A not-nearly-close reading of Aristotelis Maragkos’s Beachcomber (2025).
One shot whenever.
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0088
When you’re hitting the ground with a shovel, there’s always a good chance you’re digging your own grave. This new entry, a burrowing man, just minds his own business, but the camera that frames him bounces up and down, following the natural pace of unearthing. What catches his attention is another element, far from the home of worms and other blind creatures.
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0087
If intertextuality is a contagious disease, free associations are its symptoms. No motorbike shot will ever be the same after Close-Up, but at least here we’re also struggling with truth and untruth, not to mention male redemption. The back rider swaps hands to keep his eyes closed, which means he must have seen something in this transition. Elias’s grin trades self-assurance for the joy of anticipation.
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0086
The dynamics between the two keep shifting, and so does their mental age: the older one lets the younger dress him as if he were a little boy; the younger one handles facial hair like reins, touching the older man’s beard with erotic curiosity. As they test each other’s boundaries, the only way out is through (the lens). We’re back to playing, and this game is one of volitional blindness.
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0085
Dirty working clothes, ropes and nooses, a textured or broken glass pane, something that resembles a new fire extinguisher behind it, a piece of blue sky: elements that frame this medium close-up with hard facts that match failed expectations. The camera is still nauseating, while Elias enters the frame from the right, uninvited, interrupting the other man’s action like a player stealing a ball. (All these boys’ games!). He turns his back to us, which is common by now. He’s casting his shadow on purpose, hoping to be told to step out of someone’s sun.
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0084
A trip is a trip is a trip: the camera underlines that some people stumble but never fall, which means that in the end they will never be given the chance to stand up. Diverting as this brief choreography is, it makes us feel far-sighted. The two men keep shifting positions, our new entry always blurry in and out, our old friend (by now), facing the camera straight on, probably for the first time. Maybe he wants his heart to align with ours, or maybe he’s just avoiding the sun. Either way, there’s real truth in it.
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0083
In each new two-shot, an element is added to the setting and this exchange, telling more than these two men would ever dare say. In the foreground, the two are sorting out their options, but the equilibrium has changed: Elias looks tiny, blinded by the sun, and sitting in the air, while his friend reveals the full mass of his body while trying to peel off his skin with a messy towel. In the background, an empty chair echoing Elias's posture and an austere table suggest we should be prepared to wait forever. When the dead end is close, only a trip can bring resolution (better experienced in a loop).
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0082
This is the salt of the earth, the face of the wretched of the earth. How long is he sweeping his face for? Probably he’s mimicking something acheiropoieton, a portrait not drawn by human hands. An identified object flows in the back: a transcendental cue.
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0081
The one obsessively washes his face, the other virtually his hands — both gestures of keeping appearances and dismissing responsibility. What is a wreck with an engine? Similar to the hut without a door in the back, either a devouring mouth or a portal to another life.
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0080
Blocking suggests Elias has the upper hand in this conversation, seemingly stirring up some movement with his gaze like an illusionist. The diagonal in the backdrop might underline the eye match — or perhaps prepares the hero’s downfall? This loop concludes with a foretaste.
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0079
This is a faux Dutch tilt introducing us to this neo-biblical figure. An in-yer-face prop throw seems to work as a cue not only for recognition, but also for amusement. Too many questions about the dialogue: Why does Elias call this guy a cougar? And why is it translated into hyena? How does a metaphor for a promiscuous middle-aged woman turn into a metonymy for death and abandonment? It's a sunny day, so we can’t overthink it. We'd rather get lost in the deep waters of this shallow depth of field.
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0078
A man is being self-baptised, but we don’t get to know his name. Elias enters the scene to loot the piece of cloth the man will use to sweep his face (is it the Veil of Veronica on his way to Calvary?). Two headless men are supposed to come face-to-face, but their decapitation speaks volumes. What a heads-up!
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0077
Film viewing is a voyeuristic habit: we already knew that, but shots like this one tend to remind us just in case – not quite a masked frame, but this time we feel comfortable peeping behind something that feels like giant perforations. The man who in the previous shot looked like Dennis Hopper on a good day now looks again like a kid who just learned how to balance on a bike and forgets to lock it. We find pleasure in sneaking his regression; but mostly, we're satisfied we know his secret.
