Director: Andreas van Riet
Writer: Andreas van Riet
Running time: 5mins
The AI aesthetic is grotesque, but it is grotesque in a way that – like everything the technology does – is geared towards flattering and reinforcing a very particular group of people’s opinions. Even before the plagiarism machine sputtered into existence, the advents of high-grade CGI and high definition already meant a specific kind of image needed to be deified above all others – to help invent a ‘problem’ that only paying a whacking great fee for a new television or camera could solve.
But imperfections are where the intrigue lies. Telling a story without any jagged edges to cast shadows smooths everything out into a singular, over-wrought, hyper-detailed tedium. There is an admirable kind of resistance on display, when any artist alive now pushes back against the tasteless insistence of billionaire tech overlords, and doubles down on something purposefully antiquated.
In his previous two films submitted to Indy Film Library, Andreas van Riet already delivered hints of this approach. While both the grisly black-and-white footage of The Metamorphosis and the warm, prestige television images of The Nettle Man were both beautifully polished sets of visuals, they were both willing to let imperfections lie. They could allow for light blurring at the edge of an image to evoke the bliss of the summer sun; or for digital buzz to hang in a blackened corner to remind you of the terror of a darkness so deep your eye fools itself into seeing things.
In Onheilster, the filmmaker goes a step further – stripping back almost all of the frivolities of modern cinema, to the barest of bones of what you need to tell a story in this medium. In an age where movement, action, relentless noise and unending information are supposedly what you need in order to hold an audience’s attention, we instead get echoes of a magic lantern show.
Still images are projected over one-another. In one standout moment, a photograph of the rising sun is faded through another earlier image – to give the illusion of movement. Another sees a photograph of the sea-bed, wrinkled by the to-and-fro of the ocean, but turned on its head – to leave us questioning if we are indeed looking down beneath the surface, or up to the heavens; and again, two or three such shots are layered to mimic that motion of the wind and the waves.
Adding to this light-touch construction of the scenario, short pieces of audio are piped in, and a storyteller amplifies his voice through some kind of metal cone. What more do we actually need here?
Perhaps this kind of ultra-minimalist filmmaking is more forgivable as an ‘experimental’ format (and that is the category Van Riet submitted this too) – and certainly I don’t think it should be the norm. But I can’t help but wish more artists in ‘conventional’ genres would try their hand at such a focused, decidedly low-fi form of delivery. To pick up on something worth saying, a story worth telling, or a poem worth reading, and using this kind of trickery to complement but not over-take the process.
The poem in question here follows a sailor in a quest for knowledge. Shipwrecked on a mysterious island – the faceless, nameless protagonist is unaware of how he came to be there, or who he even is (though, given we are introduced to him as The Sailor, it won’t take a wild guess to figure some of that out). Through evocative 35mm photography, Van Riet sets the backdrop for the tale, without ever becoming literal – as the temptation must have been – and accompanying every new line with a direct and obvious representation. That’s a sure-fire way to land yourself with a particularly nice polished YouTube photomontage, or a slide-deck of holiday pictures.
Instead, Van Riet allows the images to linger for multiple beats – leaving us to interpret how they may or may not pertain to the unfolding journey of the sailor. An egret strides through the cool shallows of a beach at low tide, the crystal water rippling gently beneath it. Palm trees bake under a shimmering heat as the heat warps the air around them. And while the camera’s grounded, old world organicism breathes life and weight into each of these sights. We don’t so much see the scene, as feel it. Disorientated, amid the disconnect between what we are told in the narration, and what the rest of our senses are relaying to us, we feel more and more empathy for the amnesiac sailor, as he staggers on.
Which instincts are driving him to distraction in an apparent paradise might not be immediately obvious. After all, who hasn’t fantasised about this kind of peace and tranquillity, this moment of silence and respite. But here the sound design – and its very particular dissonance – plays an important role.
The ambience of the beach – the slow sigh of the sea, the chirping of birds in the trees around – are crystal clear. But Van Riet’s narration has a distinctly tinny quality, as though it is arriving through the speaking tube of an old ship.
The choices for this dissonance don’t always work for me. In some moments Onheilster borders on the literalism its imagery escaped here – particularly with the stock chiming of a cuckoo clock, inserted at a moment of waking confusion. And it might be better replaced by instead amplifying the shrieking “laughter” of the gulls noted in the same moment, to achieve a similar effect. Rising to cacophony, it could provide a more suitably unnerving way to place us in the disorientated headspace of the castaway.
Even so, when other sounds which don’t fit, and which have varying degrees of audio quality, make an appearance, I think it is a well-conceived device. It feels as though an illusion is pointedly being shattered – as the sound tracks go to war, this dreamlike solitude cannot hold for us. And again, this helps us connect to the character in the poem.
Some kind of distant reality calls to the sailor too. Desperate for closure on his own sense of self, he must reconnect to the past, and to the fellow travellers he shared it with.
Perhaps it is not possible to define yourself without any relation to other people. After all, no man is an island.
The titular sailor can only distract himself from the grimmer realities of life for so long. And having been connected to him so intimately by this low-fi experimental production, something also calls to us from reality. The film is in a sense keen not to make itself an island to distance yourself from the important arguments around cinema and society. It offers a place to think, but also nudges you to get back out there, however painful that re-engagement might be. These images, these moments of peace, are beautiful, but we have to return to the noise and action and high definition tyranny of our wider cultural moment, if we are to learn and act on any lessons from Onheilster.
