Director’s Cup- Film Analysis: The Corridor by Sharunas Bartas

corridor n. a long passage in a building from which doors lead into rooms.
Oxford English Dictionary

This film opens with an exterior shot of Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, with its ubiquitous smoke stacks and factories. Accompanying this rather bleak image is a demulcent male voice humming what sounds like a cross between a mournful threnody and a sweet lullaby. The titular corridor symbolizes the chamber of the collective unconscious of the Lithuanian people. It also represents the narrow passage of aesthetics Sharunas Bartas negotiates in his second feature-length film—a balancing act of portraying the ingrained sense of melancholy etched on the wizened faces and burned into the lugubrious eyes of the characters and their quiet hopes for the future, hopes which they dare not curse by iterating them with words.

This film was made in 1994, in the immediate years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and Lithuania’s independence. It is notable that Bela Tarr’s Satantango, with similar stylistic as well as thematic elements, was also made in the same year. Much as in Tarr’s film, sadness permeates the air of the said corridor of a run-down apartment building as well as the hearts of its residents. The film critic Acquarello has referred to the state of Bartas’ characters as a “demoralized collective psyche foundering in the obsolescence of an elusive and crumbled ideology.” This isn’t simply a case of the understated show of emotions pioneered by Robert Bresson and imitated in countless arthouse films of varying qualities. The characters are afflicted with a contagious form of metaphorical aphasia and catatonia.

But even amidst this doom and gloom, we witness small moments of mirth. In what may be the most action-filled scene that reverberates with flashbacks to the hypnotic dance scene from Satantango, we see the building residents dance to songs—romantic Latin songs like “Puerto Rico” by Vaya con Dios and “Escucha Me” by the Gypsy Kings. In the hearts and minds of these people burdened by the weight of their quotidian lives and oppressive gray chilly skies are souls that yearn for warmth and exoticism.

Bartas, as have many other great political filmmakers before him, has made a great political film without making explicit references to politics. The Corridor hits that bittersweet spot between Bela Tarr’s Satantango, and Andrei Tarkovsky’s The Mirror, somewhere between collective experiences and personal recollections. And it is far more than merely mimetic, because Bartas manages to fuse the personal memories of childhood within the frame of greater sociological implications.

Great intro, Blue—and thanks for showcasing this in the Cup.

I loved this film from the outset and the more I think about it the more it’s growing on me. You mention a demoralized collective psyche foundering in the obsolescence of an elusive and crumbled ideology.” Yes, you can really feel this in the film though there’s nothing overtly stated about any ideology.

Certain of the images in particular haunt me: The girl being repeatedly pushed back into the murky water; the dwarf continually circling the table. You get the sense of things taking place that have to reason, or whose reason has failed so that the remnants are empty rituals that have devloved into something mindless and animalistic.

It’s a film I’ll be revisiting.

Indeed, this film by Bartas is an excellent selection. Thanks for the intro, I can see the parallels to “Sátántangó” and “The Mirror” while at the same time Bartas has a very distinctive style. I’m planning to rewatch this fascinating film, and will come back to this thread in a day or two to discuss.

Nice Blue, your intro reads perfectly.
Thanks for bringing Bartas to the surface for me (I didn’t know about him).
Good thing that Tarr and Bartas were of the same époque that way people cannot discredit one or the other for their similarities.
Unfortunately Tarr and Tarko’s work is not very extensive so it’s good to discover faces with similar styles.

I knew the scene where the girl (or was it a boy I couldn’t tell) was constantly being pushed in the water would be one to be discussed as it is a powerful one. That determination of the weak to fight the strong eventhough knowing from the beginning that the battle is lost, surely relates to the oppressed society in that time of history. Satantango’s cat scene implies something similar, although there, the girl being oppressed takes it on the cat just because she is able to… so the strong oppresses the weak which then oppress the weaker.

THE CORRIDOR seemed like the trailer for Satantango.

Too bad this is against Kiarostami.

^ Canaletto: You’re not alone—I was only aware of Bartas because of a recent Unspoken Cinema article. I came back here to see if anyone knew who he was and Blue was one of the first to steer me to his films.

I plan on completing his filmography sometime after the Cup.

You say “too bad” as if it’s already lost. Koridorius is a magnificent film, bordering on near perfection. Even without prior knowledge to Lithuania’s tumultuous history, one can feel the bleakness, the sadness permeating from every frame. Yes, as Blue stated, there are glimpses of joy, but the use of high contrast black and white (very Film Noir like) make that joy null and void.

