Campo

At first sight, the Portuguese military base of Alcochete seems paradoxically like a place of life. Given that shots can be fired there, humans occupy this land only under strictly controlled conditions, giving wildlife free reign to proliferate. While uniformed men perform strange rituals, people also raise bees and sheep, observe the sky, hear storms more keenly than elsewhere. High above this very special place, an almost celestial voice punctuates our discovery of it, recounting the destiny of humanity from the hour it was created by gods in need of entertainment. When the voice evokes the moment that humans began to tell stories, then were no longer able to distinguish fact from fiction, the nature of the film is called into question – it is hard to distinguish between the soldiers’ training exercises and the scenes specifically enacted for a film crew. On a scale that echoes human beings’ sense of immoderation, Campo dares to touch on the deepest questions – the origin, the end and, above all, meaning, as in the scene where a clearly Spinozian amateur astronomer asserts that “the only thing that distinguishes us from a stone, is our mobility”. But the mobile stones that we are never cease to be attracted by distant horizons, and war may be the most perfect symptom of a spirit of conquest that ultimately proves to be deadly.

Olivia Cooper-Hadjian