– Berlinal 2022: Portuguese director Raul Dominguez’s film plays with space and time, which expands and expands to the point of radically subverting the rules
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a form of meditation or litani with an antique flavour, hit the ground [+lire aussi :
bande-annonce
fiche film]Who competes in the forum section 72 BerlinaleIt is the second feature film by a young Portuguese director Raul Dominguez. It is a radical and complex film that manipulates and ultimately upends viewers’ perceptions. Man is accustomed to considering himself the measure of all things, man loses his privileged position before nature, which takes his place, takes responsibility and extends time as it feels proper, and plays with his expectations to the limits of endurance.
Free of dialogue and accompanied only by the sounds of nature – rain, waterway, animal screams and songs – the sounds of tools – such as shovels and shovels – hitting the ground, the mismatched sounds of farm implements interfering with the progress of the latter – hit the ground It forces us to look at these sounds and their accompanying images for the sake of the movie Cause of existence (And much more).
Based on Amy C. Despair And Christian Mararobook Shifting planets: relationship and geoscience in the twenty-first centuryIn Raoul Dominguez’s second film, questions about the privileged position of humans as chiefs and exploiters of nature, she finds herself trapped in the productive frenzy of a globalized world that doesn’t care about her needs. Within the meditation close to hypnosis it offers hit the ground, The people—particularly the farmers whose strong hands bear the marks of hard work, whom the director photographed up close—are just one part of the broader whole. There is also nature, trees, water, animals, flowers, and much more. We are just one piece of a much larger and more complex puzzle where each element is just as important as the other.
The dominant position of human beings as central to a continuum of time and space that belongs only to them, is called into question here by restoring the necessary balance with nature. Although they are not completely thrown off screen (two farmers appear in the film, a man and a woman whose hands are destroyed by work, earth, and sun, and are often filmed at very close range, revealing a particular feature, a neck or a shoulder), humans have to adapt to the rhythm of nature surrounding them, firmly anchoring themselves in this land that supports them (the farmer we see in the movie often works barefoot as if she wants to “feel” the land). “They are sensations felt only by those who have lived in contact with the land for some time,” admitted the director, who uses his film to convey the deep bond that can develop between man and nature when respect is center stage in the production process.
In his observation of almost imperceptible movements—a beetle on a leaf, drops of water on a rose, a robin landing on a bough and flies on a bad horse’s eye, which the director magnifies as if he wanted to capture it—the approach of time seems quite fitting.
The undisputed protagonist of the film, the Portuguese hinterland has ultimately set his own rules, forcing us to free ourselves from the frenzy of everyday life and from our arrogant expectations and needs. Rather than looking to portray the Portuguese countryside as some sort of modern chic or paradise, the director tries to reconnect us at the ancestral pace that was once ours, lulling us into a hypnotic state through close, relentless observation. .
hit the ground Produced by Oublaum Films and Etnograf Films. Terratreme Filmes handles international sales.