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0076
Easy riders are never easy — Elias is no exception to the rule. He's equally attentive to who's watching and to the road itself, casually looking left and right for witnesses to his success story. It could have been comic relief, but the ambience feels fake — like a car scene shot before rear-projection tricks existed, when crews moved things around by hand. The meadow in the back will soon be consumed by the illusion of a vortex. The moment our gaze travels into the background, we're hypnotized.
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0075
Evidently, a cue for intermission or an escape rehearsal. Trapped in a film strip, our hero climbs the frame lines as if they were a ladder, flees from one frame to the previous one, and tries to break out of the image area. No perforations and no soundtrack, so this should be silent. Elias must be yelling – in a vacuum. If only this film were shot on analog!
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0074
The axis is there to be broken – just like any other rule. Elias is back in his boy suit; he tries to climb up a slide, while his (body) double rolls down the hill recalling Mouchette, which makes us wonder about his fate. The camera takes its distance again. Here we are, as if seated on a bench in a kindergarten, constantly keeping an eye on a kid, under the illusion that our gaze can prevent the inevitable accident.
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0073
Shifting, indecisive camera angles match this hand-to-hand combat. The hands tell their own story again: all they're looking for is somewhere to hold on to, but on the way, they tremble, they feel around, they pull closer and closer while keeping the other body at a safe distance so they can gaze at it from above, they turn to themselves. A constant negotiation of power. No one asked for it. It just happened. Every time we swear we did something on our own, we’re expecting an attack. But serendipity is on our side. Luck is the word we use when we feel grateful.
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0072
Someone's laughing his head off in this close-up, so hard it feels decapitating. Tickling torture is still torture, so there’s pain in every second. Cracking up has at least two senses, and this shot contains them both. In this space, no one can hear you laugh.
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0071
Human spinning seems so small when the big wheel keeps on turning, but some small cogs can disrupt the universe (and the camera) when it tries to settle down. This piece of land doesn't look like a peninsula, but like a piece of land that has levelled down – as if a piece of sea surface has peeled away from the planet. In cinema, each frame is a Rorschach test anyway, allowing the viewer to test their mood and emotional patterns, but only if they are open to questioning their assumptions.
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0070
If only this were an Olympic sport: a kind of wrestling where the combat style necessarily resembles dancing, and the rivals are supposed to change their grips instantly. The purpose of this whirl is to switch the background, from nature to dream vessels — that's what these bodies collide for, and that's what they're set against. Like a shadow dervish dance, this 70th shot can’t help but be seen in a loop, like an ever-spinning reel.
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0069
Like lions fighting with quick strikes and dirty grips — these big cats do that to mark their territory, to rule the pride, or to mate. Men do that for different reasons, but more often than not they're just in it for the kick of it. One feline roars by laughing, the other doesn't (is this closer to One Sings, the Other Doesn’t or Lions Love?). The gunwale in the foreground invites us to stand on the deck and enjoy the spectacle. Male antagonism never disappoints when it comes to inexpensive thrills.
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0068
Bewilderment-turned-to-amusement, turned-to-curiosity, turned-to-awe, turned-to-piety, turned-to-excitement, turned-to-wrath, Fitzcarraldo turned-to-Aguirre – all this in a 14-second loop. This roller coaster of feelings, doomed to last forever, is familiar to anyone who feeds and caresses their desires, but, well, no one's hopped on such a rusty carriage.
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0067
Cutting on action into what seems to be the longest shot till now, a two-shot. His friend (or his double) was by his side all along — why was Elias looking up just before? All this time, he was addressing this massive body that can't speak back, the one no one knows is there. The two men touch each other, most probably to regain their grip on reality; they don't care about one another anyway. This is the longest shot, and a long shot, doing its best to keep the hero's temper at a distance — not out of discretion, but out of sympathy.
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0066
Circling its prey like a shark, Elias still looks vulnerable. A Stalker-like shard disrupts his trajectory. Soviet masters favored high-angle shots to add humility to the characters – they belong to the muddy ground, together with reptiles and other creatures with three-chambered hearts and cold blood. On this silver globe, the earth is not dried up: it always starves for water.
