QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

During the course of this probing, insightful documentary, director Nicole Vögele peers at the EU border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over the course of the 140 minute film, the filmmakers encounter refugees from all over the globe, discovering fragile perspectives of a world that has more carnage than love. Deeply scenic, the film is almost silent, highlighting image over dialogue, which includes long, lingering frames depicting travellers coming out of the forest into the forefront, searching for a new life.

The Landscape and the Fury aims for hypnotism. The central treatise is to showcase human nature unfolding in a pastoral environment, much like Agnès Varda did with The Beaches of Agnès (2008), but the dichotomy between the humane versus the scenic fails to take off just as often as it does. What the work utilises beautifully is colour: strident blue skies precede dormant dark light. Vögele allows the imagery to wash over the viewer, leaving the camera still to let the photography exhibit motorcycle riders racing down a hill.

“Boys, up here will be tricky,” says one rider; “Don’t be scared.” It’s kaleidoscopic at times, particularly when it depicts cyclists pummelling down the slope with herculean gusto. Much of the conversations feel incidental and extraneous to the work – a person says she has already given away the screwdriver, which is largely unconnected to what has occurred before. The film, if not diaristic, seems journalistic: viewers happen upon the remnants of the Bosnian War throughout the course of the feature: tanks, landmines etc.

More beautiful are the humans appearing before the director’s team. There’s a teacher guiding their learners through a song: “My mother’s land, being one’s own..” There is a woman chopping logs against a billowing sunset. And most glowingly, three small children are excited that they have a “home” to go back to. Humans come out in their masses, escaping lives spent in denser, darker pasts.

The work is happy to face the reality the refugees face. As the midway point beckons, the camera unveils a long line of people waiting for a vehicle that will bring them to the camp. Heartbreakingly, a little toddler is held up by an adult, a small sense of comfort against a harder edged grown up world. The elder people cannot escape from the harshness as easily with a warm embrace. The geography towers above the people passing across the cavernous roads.

When The Landscape and the Fury focuses on the humans in question, the finished cut feels fragile, tender and beautifully executed, but once the focus lingers onto the backdrops, it borders on portentous, losing focus among the foliage and pastoral green. Such is the depth it makes for a work that is watchable, but not necessarily engaging. The feature takes patience, and demands a lot from the viewers, an attention that will challenge some audience members.

The documentary lacks a central hook: if there is a message it’s difficult to discern. This isn’t helped by the protracted runtime of nearly two and a half hours. There are only so many times the brooding shots come across as interesting, and some of the scenes, such as a depiction of two toddlers splashing around in a paddling pool, do nothing to draw audiences into the work. A snapshot of three bags lasts nearly a minute.

The Landscape and the Fury premiered in the Swiss Panorama section of the 77th Locarno Film Festival.