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Opens with one of those classic Straub-Huillet panning shots, by now a clear indication that something is to be conjured from and confronted with in the empty landscape, a preview for what the words and actors will make explicit. And they bring a similar shot back at the very end, turning bookend into reminder, telling us that it is impossible to think of these desolate hills as separate from people, separate from history.
Everything in between unfolds as a double progression, both of the drama at hand and the cinematic methods used to articulate it. The camera pans between different groups of actors, before deciding to simply cut between the two. There are sometimes wides and sometimes close-ups, the framing either center or off-center. The actors may decide to take the script out from behind their back, reading their lines with their heads down, or to rely upon memory and proclaim every syllable into the sky. Who knows if their recollection failed them or if Straub-Huillet directed them to look at the script anyway. Once in a while, they throw a real formal shock, an abrupt cutting of a line, an extended pause, a dramatic shift in angle, a sound bridge, a character walking offscreen instead of staying statuesque. And, of course, there's a sudden change in exposure, the sun making its unavoidable presence all the more noticeable.
With every Straub-Huillet film I gain a better understanding of what it means to view cinema as an art of concrete signs, resistant to formulas and "grammars." Every shot is a tombstone constructed with life, a perfect synthesis of the past and its recreation on present ground.
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