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0065
Constant turbulence on steady ground: this is what getting closer to something appealing looks like, and it feels like a moon landing. Elias is caught in the hows but somehow finds the balance — the trick is to keep moving. At last there’s an effort to get on board, even on that of a ruined boat. If prophet Elijah needed to set fire on a chariot to elevate to heaven, his fellow with the same name needs a different kind of vessel to see the future.
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0064
At last we learn his name: Elias is the Greek version of Elijah, the prophet with the fiery departure – a name that echoes the Greek word for sun. What a strange choice for a man who looks dark as pitch and is bound to the sea (light and darkness, water and fire, contradictory elements). For now he’s jaw-dropped and goggle-eyed, so let's hope he'll soon be open-minded and open-hearted too. In the blink of an eyelid, he starts moving; that's the starter pistol firing, and the race picks up right where it left off.
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0063
Sharp when crouched, fuzzy when stretched, our hero loses in clarity when he decides to stand tall. The landscape – half ruined, half eternal – gifts him his reflection that rises above the horizon. Offshoots of Christian mythology are back uninvited: Prophet Elijah was taken into heaven while waiting on a hill. The mirroring is explicit: call me by your name.
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0062
Pretending you are out of breath when what you are really lacking is a sense of direction – sounds like a strategy, just like addressing a second person singular. The camera uses this purposeful but disoriented body as a springboard to rocket from the earth to the sky and keep swinging. Our hero becomes a cowboy again, with his head against the horizon. He seems at home in this negative space. This is the finish line, but not the end of the race. Another paradox.
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0061
Our hero plays Achilles and the tortoise with the camera – guess who has the head start. In this paradox of a movement, the camera feels static even though it's moving, allowing its rival to accelerate and cross the finish line. Does he laugh or does he cry? His face could perform either. What a paradox.
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0060
The camera took its distance – proof that our hero is winning the chase. He runs confidently through this Zone, perhaps possessed by a cinema myth saying that at the heart of this land lies a Room that fulfills the visitor's wishes. Tarkovsky’s Stalker had to be green, first by accident, as Soviet film labs didn't know how to process high-end Kodak stock, then by choice, as green is the color of all things rotten and poisonous. This race isn’t about nature, it seems, but about danger. It’s about desire and fear: second nature.
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0059
What starts as a POV of our hero (or of his soul, anchored to the ground even when ready to fly) derails off track, into an earthy landscape that wants to look like the sea. Grass might always be greener on the other side, but on this side we remain color blind.
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0058
Always a race against time, even when driven by joy. It’s futile to battle a camera — this one in particular is traveling and having fun, leaving our cowboy behind, half off-frame, always waiting for him. Plants in the background are left behind, silent friends and humble witnesses of a moment unbound.
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0057
Resurfacing from the dream world – where drowning is mandatory. The hand waves in a greeting rather than asking for help. A royal profile framed neatly against the window light, with a disciplined lens adjusting habitually, as if soft focus is a crime. The contours of this character must always be sharp – inside of them, the abyss. “Frankenstein would want your mind / Your lovely head”: Eager to welcome the monsters, only programmed to arrive when we're awake.
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0056
Breaking the axis with a bang – from a close-up to a long shot, from excitement to uncertainty, from a Caravaggio figure to a scene that could decorate a Hans Christian Andersen cover. The intensity of diegetic light recedes as it relocates, preparing us for absolute darkness. But then comes a lens flare – never an accident, if only a happy one. A ghost has arrived.
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0055
Contrary to popular opinion, people are not self-luminous bodies. They need others, even as reflecting surfaces, to enjoy the waves of light – diffracting or diffusing emotions. As the torch comes near the discovery and then leans over to us, chiaroscuro invests this face with the excitement of carnal knowledge. Finding the unknown can build to an unexpected climax.
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0054
This belly of the beast has digested several myths that became bread and butter in film theory — as if Leviathan decided to swallow a projection booth and rewrite Plato’s parable of the cave to deliver it to a bunch of French semioticians stuck in the 1960s. No one cares about the monster's metabolism, let alone the theory, except for the fact that it reminds us we are all trapped in mediations: always behind glass, a wall, someone else's body or subconscious (which is even worse). This time what seems like giant film perforations is the center of action. Another exercise in living beyond the borders of the frame, in some (useful) margins.
