Un samedi sur la terre

How come some films make us so sad and yet, we appreciate the sheer beauty in them? The film 'A Saturday On Earth' is one of those serenely depressing movies. In my opinion, it is an absolute masterpiece.

Films are meant to be saga of images, at least primarily. But very few works can make images talk. In fact, the absence of saga of talking images is so pervasive a trend in modern movies that only rarely one gets to experience the taste of such a chronicle. 'A Saturday On Earth' is one of those rare and pleasant aberrations. This entire movie is a continuous journey across detached (but not independent) images; each of which, like a separate Haiku, depicts the contrast between bleak interiors and dazzlingly lit verdant green pastures of French countryside.

This movie is a veritable exhibition of filmatic restraint. Character studies, when performed from the perspective of sensitive restraint, often results into poetry. Its no wonder therefore that poetry drips from many of the scenes of this work. Delightful photography and the non-linear mode of presentation of the entire collage merely heightens this poetic appeal. From the (apparently) chaotic introductions to characters in the beginning, a story slowly emerges. From a set of trivial coincidences, the sense of coherence emerges. Thanks to deft editing, one can pick up the broken pieces of unifying thread between the frames. – As a result, in the end, the (apparently) random sequence of frames nicely form a pretty little sad story.

I reiterate, to me, this movie is a modern masterpiece.