Synopsis
Three segments depicting the life cycle of a freighter boat.
At Sea
2007 Directed by Peter B. Hutton
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It's hard to think of another filmmaker who's as committed when it comes to capturing portraits of city and landscape in all of their poetic grandeur. He's not limited to that though. At Sea, one of Hutton's best and most ambitious films, is a highly engaging chronicle of the birth, life, and death of a mammoth container ship. At least on surface. Metaphorically, it's a haunting meditation on human progress and environmental crises.
Charting a three year passage, the film is split into three parts: birth, life, and death. Each part follows a different ship: first we see a ship being constructed in South Korea, then a container ship out in the ocean, and finally an a ship being taken…
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This is easily one of the most essential films of the century so far, composed in perfection, beauty in every frame. The middle portion of the film, in which we're actually at sea is by far one of my very favorite extended sequences in all of cinema, but then the portion that follows, a curveball act of vital decontextualization, serves to bring At Sea to a level beyond the purely affective & sublime and into that of the necessarily empathic & human. And it is absolutely divine.
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Sound is taken for granted in the media of today. But many an old-world curmudgeon has gone on record concluding cinema died at the advent of the talkie. This is old hat. What could be most interesting about sound in cinema now is what happens upon its experimental negation.
The films of Peter Hutton are designed for theatrical exhibition in complete silence. His first few decades of output, for all its composed, painterly, often hauntingly abstract images, lacks a certain formal etiquette, the likes of which I've always admired about, say, Benning, and one can't help but wonder if the added dimension of sound may have brought those films back from the passive photo-album impression they transmit.
With At Sea,…
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Whereas I had previously watched this with an improvised cobbled-together playlist, this time I sat ensconced in the silences and let the power of Hutton's images alone win me over.
This time was a far stronger experience.
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Le cinéma méditatif d'Hutton est un cinéma d'échelle et ce à plusieurs niveaux (figuratifs et symboliques). Ici, sa façon de jouer avec la grandeur du bateau, cette coque immense et ces minuscules silhouettes humaines. Et puis il y a la vie en mer et l'humain ne se manifeste qu'à travers des essuies-glaces, face à une mosaïque de conteneurs colorés. Le 3e et dernier segment, l'envers ou l'écho du premier. Et l'humanité semble exploser. Le bateau n'est plus qu'un cadavre qu'on dépèce, et on ne peut que ressentir de l'empathie pour lui, objet inanimé, et aussi pour ces hommes dont on discerne les visages, les sourires, qui travaillent en haillons, qui jouent au foot ou, quand la caméra est là, se…
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This is a film that could have as easily been named the uncertainty principal as the prevention of actuality by the camera seems the center theme of this tale. The film, about the building and voyages of a Korean cargo ship, is extremely similar to the work of Wang Bing with two major differences. The first and most obvious is the lack of sound leaving the film haunting and dispassionate like a ghost story. The second and less immediately obvious is the lack of political theme.
Really there's a lack of any human theme with the movie scored entirely toward observation without obstruction; something that the humans just prevent. In the early portion of the film where people are present…
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Added to: Peter B. Hutton Ranked
Like a slowly, silently decaying iron whale, Hutton shows the lifecycle of a grand container ship. From its birth among ant-sized men, his endless voyage among pristine blue waters, eventually ending up on a solemn beach amongst other cadavers, waiting to be plucked apart. It is monumental in its setup and its steady cinematography which gives the massive vehicle a truly impressive sense of gravity on the silent screen. It almost creates a sense of magic in how unusually it is photographed and put together. At first glance it seems like a whole redundant film, but near the end it feels like you've actually seen a part of life. A mystical, perhaps unmoving but still very densely layered portrait of a random ship, which eventually tells a lot about the world it inhabited. To call this unique would be a grand understatement!
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fuck wow, i cried. we're seeing a theme here with tears, huh
Also, staying quiet for an hour was a good thing for the heart- or maybe not, I'm having a crisis now- idk what i'm talking about. one day i'll breathe, sit back, let life slip by and write reviews about all the glorious stuff that i keep watching and how deeply they affect me. for now, it's just i cri, i die.
byeee