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0053
Impossible not to think of Indiana Jones when you come across this shot — only difference is the military look, the casualness of this unquestioned expedition, the intense presence of a light that lands on an unknown surface in the shadow of some scrap pyramids. This lost ark never asked to be found in the first place.
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0052
Handheld camera forces some unnecessary tension into this shot, unless it's an expression of unease with the picturesque scenery. Too many colors, too dark a shadow. We instinctively read an angle as a point of view, and since we're to the right of this man and the camera is moving with a hiccup or a limp, this must be a drunk guardian angel, or the ghost of a war casualty looking for a host. A distraction from what we truly want to see – a phenomenon of light, the full moon in the daytime sky, a stain on a different shade of blue. We only get a glimpse of it, and stay hungry.
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0051
It totally makes sense – what comes after a dream sequence is a shot reminding us of the essentials of cinema: concentrated light and distributed darkness. The camera moves skillfully to merge two different worlds, from projection to shadow play. This high-contrast silhouette layout could have belonged equally to a western or a postcard, but there is nothing idyllic in this landscape. This cowboy moves uncannily fast, as if we are watching an archival screening of an early film. We’re called to keep up (with) the pace, with time on our side. We’re guided by our own light, the one we desperately hold on to.
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0050
“Past the junkyard / It looks like a dead-end, but it’s not.” This phrase can only belong to the dream world, since nothing but our subconscious can reassure us that our eyes are destined to fool us, and that what seems like debris and useless elements is in fact a beacon of something new. In dreams, we practice leaps of faith. In dreams, we can't see any new face – we recycle the ones we have stored from everyday encounters. That said, have we seen this man before? This rear headshot looks more aggressive. In dreams, there’s no such thing as face value.
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0049
How many times do we have the luxury of seeing the lead protagonist of our dreams from different angles? A pointing finger can surprisingly fit in a close-up of a girl's face, albeit unbecoming in principle for those who believe that nothing is more directional than the human gaze. When a wise woman points at the horizon, only fools look at the finger. A change in the VHS effect is a change in perception: not only will we end up going where we're looking, but in the end, we’re looking at where we want to go.
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0048
Do men dream of electric seas? As the camera movement emulates the POV of a seagull (the Holy Spirit or the Father’s specter, as we previously learned), the water seems struck by lightning. Yet another sunny day rises in the distance, the first one we witness. The noise can't change the feeling of epiphany we suddenly get, and neither can the tilted horizon.
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0047
Who will blink first? The man or the monster? Slow zoom captures the transition from intense staring to another weird game with the eyes. Maybe this blinking sequence is Morse code or something. The kingdom of Sleep always needs willful dissidents.
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0046
A long sigh like a bedtime prayer. Hiding under the cover, our hero plays hide-and-seek. Maybe he flees from reality into a dream, or maybe this is his camouflage, and he waits to be moved together with the rest of the household. The door could be half-open or half-closed, confidently calling for the monster to hide behind it.
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0045
Selecting where to start taking your clothes off is a hard choice. This time, the focus on the lower part of the body feels like descending. Revealing inscriptions on the upper part of the body feels safe – our hero pushes aside the scars of adulthood by imitating Linus from Peanuts. The best thing you can do to avoid looking at your body is to look as far as you can.
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0044
What does our hero do when left alone? Naturally, he tries to get rid of his clothes. Interestingly, following the verdict, there's always a way to stay dressed to the bone even when naked. This rehearsal for peeling emotions takes place in a messy room where all the furniture is covered, rolled up, ready to be moved.
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0043
At last, some stability – referring to the mountain, and not to this ambiguous two-shot. Are they a couple? Are they siblings? Are they bound by a social contract of sorts, or randomly found on the same boat? Not all relations need to be strictly defined, so we're grateful to be reminded, and rest assured that at least they play in the same band – they're so color-coordinated. They seem to belong in the landscape, as if they've been there forever. But then, does the mountain shrink to hug their shoulder line and help them feel larger-than-life? It’s a matter of perspective.
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0042
Are we still talking about the whale? Or is there another net weight on the agenda? There is a specific way of talking without speaking, of hearing without listening, of looking without seeing — and the mother's face can perform and endure all of the above at once.
