ROBERT A. A. LOWE IN A SPELL TO WARD OgFF THE DARKNESS

This may bring on the darkness as much as ward it off

Ben Rivers and Ben Russell are experimental art film makers. Rivers is from the UK, Russell from the US; this is their first collaboration, though they previously toured together, in a program combining their short 16mm. films. This film is conceived and presented as a full-length feature in three parts. The first is shot of a small collective community on an island off the coast of Estonia. The second is in Finland, where there is a sauna. The third is in Norway, where a howling heavy-metal style concert is performed in heavy makeup in a small club. There are some pure landscape sequences, one of the musician Robert A A. Lowe in a boat and camping, and earlier one of a woodland lake at night, accompanied by an original A cappella performance, which is quite lovely. Making sense of this film, which is really three short films tacked together (except for the carryover of Lowe) is not aided by the failure to identify the locations or sections during the film. This Spell can only be enjoyed with those who see cinematic experience as non-narrative going with the flow.

How all these three segments fit together thematically is anybody's guess, but in some ways they all flow together as part of the same world. Oddly, the communitarians on the island sound an awful lot like American hippies, circa 1968; and since the people in the Finnish woods running in and out of the sauna speak English, they might be from the same group. The final concert might take place in Seattle, if Metallica was a grunge group and went in for imitating the sound of wild animals in heat. A KimStim release.

A Spell to Ward off the Darkness, 98 mins., debuted at Locarno, Aug. 2013. Screened for this review as part of the FSLC-MoMA New Directors/New Films series, March 2014. Theatrical release at Lincoln Center Friday, 5 Dec. 2014. Metaceritic rating post-release 68, but based on only four reviews.

Reviewed for Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.