rserrano

There is an old Sufi saying that goes "Man is asleep in a nightmare of unfulfilled desires". Never has a film been made that better captured this sentiment.

To say much more would detract from the experience of appreciating the movie, except perhaps pointing out the following: This film is listed in "1001 Movies you must see before you die". Like many of the more obscure films that make the list, this one is saturated in mood. This particularly unique mood is exuded from the first frame to the very last. It draws you in and will likely stick with you long after the viewing.

As you watch this film, you go through three phases: 1) What the heck is this? 2) Fascination 3) Synthesis - What does it all mean? Here's where I came out after a couple days of reflecting on the last question: These four guys have jobs that are quirky and about as different from one another as they could be. None the less, each man is fully absorbed in what he does and uses his job, over the course of a life time, as a meditation on two questions; Who am I? and What is the nature of the world? By the end, they all come to consistent conclusions about themselves, and because of the way their dialogue and images are interspersed, they blur and seem to merge into one single person. That one person then is absorbed by the world of their own mutual conception.

The film is ambitious in undertaking these big questions and I think ultimately successful.