Sentiment

This 2003 kind-of-documentary about the late Czech director Frantisek Vlacil is simply a stunning experience to watch. It is a collection of reenacted interviews, stark shots of the old mans room, and various shots of the woods in his films.
The light contrast is fascinating. The black sillouhettes and the burnt out sunlight give a kind of organic eerieness, an intensity and a deolation. The small figures in the huge background, standing alone. The slow camera movement, a return to the love of the image which is let to speak for itself. One can read the inevitability of destruction, of pointlessness here; indeed, it is there. But there is a certain beauty and even humour, a certain noumenal quality.
The light really is fascinating. How the choice of light on the old man's face at once washes out texture, it covers half his face as black and the other in whites. Yet at times the texture of the various greys is allowed to show.
The conversation itself is at once utterly uninformative, parochial, and also intensely beautiful. In its' very process of inquisition it bursts its own pretension, an obvious feature. The messages, the unconnected senteces are indeed hillarious, but also wonderfully present a non-stylised picture of an actual human being, full of bullshit and fragility but also an epic, Ahab-esque character.
A short, stark, beautiful piece of filmaking.