LETTER

In a magnificent black and white, where the halo surrounding the white recalls countryside mists and the ghostlike quality of the characters, a group of men and women go about their daily work… stroking a cow lingering near the steps of a large wooden house, smoking outdoors, listening to one of them playing the accordion. This footage, shot ten years ago in front of a rural psychiatric hospital in north-western Russia, recalls La Colonie also by Loznitsa (2001), but here he delves into its strangeness through a striking approach to sound: at the same time present and muffled, the dialogue-free sound, rather than silencing these enigmatic figures, increases their stature and lends them a symbolic dimension. Loznitsa’s avowed intention to use his cinema, be it documentary or fiction, to “describe the phenomenon of the homo sovieticus and his native land”, forcefully conveys, mainly through the senses, a combination of suffering and anonymity, a texture of sound brimming with violent personal stories never recounted, as if a century-old despair had barred them from ever being told. (Charlotte Garson)