2021-04-23 08:38
Gave up on Rules of the Game (which was too boring), gave up on Miranda July's The Future (which was too annoying), but enjoyed Mati Diop's Atlantics (2009) the short film version, not the full length of the same name (which was one of my favorite movies I watched last year). It's basically about young men from Senegal trying to get to Spain via boat, but doesn't address the concept in a straightforward way. We see a few young men talking around a fire about being on the boat, why they would or wouldn't go, dying on the boat, etc. We see a very brief graveyard scene. We see a mostly still shot of a young woman (I think she wipes away some tears, but mostly just looks kind of sad). There is one shot in the beginning, when the title appears of a long shot of the sea with a boat on it. A poem is shown line by line at the end and then a shot of what I believe is the inside of a lighthouse as the casing of the light spins around and around. That last shot was almost... science fiction, like a sun trapped inside some kind of ginormous metallic structure. All in all, powerful and visually engaging. I can see the seeds of the later longer film. Would love to see more films from her, sadly imdb at least doesn't show anything on the horizon except her appearance in the next Claire Denis movie (Diop is also an actress).