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0041
Strange – we’ve seen this head before. It nearly blocked our view of the cowboy-turned-sailor earlier, but now it’s here to evoke the sensation of listening to his story of redemption. Medusa’s hair frames Moma Lisa’s smile, impossible to decipher. A serpent escapes from the hair and takes the shape of a snake chain choking this woman’s neck – a sign there must be more poisonous creatures nesting inside. The Christ Child evades the frame, and we are left longing for a truly original sin.
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0040
This is the fortieth shot, so it needs to feel sacramental – 40 is the number of trial and transformation, and the film is more religious than it realizes: Noah's ark endured 40 days of the Great Flood; Moses fasted for 40 days before receiving the Ten Commandments; Jesus spent 40 days and nights in the desert, tempted by the Devil; 40 days passed between the Resurrection and the Ascension. It's high time our hero shows us his wounds, proving how much he has suffered and how badly he needs redemption. He rewinds the tape by hand (how very 90s) to retrieve his past and introduce his beast – something has to spin to set the story in motion.
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0039
Still life; or, perhaps – still, life. On the surface, the water is dead calm, even with undercurrents. If it wasn’t for the recorded sound of the waves, this shot of domestic life would have been mistaken for a diorama. (But then, it fits the standard: the lack of motion in family life is reassuring, until it becomes terrifying). The frame is split in three, as good or bad things come in threes. On the right, the hearthstone and some unexpected food – the basics of life; on the sinister side, natural light, the cowboy-slash-sailor, wavy curtains, dirty glass panes, the old tape recorder, a miniature boat – all the elements of uncertainty; in the middle, a throned matriarch whose eyes open slowly, sitting below the image of Christ as a child – like an icon of the Russian tradition with the blind saint who always appears with her eyes closed. That's how church treats its Medusas. The film starts allowing them to see.
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0038
Does this even qualify as a shot? Who cares about definitions anyway. We need to recalibrate our eyes after this transcendental blue, but we flout white balance. Black is what defines film; black is what allows cinema to exist; black is not to be found in nature. Some (white) noise reminds us of simple facts.
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0037
Our man is a man of promise, so here are the waves visualized just earlier. We can’t really hear anything — not because of the wind or the engine's sound, but because we're mesmerized by the sea foam – we try to see faces, shapes, patterns on this agitated mass, while we try to keep our heads above the water. It shouldn't be a coincidence that this is the first time we hear the film’s title. Similarly to “beachcombers [who] are here to forget they are at sea,” we are here to forget what we’ve seen so far. We’re gleaning regardless, navigating and trying to listen or make meaning. Noise has the same root as nausea, hence the question and the VHS effect; anything naval stems from naus, the Greek word for ship, even if it sounds like navel. Even if this is navel-gazing, it's still a trip.
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0036
We were quick to judge. The master (or the father, sometimes it's the same thing) turned into a bird himself. Humans need to dream of flying, birds possibly dream of landing; this cowboy maybe dreams of becoming a sailor (similar call, different vocation, better attire). In this luminous tight close-up, forehead wrinkles don't prove wisdom: they extend to the curtain stripes, and resemble waves. The ocean of the mind is always more turbulent than the sea we saw in previous scenes.
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0035
His master's voice is always disembodied – the only place it can survive is an old piece of machinery that lacks any other purpose. With magnetic media, there's no way to return to the past or move to the future without feeling time pass, or hearing a sound of regurgitation. A biblical tale finally gives way to fatherly advice, drawing our attention to seagulls – companions to sailors, but poisonous food to those who eat them without knowing how to remove the spinal nerve. As we follow this transition, assured hands misplace these poor tapes – an annoying gesture, but tied to a whole era.
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0034
In the last scene of The Searchers, the doorway marks the frontier between two worlds that will never unite, and John Wayne leaves the one he desires but knows he will never belong to, for one full of dangers that is nonetheless his routine. Here we are, standing on the other side of the door — the cowboy rides his horse and, by appearances, is again leaving the blurry world of men he tamed after finding the girl. He seems to have already made up his mind, but we're still in the early days of the film. Is this how life goes? Do we lead it with our minds already programmed? This fake horizon line (artificial, heightened, interrupted, and twisted) might give us a cue.
