Aquarela Directed by Victor Kossakovsky
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Aquarela
Directed by Victor Kossakovsky
Year: 2018
Country: United Kingdom, Germany
Author Review: Roberto Matteucci
"In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters." (1)
In Genesis, God create water. God could have chosen any other place but chose water. Obviously, God's choices are not casual.
The same thought of the Bible also belongs the Russian director Victor Kossakovsky.
In the movie Aquarela, presented at the 75th Venice Film Festival, he represents the water with the spirit of the Bible. Water gives love but also irrepressible rage.
The same Victor Kossakovsky, in the press conference, describes the water with religious terms:
"... I have this character, who is the most powerful, never filmed that can be a devil or even an angel; it changes his face in a second ... with this character I have to use an appropriate language ..." (2)
The artistic result is a complex and demanding story. It narrates, for the duration of a feature film, the life of water in all theirs forms; submerged images from the impressive and breathtaking rock 'n' roll soundtrack by Eicca Toppinen.
In the shots of the ocean, blue dominates; it's the primary color above for the whole movie.
Again, Victor Kossakovsky:
"... they call me the Rembrandt of the documentary ..." ... "... colour, like a brushstroke, or water as a material ...". (2)
But Kossakovsky loves blue while I do not remember lapis lazuli as the predominant colour of the Flemish painter.
The beginning is on a frozen lake: Lake Bajkal in Russia. They are aerial shots, imaginative, beautiful, the sun reflected on the ice. A solitary person is on an ice sheet, others with a rubber boat go fishing.
Everything is transformed into drama; a car is driven madly on the ice. The change of water in ice does not last forever and returns to the primordial form for the weight of the car. The conclusion: all, included passengers fall into the frozen water.
It is not the first time. A group of people arrive; their job is the recovery of the cars collapsed for the weakness of the ice: "... the bumper is still good ..."
A fast, high-sounding music accompany the sequence. Around it, there is a scene of normal familiarity of a village near the Bajkal.
This part refers to the Russian film Belye nochi pochtalona Alekseya Tryapitsyna - The White Nights of the Postman of the director Andrej Končalovsky, also set on the daily life of a small town on a lake in Russia.
Subsequently, the scene moves to the great icebergs of the pole.
The glacier breaks down the dramatic force is transmitted, and an incredible roar deafens us; the sound of the iceberg is not enough, there is still a frighteningly powerful soundtrack of the Finnish band.
The energy of the sea is together the presence of man: in the ocean, a sailing ship, conducted by a woman, challenge the waves while an icebreaker crushes the frozen sea. They are impossible challenges, and like in a Hokusai boat, the sailor does not appear impressed by the waves; Victor Kossakovsky:
“We make a mistake in not understanding our role in the world, we think we are very important, we can define the world as we want, ... we are just a tiny piece of the planet, if we disappear, no one would notice. .. " (2)
On the notes of rock, the light white waves become water and the color changes to black and white. The blue is disappeared, but not the power of the water, the edges make a sketch with a beautiful style to shape many modern and ancient visions.
It is the skill of the director, master in drawing, sketching lines, curves with the camera, a true Rembrandt.
Climate, water, ocean, death, natural disasters are the story of the film with two distinctive characteristics, the two deadly sins facing each other without fear: pride and wrath.
Man is superb, he supposes to be superior, to be overwhelming, but in reality, it is just presumption.
The water, the territory, are believed to be equally dominant and answer to pride with wrath, with anger, with destructive strength. In the end, the director shoots a tornado, it hits hard and violently the roads, devastating, preventing people from circulating; there are fallen trees, strong wind and lots of rain. It is another form of water, drops from the clouds.
It is Kossakovsky's idea; he chooses refined scenes, which allow us to reflect, to ask ourselves questions to analyze the intrinsic meaning of earth. For the author, the allegory is water, and despite its fundamental solemnity, is it a good concept to compare man and the environment? Did the director exactly film the values of the two strengths in the field?
It is common belief - even by the same author – that humanity is the killer, so bloody to erase the ecosystem; and if the contrary one happened? Moreover, if nature were the sniper able to strike and annihilating man like thousands of years ago?
Clear and rational thinking looking at Aquarela, with a water - a metaphor of nature - implacable.
(1) Genesis, 1,1: 2