Movie Review
By Ángel Jesús Hurtado Palencia
The land without pain
Cesare Bedogne is the Italian filmmaker responsible for this beautiful work. Without knowing the person, but knowing his work, I can affirm that he is an artist who writes poetry through the lens. The film is sustained throughout by the power of the audiovisual composition. A highly sensitive and immersive work. A soothing experience that reminds you of a father's embrace and a mother's caresses.
The first part is cyclical, we begin with the beautiful passivity of auteur cinema, more common in the artist than in the experimental filmmaker, always with a constant wild harmony, without any narrative north, only to immerse us into his universe. Typical of a passionate filmmaker who knows his possibilities, who can even generate a relationship with failure, such a relationship puts you at an advantage. In the case of Cesare, he relates perfectly with his resources, achieving an impeccable technical execution, absent of any human voice. The film overcomes the audience's prejudice, thanks to a good mix of elements. The film starts and we are immediately inside the situation. From minute 8, we are presented with the first visual conflict, when fire timidly interrupts the dominant presence of water, this provides new glimpses into the universe, being the opening for a moment to color. Continue the experience until we reach the filmmaker's conversation with the audience, but more importantly, the conversation with himself. We see the acrobat; we see beautiful compositions and we walk hand in hand with the director until the peaceful ending.
Here there is no anguish, the viewer will bathe his thoughts on the shore of Cesare's beach. Like the acrobat who seeks balance on the rope, here those involved by the hand of its director constantly try to preserve the visual balance, just like a maritime harmony spiced with a pinch of longing. Drowning in its virtues can help hide its shortcomings, but the beauty of art is its imperfection. The cinematography is dreamy, undoubtedly one of the film's high points. A technically free and at the same time professional audiovisual achievement. The sound complies and clumsily imposes itself, but without losing any beauty it achieves its goal. We are in an enveloping universe, with a result that pleases your senses. Harmony cannot always be achieved, but here the most important thing is immersion, it is a place of great beauty that needs no narrative. The force of the sea does not impose itself, instead, the tranquility of the beach is what predominates. This film will not erase anything negative from your existence, much less deepen its symbolism between images. The last step of an acrobat is something much purer, it is a look at the shore of Cesare's beach.
A beautiful European beach photograph that could easily be mistaken for the Garden of Eden. The artists behind this work claim that the film was a situation that arose during a casual day. Many experimental works arise from casual days, nights, and afternoons. Some shootings do not pursue a clear objective, aimless shootings, but they survive thanks to the courage of their author. Shootings with universal rules, born from the imagination. Sometimes with bad results, and sometimes with positive results. The film is not an overwhelming experience, it does not present an accelerated pace. The whole experience is a poetry of old souls, quietly slow and beautiful as it can be. This is a film that will not make you think, this film will help you rest and put your instincts in order.
AT LAND 1944 – MAYA DEREN
A dolphin in a state of decomposition on infinite grains of sand, an image that reflects the profound forgotten beauty of the lifeless body. Every image on the beach reminds me of the work of the mother of underground cinema, the spirit of Maya Deren constantly haunts the film's existence. I must refer to 'At Land' from 1944, a masterpiece that connects that iconic image of Maya Deren lying on the shore of the beach, with the naked bodies of Cesare's work. The waves lap at the body of a mythical woman, in contrast, with the pure sand that holds Cesare's naked maidens. A conversation between the current antipathy of experimental cinema and the frustrating inner quest of mid-twentieth-century amateur filmmakers. The gazes of both artists, the Ukrainian and the Italian, collide in a flirtatious way. So pleasurable is the photography that your gaze forgives any moment of apathy. That casual day, as Cesare and his team remember it, turned into something more, and they dared to converse with the imagination. I don't know if Maya was Cesare's reference, but what I can say for sure is that she was present in the film, her experimental genetics are impregnated like a cloying perfume, in addition to her beauty. A hypnotizing look, where an acrobat overflows melancholy, at times of film noir, and others of shy surrealism. Evoking even that strange but beautiful sensation unleashed by the work of the master Andrei Tarkovsky.
But let's be honest, Deren's and Tarkovsky's narrative abilities inhabit the dimension of genius. Cesare's cinema honorably fulfills its purpose, suspending its acrobat until it crosses the tightrope of free will completely. The constant competition between light and darkness is no coincidence, in the scenario, the characters and their creators propose a discourse of spiritual transcendence. We are in audiovisual poetry. Cesare Bedogne's conversation with the lens focuses on the image, on the symbols, on the amateur nobility, and, above all, on the artist's search.
TWIN PEAKS 1X1 1990 – DAVID LYNCH
A Lynchian dream fanned by the tide of an Italian filmmaker. Before concluding, I refer my thoughts to the first episode of season 1 of 'Twin Peaks', a series created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, which premiered in 1990. I perfectly remember Laura Palmer's corpse wrapped in plastic, her skin pale as the moon, on the shore of the lake. The naked bodies presented by Cesare on the sand are poetry, something so romantic and at the same time delicately terrifying, simply Lynchian chemistry. This film helps the artist and allows his imagination to expand. A simple experience, but refreshing as a glass of water, anticlimactic as life itself, but with a reflective dynamic. A balanced film, where its strength is also its weakness, is a necessary work in the face of the daily insistence of stress. Shadows full of salt water generate calm. The memory of Laura Palmer is constant, the female body, naked and inert reminds me of the vision of the young dead woman wrapped in plastic, but with a big difference, in the last step of an acrobat, hope seems to be the answer, and for that I thank the filmmakers.
Thank you for making movies from the heart.
