sitenoise

This is a symphony of darkness that plays out like a Greek tragedy. There is no comeuppance tho, only a final confrontation which feels as unavoidable as it is unpredictable

"... there is no violation here no malice just a set of ancient responses"

JB Arthur's classical score is a little too standard classical when it's just passing time. When it speaks directly to the story it's scary, tearful, lovely, everything you want it to be

This film began the collaboration between Dereck Joubert and Jeremy Irons that exists to this day. Dereck is a squishy poet who's lived in a tent amongst the wildlife of the Botswana swamplands for thirty years. Jeremy is Jeremy. A pro. A match made in heaven

Big Cat docs are all about the dry season vs the wet season. During the former, prey comes to predator. In the latter, things get scattered. Everything comes down to where the water is

"Africa comes at you from both sides it is a golden ray of light and a dark sloping shadow it has the power to abandon pretenses and the humor to play with your body"

In this story a group of lions break off from the main pride and become nomads. It starts in standard fashion when the dominant males exile the maturing boys. Lucky those boys that some of the girls go with them. The girls are the hunters and can use their feminine wiles should they stumble into territory owned by macho men

One morning a nomad lioness wakes up and notices some giant footprints in the parched and dusty mud:

"the tracks of which gods are those walking beside me are they from the fire or the flood are they the ones who wait for me and is this my map of blood is this my destiny"

Make of that what you will. The majority of the narration is of that ilk. Sometimes silly, sometimes insightful: standard poetry. Nothing else like it in the world of Big Cat docs

Sadly, this was filmed before the Joubert's cameras were up to HD snuff, and before thermal imaging or infrared cameras were available to them. But Dereck makes the best of it in two ways:

First, he doesn't make this a highlight reel of well lit HD captures of kills and dining. He brings us into the middle of the chaos, where real life is blurry. It's freaky how he gets some of the shots he gets. It's immersive, and works

Second, Dereck is primarily an Art Film Director. Since this was shot back in the "night" when film makers had to shine a work lamp on their targets that was bright enough to illuminate the animals but not bright enough to disturb or distract them, it works to Dereck's strength of using shadows and reflections, silhouettes and flares, shapes and closeups

Most of it is shot at night, dusk or dawn. So ... grey elephants and dirty cats playing in the mud. Not a healthy color palette. It's where the classical score, the wannabe poetry, and the blur of real life collide to form this Symphony of Darkness. There is nothing like it in the world of Big Cat Documentaries

"when you meet me again maybe you'll remember that your wild eye when open travels inward"

This is the second film Kôji Fukada has made about a stranger insinuating himself into a seemingly calm family. The stranger first starts working for the family in their home business, then he moves in to their home, and then ties between the stranger and the family are revealed and exploited. Kanji Furutachi played the stranger in the first one, *Hospitalité*. He plays the family man in this one. I like this one better.

Any time one of a character's introductory scenes consists of bad eating-acting you have the most simplistic of character definitions: the character is an idiot, with a bad moon rising. Both the family man and the stranger are introduced this way. They both turn out bad. No surprise. The first act of this film is full of bad indie nonsense, but after the lame setup material is out of the way, including Asano's snorefest of a background story speech that sets things in motion, the film finds it rhythm. And it's frighteningly good. And only then does it become unpredictable. There's a character swap about halfway through, and trying to figure out the relationship and motivations really put me on edge. The second half of the film is walking on razor blades.

Asano has pretty much jumped the shark, imo. He's played this character a hundred times. I don't think he does anything special here, but he's not bad. Kanji Furutachi is a good creep. In the first act he tries to act like a creep and fails. In the second half he becomes a creep and is awesome. But the star of this film is Mariko Tsutsui as the wife. Her face is hard-coded for WTF sadness. She does the Japanese thing of remaining calm in the face of super-WTF-ness, wonderfully. There are several big moments, impact moments, in the film where if I were her my head would have exploded. I had no idea how she would react. She's fantastic. The opposite of acting. She looks like she's processing the information given to her for the first time--not like she's acting the part of processing information. Bravo! When you see what happens to the kid it's funny, sad, super weird and then some. It remains understated which doubles the funny, sad, super weird and then some of it.

I have no idea what the ending says. It felt abstract and lame but didn't spoil things for me. I highly recommend the film to those who aren't bothered by bad eating-acting, or may not notice bad indie cliché scenes, and to those who are forgiving of bad script writing and acting during a film's setup phase.