In The Basement

Austria

Basements are places of recreation where Austrians spend their free time. Here they can be whatever they want, cultivating needs, hobbies, passions, obsessions, and dependencies...

After the Paradise trilogy (love, faith, hope), Ulrich Seidl returns to documentary filmmaking, focusing on several basements, including that of a fan of Führer Adolf Hitler, a sadomasochistic couple, a woman who collects and cuddles baby dolls, a cleanliness fanatic, someone who has built a shooting range and sings opera while shooting, and more. A wonderful documentation of what separates social life from private life.

There are also stories of disorientation, like that of a woman who fled from two violent men to dedicate herself to masochism, and if that weren't enough, she works for Caritas, helping women who suffer abuse.

The basement is a place to hide, and Seidl worked hard to gain entry. They are places of mystery and fear. Here one encounters the duties from which they flee, the ways to sublimate their inadequacies, the need to exercise power, and to find an outlet for sexual repression.

A place of the unconscious where meaning, feelings, and experiences are hidden.

Seidl continues to investigate the human condition without judgment, allowing us to see what he sees, what strikes him, what surprises him, constructing small fragments of reality that are never complete or definitive.

He maintains that none of us is immune, for example, from xenophobia, fears, fundamentalism, tendencies towards violence, unexpressed desires for power, repression, and sexual fantasies. In his film-documentaries, religious symbols always coexist with the most aberrant violences, considering that whenever someone is given the possibility to act on another, it can lead to oppression, humiliation, and abuse.

This documentary clearly shows how living rooms in houses are the representational spaces, almost uninhabited, while the basements are the true spaces where life happens.

Many scenes provoke discomfort, and it’s unclear if the need to laugh or cry is stronger; certainly, a great sadness and a deep embarrassment prevail.

The contrast between the façade of life and the reality where one can be something inevitably distant from what one is becomes evident.

An attempt to escape reality to construct another reality that simply highlights the symptom, freezing it in place.

Seidl captures disturbing snapshots that, where possible, awaken from a biological anesthesia that frames identities like erasable and rewritable cards. An attempt to stimulate the gaze, to exceed, to break, to shatter, to KNOW that the basement is simply and illusorily an act of freedom.