I had the good luck to attend a screening of Epifanía given by one its' directors, Oscar "Papeto" Ruiz Navia.
One of Papeto's main premises as a film maker, is that movies or films do NOT have to tell stories. He claims that that story is not needed for a movie to be a cinematic experience. So if we expand on the director's claim of "no-story-needed" we are basically left with the cinematography and sound to carry the viewer's interest through a movie.
This movie consists of three parts, numbered i, ii and iii. Judging this movie by Papeto's premise, the first part (filmed in Sweden) is a success.. based on a simple idea, the stunning northern fall landscape, the cinematographic moments that looks like beautiful paintings and the amazing sonic landscapes certainly were breathtaking. The telepathic communication, and blank screen scenes were brilliant. I was hoping the rest of the movie would be like this, but....
Unfortunately, once the first part of the movie ends and morphs into the second part, beginning with the Temazcal (sweat lodge) scene, the great cinematography and sound ends, and we are greeted with what feels a cheesy documentary featuring shoddy, hand-held camera work worthy of a home movie, and horrible editing decisions, such as cutting off a song that one of the protagonists is playing in her car. Hey Guys, ever heard of continuity?? Did you know sound can be faded? LOL
The rest of Epifanía feels like two cheap home movies (parts ii and iii) were glued into the beautiful part i, because there is no continuity in the cinematography or sound from the first part of the movie into the other two, despite the great transition between parts i and ii. Let's not forget that sound and image are the two things left to carry the movie, since there is really no story behind it. I wish Papeto wouldn't have taken the lazy way out and put more effort into filming his documentary pieces.
In Papeto's talk about the movie, We learned that the first part was mostly written by and inspired by one of Anna Eborn's dreams, After watching the entire movie, one can see clearly that part one has her imprint all over it, and I yearn to watch some of her work.
