macduff50

The miniseries reviewed here is actually a compilation of two feature length movies, which were very successful in Scandanavia, and as a result of that success, were shown on television in the form of a six-part miniseries. But the running time is pretty close to identical. The two films, minus opening and closing credits, run about 257 minutes; each episode (there are six) runs about 43 minutes, minus opening and closing credits, for a total of 258 minutes. So the reason it looks like a feature film is because it IS a feature film.

As to the content, it's a love story, but the lovers are divided by war and circumstance, so the bulk of it is devoted to how they cope even though they are divided. I thought the two leads had marvelous rapport (the two actors actually were in drama school together, and have acted together many times, on film and on stage), and I found their devotion to one another to be wholly believable. Of course, you have to remember that these were very different times. As the author of the original novels has said, this was an age of faith, and that extended to the faith that the lovers had in each other. Ours is a secular age, and so in order to fully enjoy the films, you have to be able to make a leap of faith, to believe that two people could love each other that much. I guess I'm a sucker for a good romance.

But don't go to this series or film expecting a re-run of "Kingdom of Heaven"; it's set in the same time and place, and covers some of the same historical events. The tone and feeling of the film, however, is very different. If it is an epic, and I'm not sure it is or was ever intended to be, it is what might be called an intimate epic. As with "Dr Zhivago," to some extent, history is the enemy of these two, and it constitutes a force that is very difficult to deal with. I can say no more without spoilers, but rest assured, all is not gloom and doom for these two.

I was able to see this film at a film festival, where the director spoke afterward about how the film was created. As I had suspected while watching the film, the source for the script was not just the minutes of the meeting, which mention very little of the detailed discussions which occurred that day, but as well what the director called the "Eichmann protocol," that is, transcripts of the interviews conducted by the prosecutors at Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem. Grupenfeurher is correct when he says that the minutes of the conference never mention extermination. But Eichmann's later, extensive, comments prove that that is precisely what was being discussed. For a detailed look at the conference, the best place to begin is Mark Roseman's book, "The Villa, the Lake, and the Meeting: Wansee and the Final Solution." But there are also comments noted in Goebels' diary, and interdepartmenal memos from those who were invited to the conference itself, and much other evidence besides. A good discussion of the process leading to the genocide can be found in Christopher Browning's "Origins of the Final Solution," and a more abbreviated discussion in volume two of Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler, "Nemesis."

Feeney was a National Film Board director beginning in the early 1950s, and this was one of the last films he did as a director. Since he lived on until 2006 I assume, like other NFB types, he made the transition into management, and thereafter didn't work actively on production.

That said, nothing in his previous films could prepare you for the breathtaking splendor of the images in this film, nor (once you think about it) the technical virtuosity which created it. We are very used today to time lapse, or speeded-up motion films, particularly as it's used in such films as "Baraka" or "Koyanisqatsi," to show nature and society. Sky uses all kinds of camera mounts and positions to show one day in the life of the sky over western Canada, specifically, the mountains, forests and prairies from around Banff and on down in towards Calgary. In 1963, when Feeney made the film, so far as I know, nobody had ever tried to use time lapse photography in quite this expressive and artistic way. Mostly it was a tool used by scientists to study various phenomena that moved too slowly to be observed with the unaided eye. One locked down the camera, exposed one frame every second, or every two seconds, or whatever, developed the film and studied whatever it was you wanted to study.

For a movie, however, a locked down camera is boring; movies should move. So Feeney and his collaborators devised ways to get the camera to pan, tilt and dolly while it was simultaneously working at time lapse speeds. So you get shots in the film that appear to follow the clouds and their shadows as they speed past mountains tops, and then down on into valleys. "Baraka" achieves the same effect with the assistance of complex computer programs, i.e., a motion control system. Feeney did it without any sort of computer assistance at all, with purely mechanical systems. In some shots, the speed of the pan appears to perfectly match the speed of the clouds as they move across the sky. My guess is that Feeney either built his own motors and gearing systems, or he adapted gearing systems used by astronomers of the day to keep their telescopes static with respect to the movement of the stars. One of my favourite shots in the film shows a vast stormcloud rotating, raining on the prairies below, and moving up fast towards the camera.

However he did it, it is an astonishing technical feat. What 's even more amazing is the stark beauty of the images, and the melding of the minimalist music track with the images. One gets an entirely otherworldly feeling from the movie, that is, the music is designed to try and put us into a frame of mind that emphasizes that what we are seeing is not something one can ever see in the real world, but rather only out of a distillation and transformation of the real world, a transformation only achievable by the technical means of cinema. Simply astonishing.

NFB's website doesn't really do justice to the film. Shot in 35mm, this is a film that is long overdue for transfer to a high definition medium.

One further point. The film was shot at a wide variety of different speeds, but at the very middle of the film, roughly the five minute mark, there is one shot, and one only, at the regular 24fps. A truck passes along a road with a storm looming over the fields in the background. I believe it's placed there as a reminder that what we see depends on how we choose to see it.