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0033
Madonna mia! Has this girl turned into a saint already? All she did was watch. What seems like a failure in the eyeline match or a continuity error (we left her on the right side of the glass door, but now she moved to the left) has a metaphysical vein: her face tilts within the boundaries of her halo, but then her blurred mask prevents us from meeting the gaze of Medusa (this is the lens's divine intervention). We're not ready to turn into stone just yet – everyone alive wants answers.
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0032
Come to think of it, there is no safer place than the belly of the beast (or the mouth of the wolf): a warm cave to hide in, where no one watches, a place where you can perform any act without stage fright. After all, who knows what would have happened to Jonah out there during the tempest – but then, for the sake of Christianity, the Bible always lacked a comparative angle. The stranger tests his domesticated beast like a watermelon, assessing the way it sounds, pirouettes again to fetch a log from what could have been a hearth and home, prompts a man covered in silver hair to reenact a violent opening that keeps perpetuating even when he's not supervising, and then freezes as if caught mid-mischief. The off-balance negative space in this classic three-quarter close-up evokes a sense of uneasiness – but the productive kind.
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0031
So far, door frames and pillars have been used ingeniously to set the quadrant system and highlight roles and actions. But it’s the first time we see how it looks to observe through the glass, even if the glass is blurry or full of obstacles that force a girl to bend her knees – at least the camera has the courtesy to modestly lower the gaze. Red and green are complementary colors, so this young female intruder spattered with this palette might see something new and different from (and useful to) us.
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0030
And just like that, we see something in this mental horizon of the frame composition. As if something is caught in this invisible fishing line that keeps this world together. At last, here we are: in the belly of the beast.
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0029
Cutting on action again, another push-transition effect: the stranger is as volatile as a ghost, yet his unusual way of touching his face – and others – lands him more firmly in this secluded garden of earthly delights. He ambushes a regular by unzipping his jumper, maybe in an attempt to rehearse open-heart surgery. It's safe for him to do that, as his own jumper only unzips halfway down his chest. No way to reciprocate – or strike back. His own heart will remain shuttered, even if his gaze tries to pierce the wall against him.
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0028
The camera movement emulates a push transition, allowing space for the surgical table. The stranger pushes back Sancho Panza, but again his gestures betray him – he looks more like he's trying to grab his beard or collarbone, as if he’s about to drown. There's no action without a performance of ambiguity. Everyone is laughing; maybe no one believes their eyes, and for a good reason: the hands narrate a different, more visible story.
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0027
Every dancer needs a partner, and lacking better options, a man might circle his prey and recruit on stage any witness to his symptomatic presence; if anything, this man applies force with a sense of grace, so his violation looks like a pirouette, and the glance behind his shoulder disguises his need to watch his back as a search for an audience. He's so ashamed of grace that he outbalances it with some good old-fashioned nose-rubbing. Sancho Panza wonders whether his own private Quixote was worth the trouble.
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0026
Suddenly everything looks like it's moving in fast forward. The old wise man knows when to light his cigarette, when to turn his head, where to look. We get a glimpse of the tattoo on his left hand. Is it a sloppy hammer and sickle? A pair of anchors? A weird complex of arrows? The stranger's action is fragmented yet purposeful like a somnambulist's dance.
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0025
Cutting on action, and the stranger helps us revisit the space. The surfaces are reflecting, gleaming, pouring light all over, obviously not to reveal, but to conceal what's behind them. Similarly, the man smiles when talking about a monster — the translation refuses to resort to beast, preferring the creature that demonstrates what fails to fit a category. He walks intoxicated, or like a young boy, i.e. the only two states where a lack of full consciousness can be socially or existentially excused.
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0024
The magus’s cigarette leaves a trail of vapor destined to evoke some storytelling. An ambiguous holding of hands – gripping turns to caressing – is enough to pass on the disease: language is a virus, and now it's someone else’s turn to blow smoke. The stranger enjoys himself, narrating an adventure with familiar symbols: the whale, the sea, the desert, the fuel. Maybe he’s a Christian? A prophet without honor in his native place? The camera carries a spirit ready to possess the man in the oracle. His exit from the top of the frame feels like an Ascension.
