La Folie Almayer
Conteúdos(1)
Algures no sudoeste da Ásia, numa aldeia perdida num rio grandioso e turbulento, um europeu agarra-se aos sonhos ilusórios por amor à filha. É uma procura pelo absoluto, uma história de paixão e loucura. (Leopardo Filmes)
Críticas (2)
The subdued light of the long Akerman-style shots mixes the shadows of the characters' dull figures with the night of reason into which the main character falls. What is the director's last fictional film about? It is about the eternal European chimera of its own superiority, the impulse for Citius, Altius, or Fortius (faster, higher, stronger), which reduces people and nature to mere symbols and materials of its own success and dream of victory. It is about the rebellion of one of the objects of this madness, which is intertwined with a family rebellion - the effort not to appear in a stranger's dream, even if it was the father. Is all this not just intertwined with the rebellion of youth, escaping from the authority of the father/culture toward love, regardless of profit and prestige - wanting to live in a world that is true to itself? Isn't this supposed to be the fate of the entire third world, which was not even named in the film? How should we interpret the opening scene, which uncovers hopes of defiant gestures: a young mixed-race woman loses hope despite Frank Sinatra's voice - was it the lover's killer who took it away from her, or was it Sinatra himself, revealing the end of a different illusion, not European but the illusion of the youth of the third world about their own world? The minimalism of already dead characters imitates the death of Almayer's world and the world of his daughter. Not to forget means to die, and to forget means to lose the meaning of life - in this space between two deaths, the main heroine is captured in the opening scene, in which her gesture sadly beautifully misses the situation to which she no longer belongs.
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Chantal Akerman may not be my favorite filmmaker, but it must be acknowledged that she knows how to make films and how to present them. In this case, in a weird way where on the one hand you feel like it's a plot-driven film, but at the same time not much actually happens. But the environment and the state of the human mind are captured well.
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