Change Your Image
patrickabois
Reviews
IRIS: A Space Opera by Justice (2019)
This is an absolute masterpiece...
This is an absolute masterpiece. These reviewers aren't seeing what I am seeing. Or feeling! Gaspard and Xavier have prepared for you something to be contemplated, like Gaspard noted in the opening documentary. I mean, did you FEEL the magnitude of such a light show? Did you even try to contemplate it? Do you know what that means? Did you see how the cosmic imagery is part of the art? You're supposed to take it in as art, but not any kind of art. This is art that's symbolic and evokes a response from you that I can only describe as soul-galvanizing. The colours, the cross, the reflections; what this film is is truly an experience if you're on board with art and spirituality, or, if you're at all curious about the universe. I felt palpable wonder in the theatre. As far as I'm concerned, these boys are absolute artists, let alone geniuses. Listen to Gaspard in the documentary, the one who's got the shades on and is only too glad to let the other hipster spin yarn after yarn since he can't get enough of his voice, the poor fellow. There is meaning here, ladies and gentlemen, and it flows deep. The tunes are at their tightest, let it be known, and I should know given their albums are gospel to me (like, literally). I know all of their albums inside out. This is outright mastery here, and I can't wait to see what they come out with next. They put Daft Punk to shame, that's for sure, because Justice is much less vapid. I'll leave it to you to figure out why, but this film certainly proves exactly that. Everything oozes with meaning, and that is the best kind of art. These reviews I've read here are technical, or middling, like most reviews. But make no bones about it: Iris is a mystical masterpiece. I seemed to be the only one in the theatre bopping my head every which way, and it took much strength not to belt out singing during Love S.O.S. 💗
On a side note, I surreptitiously ended up going to mass prior to this concert; actually, by accident, at this church called Notre-Dame-du-Cap, near Quebec City earlier this afternoon. I thought I was walking in for a tourist visit, but instead, I stumbled on a mass a mere minute from starting. And right behind the altar was the cross, and Jesus wasn't on there. It was this big white cross. That blew my mind. Just like in Iris. Right off the highway, for a breather and petrol, before driving in town to the theatre. And that's the first time I see a cross in a church without Jesus front and centre on there, suffering. He must of climbed down and sat down among the common people. 😁
Call of the Forest: The Forgotten Wisdom of Trees (2016)
A very beautiful and brilliantly filmed epistle to trees (and the world!)
I saw this last night in Kingston at the wonderful Screening Room and by the end, I was left speechless. It is definitely one of the best documentaries I've ever seen (and I've seen tons). By the end of it, I was convinced that this could become a kind of sleeper hit, even a cult phenomenon, along the lines of A Portrait of Jason, namely if given enough momentum. Let me outline why:
1) Some shots reminded me of the best from nature documentaries, like Microcosmos, and some other great nature documentaries I've seen, like Planet Earth. Anyone who's a nature lover should check it out. Bring the kids. Bring the village. Find out why trees are indispensable to our survival.
2) The quirky uniqueness of it: our Heroine (and I do emphatically mean Heroine with a capital H) hosts this documentary with such blood and bones fervour that it reminded me of another cult documentary, The Hellstrom Chronicle (more of a Darwinian satire). Only this documentary is for real. Very real (especially by the end). You are onboard from start to finish.
The different effects used in the film I feel do not detract from the film, as when she enchantingly outlines chemicals we find in trees. It adds to its whimsy. As an educator myself, I felt this to be pedagogy at its best. It reminded me of Wenders' Salt of the Earth, when Sebastiao Delgado looks through a screen and is filmed interacting with his own photographs.
And when Diana interviews a mother with her child near a riverbed full of wooden detritus? Find out what is original and so upsetting about this Mother Earth-like scene.
3) The urgency of it: by the end, did I think it was too didactic or overly prescriptive? Absolutely not. Perhaps a quasi-cynical critic would deem it so for weighing the film's merits over its message, as many are wont to do when a documentary imbues its ends with urgency. But the film, on its own with its stream of images, easily can outweigh its message up and until its final remedy for the planet. It's up to you by then if your heart can hop along and consider seriously this woman's plea.
4) The beauty of it: From the first shot to the last, it is truly beautiful. The closeups are fantastic, the animation is spotless, the aerial shots crucial. Right when we slide from the vertigo of our collective asphalt jungle into the timelessness of green trees within a city at the beginning of the film, it's a statement.
5) The message of it: the beauty you are afforded in this film is bittersweet once you realize that so much of it is gone. Just gone.
So find a way to see it.