insignificant facial hair, every tear drop, every wrinkle was right there, unmistakably real and visible on each worn and worried face. Wide shots filled with such fine detail and the exquisite use of vertical framing pushing characters and objects to both the top and bottom of frame simultaneously, forcing our eyes to roam about the exhaustive and rich world, creating a stark, meaningful transparency. Comparisons to the work of Béla Tarr seem fitting, not just for the use of black and white, but also the long tracking shots, which move like a silent ghost through the houses and lives of the characters. At times lighting would become so sparse that we would be left with nothing more than a fiery flicker, which would then, upon the arrival of winter, create an extreme contrast with the burning whiteness of the fresh snow. This scrupulously consistent aesthetic is more than just beautiful; it is an accurate, commendable representation of the internal functioning of the film. Still, I feel what will stay with me the longest is the performances of the children. Each one felt professional, authentic and mature, no doubt another testament to the excellent direction of Michael Haneke, who has created a film with absolute intent and potent execution.

Jane Campion has found divine moments inside narrow spaces, often through the use of shallow focus or expressionistic yet naturalistic lighting. This wavering cinematography separates each layer of each frame to such a degree that they can be savoured almost as individual flavours. It is only later that they combine to form a complete image, then able to articulate a full, mature resonance. In these narrow spaces, which exist only for fleeting moments, intimacy is found. This is a heartbreaking intimacy, one that you can never hold onto and only stumble upon by sheer luck, or perhaps by sheer misfortune. Yet I have a feeling  that Campion looks at this tragic romance with an optimistic eye, able to appreciate that happiness, even if only for such a short spell, is worthy of a lifetime of emotion. Ben Whishaw’s performance is, just as I had expected, terrific. He carries himself with enough dignity to command respect and presence as a figure, and enough humour and tenderness to garner my affection for him as a man lost in love. However, Abbie Cornish, who plays Fanny, the central figure of the film, may have outdone him. Her performance is complex, animated and, much like her ever-changing wardrobe, fits the film adroitly. By and large Bright Star is quiet, elusive and collectively personal. It never goes out of its way or loses its modesty, and for that I am thankful. Set and costume design does not get any better, and rarely do films come across so effortless, so inspired and touching, so simultaneously genuine and elegant.

Often the screen is filled with as much black as possible, leaving us with only hands, faces, and distant circles of light floating in empty space. This approach strikes many of the night scenes as nightmarish, where hope finds itself lost in the heavy film grain and fuzzy glowing lights. There are moments where the cinematography and editing come together in a delightful unison, able to spring to life at the drop of a hat. The action scenes are kinetic and alive, swinging each and every way while cutting with reckless passion. Invasión can kick, but it also knows when to calm down. Beautiful wide perspective shots make the most of textured, organic locations, ripe for contemplation and brimming with aesthetic pleasure. Empty streets at night are cinematic paradises, rewarding both thematically and visually.  As the film progresses the structure loosens and a more intimate approach is taken to the characters, who by now have been put through a gauntlet and had their resolution tested. However, I feel the strength of Invasión lies not in the characters but in the overarching narrative cause, the invasion, and the way it projects itself to a level of universal relevancy, insuring the film only grows stronger with age. Credit should also be given to the mise-en-scène, which draws inspiration from all over the place and achieves a wonderful balance in doing so.

I’ve always been a fan of Laura Dern and her performance here is extraordinary. One of the best in her career and all at such a young age; she really stands strongly as a powerful centre for the film. The supporting cast also fit very neatly, especially Treat Williams who plays his symbolic manifestation of a character as smooth and as controlled as humanly possible. He’s disturbingly charming for a predator. Visually the film takes a slow and simple approach and is all the better for it. Not only are we given ample time to soak in each gorgeous and full tableau vivant, but I find it also helps the events and people feel more natural and deliberate, as they are allowed to unfold unrestrained and not under threat of being cut or trimmed. This also grounds the film in reality, adding to the overall feeling of unease and danger. Sexual discovery is certainly the most prominent theme in the film, but it never comes close to being excessive or heavy-handed. Instead it is sprinkled thinly throughout, creating depth and nuance. Connie is not simply thrown in at the deep end to be traumatised, her descent spans over several nights, and each night she chooses to delve further into the unknown, daring herself to overcome inhibitions and seek a hormonal thrill. Her behaviour is destructive in a sense, but at the same time it feels justified, as she is standing up for her own freedom and individuality. There is a complexity revealed through this that few films are able to touch on so accurately. As far as I’m concerned Smooth Talk knows exactly what it is, right down to the last second. The closing scenes left me with plenty to think over and really put the nature of the film itself under scrutiny, which is an admirable conclusion to a film that could have so easily been wrapped up with an overbearing or obvious statement.