Swiss director Alain Tanner having a go at an English language film. In Ireland. Starring Trevor Howard and Mick Ford.
Trevor Howard is Yoshka Poliakeff, a cantankerous old recluse living in the bleak back of beyond; he takes in Jonas (Mick Ford) and initiates him in the meaningful or less mysteries of life.
The ridiculous tasks Trevor sets up Mick to do are covert tests of his aptness to be a suitably devotional disciple. It’s Gurdjieffian absurdity added to Beckettian absurdity to = nonsense. At one point Trevor is demanding to be buried up to his neck in the ground so as to heal his clawed at flesh.
There he is with just his head popped up out of the earth like Winnie from Happy Days, or Ham from Endgame.
It’s a bleak, sunless, gloomy wilderness we’re in. Typical Ireland really. The broody browns and moody hues make it look very end of the other worldly.
At last, we get to the pointless point of all this absurdity: Trev wants to fly beyond the galaxies on homemade hopeless wings. Soar away like a peerless bird of prey. He only makes it 20 miles down the road before crashing down to earth. He gets his eyes pecked out by an eagle.
Anyway Mick (Jonas) seems to have become suitably enlightened by all this meaningful (or less) malarkey. So that’s good. Although I haven’t. And I suspect nobody else who’s seen it through to its absurd end has either.
I’ll say what I’ve said before about these Tanner films: I’d have got far more out of them if I’d seen them when they were originally released; when I was in my 20’s (late 70’s through to mid 80’s) But now the time feels like it’s passed for me to engage with them quite as naively and idealistically as I would have done back then. I’ve got older. And less gullible. And more cynical (unfortunately) Although it is also possible that the films themselves haven’t aged well, and would seem rather dated to a modern audience.
Dir: Alain Tanner, Switzerland
6/10
Windows on the World 