We soar, we plunge, we labour: here is all peak human experience
An astronaut is launched into orbit, his body tightly
confined inside his suit and vessel, his mind enraptured by his new perspective
on Earth. A boxer pumps himself up before a big match, repeating the mantra
‘you can’t change destiny’ before plunging into the controlled chaos of a
fight. Two young men roll a joint, smoke it and lay down in a euphoric daze.
Preparing for the birth of her child at hospital, a woman enters the painful
throes of labour with her partner by her side. A man approaches a diving
platform, peers over the edge to take in the height and plunges into the
swimming pool.
These are the disparate narrative threads that the Dutch
filmmaker Dylan Werkman weaves in his ambitious short film A View from
Above, tethering these scenes together with craft and care to form a
single, sprawling story. The rattling and beeping sounds of a spacecraft
entering orbit bleed into a boxer in the heat of combat. Edits juxtapose the
man’s walk up to the high dive with the astronaut’s journey to the space
shuttle. Each strand shares a cinematic shot-on-film aesthetic and
contemplative pace. While depicting these extremes of human experience, Werkman
draws out elements that unite all of humanity – views of the Earth, the sounds
of breathing and heartbeats, the experience of birth – evoking human life as an
inevitably shared endeavour.
That Werkman, who created A View from Above while
studying at the Netherlands Film Academy, isn’t overmatched by his
stratospheric ambitions is an impressive feat. Meditations on the wondrous
smallness of the Earth when viewed from space is well-tread filmic territory.
But immersing the viewer in the shakiness of the space capsule and, ultimately,
the parachute ride back down to Earth, he brings these scenes a true sense of
intimacy and tension, and, upon entering orbit, breathtaking serenity. Through
this, and from the many small glimpses into of terrestrial life below, emerges
a bold and poetic exploration of peak human experience and ascendence.
Written by Adam D’Arpino
Director: Dylan Werkman
Producers: Marrit Greidanus, Pieter Kapteijns
Cinematographer: Jaap Mar Diemel
30 MARCH 2022
A view from above | Psyche Films
No comments:
Post a Comment