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It is challenging to accurately describe the experience that watching this film entails. When I first saw it several years ago, I remained deeply immersed for days on end, captivated not only by the film's density but also by its radical form.

An unclassifiable essay, the film delves into the early years of the Norwegian painter, offering anything but a conventional and comfortable structure. It transcends mere biography, allowing us to enter the subjective vision of the painter by constantly blending levels, different narrative threads, styles, and eras. Employing non-professional actors while using documentary codes, the film is woven with re-enactment scenes that immerse us in the puritanical era of the late 19th century. Through its editing (done by Watkins himself), the film marries seemingly heterogeneous techniques: fictional constructions, candidly captured scenes, fragmented editing, informative voice-over, non-professional actors playing characters being interviewed... Watkins pushes the blurring of our usual reference points to the extreme. He offers a historical chronicle that is commented on along the way, not only by an external voice-over but also by the characters themselves who interrupt the fictional narrative to provide insights into their lives (or is it the actors themselves expressing their thoughts during filming?)

At any moment, the characters turn towards the camera and look us straight in the eyes, sometimes briefly, or sometimes more insistently, taking us as direct witnesses to their discomfort, weaknesses, and pains. These direct camera gazes challenge and question us, making us more than mere spectators. They integrate us into the scenes in a strange and persistent way. The characters suddenly become aware of being observed, and it is us whom this realization seizes.

Recurring images from the past, interwoven without chronology and obsessively throughout the scenes, become kind of revealers of the characters' inner states. They haunt their destinies, much like they haunt our gaze. These constant temporal shifts invite us to follow something beyond the simple narrative. They almost compel us to look inside the characters, as if to pierce through them and see their destiny, their intimacy.

All of this composition does not obstruct our connection to the film but, on the contrary, contributes to our complete enchantment. There is something hypnotic about this epic film, something akin to the discovery of a language. So, do not let the apparent length of the film (3h30!) deter you. The magic of its construction will pull you out of real and linear time, inviting you into a completely deconstructed time where things flow more on the mode of thought, through associations, fractures, and haunting repetitions, suspending the very notion of time itself.

Annie Jean
Tënk subscriber and film editor

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