Slant Magazine

In its fourth year, the Migrating Forms film festival at Anthology Film Archives continues to present ambitious films of unclassifiable nature. In their past interview for The Brooklyn Rail, the festival co-directors Nellie Killian and Kevin McGarry stressed their interest in works that move "in and out of different viewing contexts," and for which it may be hard to find "an ideal audience."

Abendland, by Austrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter, meets these criteria by being mostly a meditative documentary in which images do all the talking. Considering that no poetic voiceover ties the loose ends, the film's eloquence is pretty remarkable. Is Abendland a metaphor for contemporary Europe? Following glum economic news, some critics have espied in its title an allusion to decay and decline. Perhaps, but watching the nocturnal going-ons in factories and in hospital wards, in whorehouses or at an anti-nuclear protest, I wasn't so sure the film delivered one particular message. This is partly because Geyrhalter, whose background is in photography, has a patient and a discerning eye when it comes to capturing the prose of life and rendering it strange. In one early scene, a nurse feeds a tiny human infant attached to a tangled network of tubes. Her soft patter and the baby's cherry-red skin seem almost menaced by the life-saving machines. By the time the infant is back in the incubator, and the lights go off, leaving it to its precarious breathing, you may find yourself holding your breath as well. From the start, then, this movie is more broadly about "the human factor" in an increasingly mechanized world. Continue Reading »