Perhaps I'm completely seeing things in Aether that don't exist, but as I watched it I began to wonder whether or not Patrick McGoohan had ever seen the short - and whether or not it was an influence on his famous television series 'The Prisoner'. As unlikely as it seems, the red bouncing ball and the long runs on a deserted beach - plus the overall sixties stylishness of the attractive woman in the vintage motor car - reminded me of the time spent by McGoohan in The Village trying to escape Number One's clutches. A short, sharp little film with some daring innovations (love the paint pouring over the frame!).
2 Reviews
The Ball of the Red Death
Coventry15 May 2006
This extremely artistic short movie really deserves a brief review even though it only has a runtime of 7 minutes and contains no actual dialogue. Harry Kümel put "Aether" together in 1960 already, yet it contains some ideas that are definitely ahead of their time and even the photography is revolutionary, especially considering the possibilities in Belgian television around that period. The short story is incredibly rich on symbolism and revolves on the last hallucination/vision that a person experiences shortly before dying. An anonymous man runs down a spiral staircase to meet his girlfriend (?) in the parking lot, but he stumbles over a red ball and falls on his back. Subsequently, he has visions of himself at the beach and in the hospital but the football and particularly the red color continues to appear. "Aether" (don't ask me what the title signifies
) reminded me about the work and styles of David Lynch and Samuël Fuller, and that's pretty impressive for a modest Belgian film experiment. Images such as the football bouncing down the stairs, or the light of day fading away inside a tunnel are extremely elegant and quite haunting. A little triumph for Belgian cinema.
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