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0023
A zoom shot can last forever, since you can never get close enough to – or get enough of – a human face. This old magus is angry enough to keep people away, but then invites the stranger to remember, which is itself a passive-aggressive prompt to come closer. The camera, naturally, is hesitant to do anything but observe and compare, and perhaps conclude that the two men look alike; it must be the face shape, the neat cheeks, the thick mustache and the dark vegetation of the rest of his facial hair — or maybe just the temperament. A prop from the previous shot foreshadows the texture of this encounter: he'll be his mirror.
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0022
What starts as a domesticated plan américain unfolds unexpectedly, as the magus circles the fire, moving from a green-yellowish backdrop to a warmer far side, where red light bleeds into earthy tones. The walls abound in landscape photos and map-like pictures – just in case we lose our way out there. Our cowboy is seated at the kids’ table. A note on patrimony and the entitlement to family legacy proves an exceptional icebreaker, and should a man need to wash his hands of responsibility, there’s always an option in the back.
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0021
We've seen this one-quarter rear headshot before, or at least part of it. Our hope that this puzzle of a man will fully reveal itself is futile — the subtle nodding only adds more missing pieces to the jigsaw. He’s asked a trivial question: he groans for yes, bobs for no; his frontal vein swells like a river, his head a turbulent mass. We're receiving mixed signals. The shot helps establish a sense of space, though this distance might be just a matter of blurry perception.
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0020
This medium close-up makes the previous shot look like a red herring: this is our guy after all – the chieftain, or perhaps the tribal shaman. The old wise man is framed by his satellites: the penitent thief is borderline out of frame but sharper (all meanings attached), the impenitent one is soft and armed with a cigarette. The magus fixes his jacket with his right hand to keep the left well covered, ready to move. Some worry beads keep on turning, like a clock without hands. Time for action.
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0019
A physiognomist is already tripping: impossible to confuse a man’s profile – a plain truth feeding postage stamps and mugshots alike. This man could have stood out in a weird police line-up – and we could still easily be trapped behind another glass (the one mirroring from the other side). His gaze is traveling, triggered by a stimulus. Time for some identity recognition.
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0018
Always a delight to get acquainted with a gallery of noble men — as if we’ve been invited into a salon, browsing portraits of 16th-century lords while we wait for the host to arrive down some imposing staircase. Bela Tarr’s tracking shots through hazy taverns placed everyone on the same level; here, each figure has a different relationship with the camera — their gaze and level of attention seemingly dependent on distance. Luckily, a monobloc will always be at arm’s length, till the end of time.
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0017
More often than not, close-ups of hands express more than faces (Farocki, after Bresson, was right). When the right one rests, the left takes over, coping with the storm in the glass. Even if these aren't the hands of a working man, they serve as canvas for motifs symbolizing freedom — at least the birds are looking at each other. This shallow depth of field feels deeper than it should. Are we just out of focus, or already drunk?
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0016
This is a new kind of editing: caught between the devil (within) and the deep blue sea. A travelling braves the tempest, moving further in; the sea has a face, and its waves change shape quicker than the clouds. By the time we learn to read the water’s expressions, we have gazed so long into the abyss that it gazes back into us. For some reason, this feels refreshing.
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0015
An eyeline match cut plunges us into blue – it's a boy. Boys are mimetic animals, and spitting arguably helps build an unspoken code of conduct. Out of the blue, this feels like the moment of Aristotelian anagnorisis: it takes one to know one.
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0014
By now, we know that whatever we see behind a glass surface is not transparent at all, but transformed by imagination or fear (or both). Two male animals bare their teeth, spitting and hissing, behind some hanging makeshift talismans. We feel safe — not least because of the blue charm, but because the eye match between a male and a female animal is interrupted by the car frame, and her gaze then turns 180 degrees. She’s not escaping the evil eye, but drawn to something new.
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0013
Using a table frame as a match-cut element is an odd choice, especially given it's scrap material. Finally, there’s daylight, so we can comfortably count how many dualities fit into the wide shot: wheeled vehicles, people inside the car, people outside it, water on either side of the road (good fortune comes in two forms). The mise-en-scene keeps toying with the vanishing point, a reminder not to mistake analogy for symmetry. This shot is really about establishing power dynamics within the group. Notice this man’s trembling legs — just an illusion from the wind. Let's wait and see which way it blows.
