Saturday, February 06, 2010

One month in

It's one month in to this joyous new decade, and this is only the second time I've graced my blog with words. Meaningless words. I'm becoming more and more fascinated by the fusion of sound and image, and less fascinated by classical Hollywood narrative. I need to become independently wealthy.

The Ascent

Borrowed this from Marc, and it blew me away. Incredibly bleak, not only in its narrative, but also the cinematography and the sound-scape. My god, I thought Come and See was the be all and end all of WW2 films but I was wrong. Larisa Shepitko, who made The Ascent, was married to Elem Klimov, who made Come and See, and there are definitely parallels between the two films, but whereas Come and See relies more on affecting the viewer by depicting atrocities and using disturbing imagery to ensure you're horrified by what you came to see, The Ascent relies purely on its cinematic audacity, the bleakness of the landscape and the protrayals by the actors to drive its message home. Blew me away.