Milky Way (2007)
9/10
A purple arrow landing on every target
28 March 2020
As one struggles to get to grips with this movie, one suddenly realises that his is the point of the movie; you cannot really get to grips with it. It is a koan, an exercise in demonstrating the inadequacy of reason. 10 puzzling, statically shot tableaux later an absolute calm has descended. That is the beauty of the movie.

What follows is a description of my experience of 2 of the scenes, so please read after the movie if you haven't seen it and want to come at it fresh. The first scene sets the atmosphere of confusion, in the dark there's what looks like a sliver of a river, and a flickering flame in the distance, I was wondering if this was Styx and some watchfire in Hell, as the light increases it's clear there's a wind turbine on a lake (technology and alienation also seems a theme) ominously chopping at the air (sound design is very important in this movie). There's also a meta layer to this fugue of reason, for example you see a couple of cyclists bunny-hopping up and down a rocky mound, a particularly awkward way to navigate an inscrutable surface, they are then bemused by a tree that is spontaneously combusting and contradicting the maxim that there is no smoke without fire.

The link to the title appears to come most directly in the last scene of the movie, where the lights of an industrial complex resemble the Milky Way.
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