Review by Beatrice On 23-Jun-2023
“Solon, you Greeks are like children, there is no old man among the Greeks! You are all spiritually young because in your minds you have no ancient opinion formed by long tradition and no knowledge hoary with age. And the reason is this: there have been and will be many destructions of mankind in many ways, the greatest by fire and water, and lesser ones by countless other causes.”
From Plato's Timaeus to Ancarani's Atlantis: from the political vision of the Greek philosopher to the social/anthropological/adolescent perspective of the young Venetians:
The small boats are to the Venetian boys
as mini-cars are to the Roman kids.
The name above is that of the current young woman.
Speeding boats....
A tradition that has been going on for generations.
The carved bricole signal 85 km/h, while the law allows 7, and if the financial police chase, the boats venture into the lagoon "alleys" as if they were the Spanish quarters.
Young people running and chasing, competing and dancing to the rhythm of techno trap and neon lights, in evocative semi-deserted islands and canals of Venice.
Northern lagoon, the island of San Francesco del Deserto where one coexists with the monks; cypresses cast shadows in a treeless lagoon; Pellestrina and secret places where one runs, plays, challenges rules and life.
"A film without a script because you can't write and then shoot," says the director, "because it becomes old, everything happens too quickly."
"Gaining their trust at the beginning wasn't easy, but you had to wear the right sneakers, listen to their music, to understand it and understand their world. You had to understand the car culture, learn and convey passions: you had to be there while things were happening."
It's a work of research, a work on image and movement, not just a documentary. There is the story of the boys and many other stories at play.
"The only fiction in the film," says the director, "was the news broadcast that transmits false news, and that says a lot!": even though the boats make news every day.
Ancarani's background in video art and documentary accompanies here a symphony of adolescent apathy and solitude in an abyss of existential emptiness. Meaning is absent as the future doesn't exist except in an eternal present marked by the suffocating soundtrack of Sick Luke.
Sex and alcohol, hashish and cocaine, the banality of consumption intersect with the mythological vision of an unknown Venice where everything seems still and yet moves in a disjointed and fragile way.
Photography becomes, at times, the absolute protagonist together with the most sentimental and symphonic music, even when silence is accompanied by the sounds of nature.
And amidst the girls' manicures, the present rushes deafeningly, and emptiness becomes an ominous omen.
The aesthetics of discomfort become sumptuous, at times baroque, the trappings of nihilism oscillate between the orgy of nothingness and the minimalism of everything.
The colorful, unrestrained, senseless strokes become an ascending parable to plummet into a tilted and semi-submerged video camera between a below and an above that no longer exist... for an Atlantis that becomes an Apocalypse.
The sound by Mirco Mencacci accompanies the epilogue already present in the famous Platonic dialogue.
A lacerating film installation tears open the gaze of the 78th Venice Film Festival, telling, like never before, the unsettling contemporaneity.
“But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune, all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.”
23-Jun-2023 by Beatrice