At
times, Theo Angelopoulos’ The Hunters weirdly evokes Luis Bunuel’s Discreet
Charm of the Bourgeoisie, as a central group of characters submits to a
surreal series of events and time shifts, near the end even being lined up and
shot, before the film revives them and resets to an earlier point. If nothing
else, the comparison underlines Angelopoulos’ relative withholding of cinematic
pleasure (although the movie does have its moments of deadpan farce): his mastery
of long, complexly orchestrated takes is second to none, but seldom deployed
here for the sake of conventional pictorial beauty (a few scenes of red-sailed
boats stand out as almost the sole exception) – even the film’s various musical
sequences feel dour and joyless. That’s appropriate though for a film that
grapples with Greece’s post-war history of violence and turbulence, sometimes
conveyed relatively straightforwardly (such as its depiction of the influx of
American Marshall Plan aid and the ensuing economic optimism), at other times barely explained and thus largely impenetrable (at least to an outsider, at least at
first viewing). Angelopoulos intensifies the sense of witnessing and spectatorship
through his austere approach to performance, his characters moving in a kind of
formation, with little sense of spontaneity (at its most extreme making them seem
as little more than programmed zombies, which would however carry its own
statement about the toll on the individual) The notional plot has the titular
hunters finding a dead body in the snow and bringing it back to town for
investigation, the corpse lying in the open through scene after scene as
individuals provide their testimony (typically in the form of a theatrical performance
or other non-naturalistic set-piece), people regularly remarking on how fresh
the blood appears, another recurring reminder of the cost of political and
social instability and the consequent disruptions and traumas.
No comments:
Post a Comment