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0012
More games to play: panning right to left as we disembark, then left to right, back toward the water – though not for long, however much fun we’re having toying with cinematography manuals that insist the latter movement feels natural and progressive. Right to left again, returning to land, pretending we're on safe ground, while the same two men seem locked in their own relay race, just two steps from a stretch of silver linings.
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0011
After all, this empty platform might have been a water dolly (is there such a thing?). A weird game with the axis invites us into a tug-of-war. Two men – one of them still a stranger – seem to be winning, as they lure us into a garden of boats – their hulls all gutted.
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0010
An invisible force twists and pulls an empty platform closer, while the rope splits the frame into a space of darkness and a space of reflections: a border, liquid regardless. Diagonal lines supposedly add energy and depth to an image; diagonal curves are as soothing as the life line or heart line on a palm (so not at all, really). Tamed like a pet, this non-human object calls on us to choose sides.
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0009
So far, the camera has only tilted upward — a solemn, almost sacramental movement, as if meaning to hallow the water or the main shadowy figure (who seems ready to be raised to heaven anyway). It lands in a ¾ close-up, echoing the previous one, but now caught in left profile. Our hero is turning the other cheek.
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0008
The frame opens to reveal the setting, yet low light keeps things mysterious – we're probably in forbidden waters. Maybe this is an exercise meant to train us to distinguish a shadow's movement in pitch darkness. Hence the ghost light on the left of this strange stage, this one-man show. The camera moves, but it is left afloat.
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0007
In this single mid-shot, the camera toys with our expectations of framing — we see either our hero's hands or his bent head, never both. A workingman can never appear whole. He fights to put out the light, to peel the strange skin of scrap from the ground. There's no doubt he'll make it, even as the slow lateral drift settles into continuous denial.
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0006
Again, diegetic lighting. This light travels more slowly than our hero’s pupils, but quick enough to leave us puzzled (beyond continuity): why is this man surrounded by water? No man is an island. Breaking the line underlines instability. We feel trapped in a Magritte painting – the one titled “Not to Be Reproduced.” We take this message with a grain of salt.
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0005
Heroes move in the dark. The first face we see has something biblical about it — obviously not the man from the previous shot, and this one seems to be floating, almost in utero. His backward movement is punctuated by a rope being pulled, as the frame opens and tilts upward. Diegetic lighting makes it feel as though we're sitting in a dark theater just as the movie begins. We expect an over-the-shoulder shot, but instead we recognise someone familiar, held in a measured medium close-up. His eyes keep moving in the dark, probably scanning the area, but he’s as still as a rock.
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0004
Refreshing to see a man in the window – in cinema history, it's usually women (or cats) occupying this spot. We're still behind the glass, enjoying a disruption of the quadrant system. The horizon line sits exactly in the middle; the window grid draws our attention upward. Maybe someone is bearing a cross (not Cartesius). His gaze is directed at a boat, but it takes effort to discern it. The false symmetry between the shadow of a figure and a curtain (both cues for acts of concealment) is disrupted by movement. He turns his head: will he look back at his past, or meet us straight in the eye? Neither.
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0003
Forget the horizon line – or discover a second one. All systems of Renaissance perspective are warped for good. Seeing things through a glass (darkly), we feel trapped in a spirit level. The symmetry of the foreground distracts us from the tempest in the background. VHS noise allows for an intercut of a man climbing a glacier. He is on the same axis as the opening credits — maybe he wants to climb up to the vanishing point (what a drag). Glaciers are constantly moving under their own weight, even if they seem immovable. We're already being reminded to peel off the surface.
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0002
A quote rises to sea level – a constrained ocean of letters. The horizon line is always reassuring, as is any attempt at alignment. A word surfaces when everything else is lost, and so (for the surface, not for the loss) we gather that it's the film's title. The font is tiny, so we can’t read it — but maybe that's the point. We’re not here to read; we’re here to see. But then, it’s reassuring just to know something is there, even if we can’t access it.
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0001
A title card is always an ID card. When a film opens by showing its production marks, we know it's willing to show its scars. An origin story. A logo resembling a tarot card — the five of wands, but for those who can't count. A card that represents conflict within a group, or the need to prove one's ground. A company named after underwater life. A logo like a circle-A — why the need to insert alien alphabets? Other supporters' groups fade in, fade out. Just like words, money, life.