----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
I missed the bit where the decision to move to the country was taken. Shame,
because I enjoyed the transition from flat to the city and especially enjoyed
the time in the flat.
I used to teach a seminar on Murnau’s classic Sunrise - A Song of Two Humans,
it won’t leave me alone as I think about this woman’s return to nature.
Somehow, it’s a very city thing to do to move into nature starting with an
outfit design. Brilliantly City.
This woman blows Murnau’s typically patriarchal approach out of the water. It’s
still a love story but for a planet maybe or a cause, the country still wins,
the city once she joins it is dangerous and complex and yes, she starts with an
outfit.
It seems an appropriate foil to a comparison with the patriarchal history of
film that she worries that the filmmaker might feel taken advantage of.
I like the pace, the evident and slow process of filming, the time as she lives
though a cold winter in her flat, and the punchy speeches.
There’s the fabulous scene in Sunrise where during a country tryst, the city
appears in sky surrounded by the mists of the marshy country. I imagine similar
mist around thought bubbles appearing above the head of our protagonist. What
would they contain?
…Maybe it’s appropriate that it’s a film without spoken dialogue which I’m
most reminded of in a discussion around voice.
Maia Conran
www.maiaconran.com
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