A fucked-up love letter to the initial magic of the moving images when they first flirted with our eyes.
The obsessive compunction to give prolonged life to the dead, to inch out a few more moments out of the cadavers of animals has given us this strange ode to early cinema when its moving photography was still embryonic, particularly The Horse in Motion. This short, Living Still Life is the paranoid artistry of a woman who whether consumed by compassion or consternation for the dead, animates dead animals she finds in the wild.
Wide angle lenses which push the sides of the frame beyond the reach of sight fit so much destruction and construction within the frame. The landscape shots of her walking through the world and happening upon these dead animals are sublime, a sonorous juxtaposition going on between the colours of her tattered dress and the pallid greys and whites of this snow-capped desolation. The opening shot of her in the wild though is something out of a Tarkovsky film with the subtle hints of hues in the background that light up a world so dreary and dead. Symbolically it makes perfect sense for the film to take place in winter; death of life, death of the year, death of hope. As one starts to wonder who is leaving these dead specimens for her, or whether she’s behind their murder, she makes her crowning rite of passage and moves onto humans, elevating their death to art.
The incredibly sharp red lighting gives it an evil menace that’s seen time and time again through cinematic history but never gets old.
Now marking the end of my short film binge from last night, I highly recommend you do your eyes a favour with this film and watch it come alive like the dead walking.
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