Armenian director Artavazd Pelechian (USSR, 1938) is one of the most brilliant directors in the story of world cinema, but you will rarely hear a common cinéphile mention his name. Perhaps, if you were alert, you unknowingly saw «Inhabitants» during one celebration of World Environment Day.
His films are mostly made up of shorts that resist classification and that were the way in which he developed his concept of "distance montage", as opposed to Sergei Eisenstein's "montage of attractions" theory. In the 1980s, thanks to the writings of a French film critic who saw and praised his work, his cinema (particularly his masterpiece «The Seasons») began to be talked about, and Jean-Luc Godard became his admirer and advocate of his montage ideas.
Now, by pure chance, in these times of wars, pandemics and the tearing of the ethical and moral fiber of societies (dominated by the materialism of the dictatorship of corrupt and thieving businessmen, politicians and professionals), I saw his work «La nature», premiered when he turned 80, in which he shows us human beings that we are a tiny dot in the universe; our egos, an insignificant detail, and our wars and robberies, useless displays of force and deceive, which are absolutely nothing compared to nature.
And don't expect postcard landscape photography. To begin with, the film is in black and white, and the filmmaker made use of all the material he could find (surely you have seen some on the internet), both on celluloid and on video, to show us the marvelous force of nature and its ability to create, destroy and be reborn from the rubble, and the ease with which it turns the work of men into soup. Pelechian did not leave anything out: clouds, forests, seas, deserts, rivers, lakes and snowy peaks, but at the same time he included material that can leave you in awe: landslides, eruptions, melting ice, tsunamis, tornadoes, earthquakes, in which nature demonstrates its power, its ability to give a couple of lashes and send us to fry asparagus in Siberia, whether you are black, Chinese or white... if we can light a little fire, if we get oil and if she gave us the asparagus.
A lesson that does not lack the hope of another dawn, to the chords of music by the Armenians Avet Terterian and Tigran Hamasyan, as well as Beethoven, Mozart, and Shostakovich. Highly recommended.
