Hynningen

Hynningen (Swedish for ‘honey roof’) begins with long multiple exposures of a landscape with a clearing, opening up to the horizon. In the middle of the clearing there is a simple log cabin of the type characteristic of Northern Europe or Quebec. There are actors a man and a woman – at the window, at the doorway, strolling in the grass, doubled or even tripled by multiple exposure. Traces they have left at different moments of the day and in the changing light appear as gentle phantoms. If our varying perceptions would outlast changes in location we would experience a strong sense of continuity and of repetition. This visual counterpart to the imperfect tense in grammar is amplified by three high tones on a background of sinus curves. These gradually reach a higher pitch. But this isolated house, filmed in the almost silent density of a Baudelarian ‘Afternoon without end’, that seems as if made to accommodate peace and meditation, does it not attain a sudden, bewildering presence? If it is true that the term ‘to be’ originally means ‘to live’ and ‘to unfold’ but also ‘to dwell’, taking into account both Indo-European roots (es, bhû) as well as the Germanic ‘wes’, is one not, on seeing this dwelling place, invariably reminded of what Heidegger said about Man as ‘the keeper of his being’? Is this honey roof not the place of sheltered existence? No matter what Nekes himself thinks about his films and no matter how dominant the primacy of technique and structure, has he not with DIWAN begun erecting a metaphysical oeuvre, in which unto the cinema is bestowed the task of concealing and revealing existence as such? This is precisely the purpose that according to Heidegger constitutes Man’s oppressive privilege, Man who is subjected to the painful experience of boredom and of Angst. The end of the film is as cheerful as it is mysterious: we are led into the house with the honey roof. In front of a window, open as in the paintings of Magritte, the inhabitants walk, in multiple exposure, naked and silent… –wernernekes.de