The Banishment, by Andrei Zvyagintsev

However you look at it, a masterpiece in a true sense.



"It is truly something to see; for among all the lives to be ruined it is a visual rhapsody, attentive to every nuance in the spectacular land and foliage around the family home, following the lives within as meticulously as it traces the dramatic changes in weather — from clear day to torrential showers — in one of the longest, most intricate and beautiful tracking shots in cinema."

Private screenings

Watching a film is essentially a solitary act.

It requires our full and exclusive engagement, the need to let ourselves be immersed into the director's mind translated into picture and the actor's expressions conveyed to us.

It never is a passive act, at all times it demands an interaction of our senses and sensibilities with a world created under an immense effort, for our eyes only...

With my eyes wide open, the time of the screening is a time of dedication, nothing short of this. To another world, another place, another person in time...
Of course it's all about the films that matter, but what are they?

Last wednesday night as I was preparing a talk for the following day my mind drifted to the film i was about to watch a few hours later, last show of the day.

Few films manage to bring such an anticipation. I've been silently waiting for this movie for a long time.

This feeling is not shared by most of my friends here and i don't blame them, one's passion is not usually another's.
One after the other found an excuse, but long ago, the decision to attend something i long for, is not affected by anybody else. I dont believe it should anyway...

"El Aura" is Argentinian, directed by Fabian Bielinsky, who was behind "Nine Queens" a few years ago. "El aura" remained loyal to its title and created a spreading aura only a few weeks after it was completed...
Despite advertising, word of mouth is still a reliable way of letting something be known and could even be more indicative of the real worth of it...
Already rave reviews were written during film festivals, the directing maturity of Bielinsky was praised, cinema that hypnotized most of the people who saw it.

And then! Biliensky at age of only 45, suddenly died in Brazil from a heart attack. His second film was his last, an irony considering the maturity of the movie, a grandmaster-to-be who will never become one...
"El aura" became sudenly a cult movie. The last word of an artist who obviously had a lot more to do and say. The insignificance of human existence that tries to grasp a piece of immortality from creating a work of art... Where vanity may actually serve well to the rest of us!

From a punishing cold outside, I arrive at the movie theater frozen and buy the ticket, holding it with my blue fingers.
I enter the screening room and the lights dim...
I am all alone.
For a minute I feel like i'm part of "Mullholland drive", in an instant an illusion would come out on a long dress from behind the red curtain and would break my heart with "Silencio"...

I sit in the middle and I am all alone. For a movie like this, only one person showed up!
A private screeening for a genuine cinephil should be a blessing.
It takes me time to get used to it. I feel thankful they show the film only for me! It probably costs them more than what i payed to get in!

From the first scene the stregth of the movie is unfolding full blown... It retains this hypnotizing rhythm through Ricardo Darin's penetrating eyes and rough face, everything seems to be in the right place...
I smile as if Bielinsky played a joke on me when the first dialogue is in hungarian! Out of all the languages!

I'm almost ecstatic when the movie ends, more so having my expectations fulfilled...
Going home I can't stop thinking that out of one million people, only one payed tribute to a cinema as valuable as a jewel, a cinematic approach just waiting for you to grasp it...

You only have to let yourself be immersed in it...Who does it these days anyway?...