These are the films avoided by the lovers of the mainstream as being “too slow” or “too sad” or because “nothing happens.” Frankly, amidst “nothing” happening, it speaks in more volumes than many films created, and even more than so called political films who’s only tool is bluntness or, even worse, clever use of the truth. There are no selective truths in this film, it is what it is. Quite like Satantango, nothing is hyperbolized, and nothing is understated, it just is. The personal place Bartas takes us to is to be heralded, and I’d love to see this little film championed by more.

A wonderful first choice for Bartas, and my first Bartas as well.

I can easily see this film winning Round 1, not to take anything away from the Kiarostami film.

Maybe I didn’t finish the sentence.
Too bad this is against Kiarostami because one of them will be eliminated in the first round.
I would like to see both of them go further up and having their films discussed. I wouldn’t like any of them to go right now.

Films like this are as limited as you are.

I think it’s going to be one of the closer matches of the first round. And like I said in the Kiarostami thread, I’m crushed that these two filmmakers had to be paired in the first round because they both deserve to have more of their work showcased.

“Films like this are as limited as you are.”

Well-said. Of course I think this applies to Ten Skies as well.

Ah, that makes way more sense, Canaletto.

Sorry about that.

JR; from the little I read about Ten Skies I might have a problem with it, I might let you know why later in your forum. At the moment I’m trying to finish my damn thesis and I’m a bit behind.

Blue: In the case of a match up between Bartas and Tarr who would you go for?… Are all Bartas’ films similar to this?

Wow, great intro, Blue. I got to watch this two days ago, and I’m definitely glad it was brought up in the cup.

Although the child being constantly pushed into the muddy water was a powerful scene indeed, what really showed me the true strength of this movie was the scene in the apartment, as everybody dances and drinks as the music plays behind them. It was a joy to see these people have fun, but at the same time quite mortifying to feel that the joy and hope they have in that moment will probably not last. Very impressive stylistically, and like Josh Ryan before, this is a filmmaker I will definitely seek out more of in the future.

Blue, I would like to get your take on the lack of dialogue. Did you see it as a “great political film without making explicit references to politics” using a particular technique to try and further that statement – basically, the film acting as the voice of the voiceless? Of course, that question is open to all, and I’d love to hear anybody’s impressions on that.

I was very impressed with the presence of games and dynamics, and how they link characters in emotional terms: For example, fire writing and then clothesline on fire, toothpicks and glasses’ games. I link such attemps of structure’s construction, with the building and rooms’ structure of the film itself. There are processes and dynamics in the streets and Bartas alludes to them powerfully sometimes in just one shot. Long shots of the city have nothing to do with establishing shots: they show us structures and hierarchies.

K White—- I like your idea that dialogue was not included as giving voice to the voiceless. In a film such as this one, I do not think that script is necessary. I believe Glemaud mentioned earlier that the film speaks volumes just as. I think by refraining from following a conventional linear plot and using non-formulaic methods the film is able to capture the essence of life truthfully.

This film makes me think about the area where I work. The neighborhood is a poor section where most people do not speak English (or very little) and live differently than the suburban neighborhood in which I live. I get to see everyone interact and live within a completely different culture than my own. I don’t understand half of what is said, so it’s similar to this film in its lack of dialogue. But at the same time I get a true sense of people’s lives. I see their pain-stricken struggles, their sordid living conditions, AND the sporadic gaiety in simple situations, their connectedness and cohesiveness, etc…life includes many different facets. And just as real life, the film was able to exceptionally grab the brilliant displays of the various and fleeting things life brings… It was able to bring levity and humour to dreary situations and also illustrate anguish and isolation when appropriate and sincere.

(not sure this adds anything new…just my thoughts..)

Great intro Blue, I’ll be looking forward to watching this one and I suspect I’ll be equally disappointed that it was matched with Kiarostami’s film which I like a great deal.

Great intro Blue. yea it is sad that Bartas matched with Kiarostami. Corridor was my first Bartas and I’d love it i really like the black and whites shots, they impress me a lot . it was a great discovery for me. i won’t be upset if i loose to corridor ;)

there was hope in this? all i got was a great grandiose smack of despair and degradation in the face. the father touchingly, pointlessly cleaning the child’s face. and black humour – i’ll say it again, loved the shotgun didgeridoo….and the proffered flowers at the glass tower….but was this film not a touch too glorious in its despair?

i might have to abstain from voting in this match. i just can’t decide.

“The characters are afflicted with a contagious form of metaphorical aphasia and catatonia” – that was great =) Blue has done a nice introduction. This film is great and full of symbolism.
I just want to share 2 thoughts.
I saw the kid as a personification of a young state, fighting and trying to get out of the mud, it gave me the impression of a process of self awareness, a conflict of identity between a devastated village and his opressor (perhaps a soviet superego).
Second, I was really surprised when I heard fado, the first song when all are drinking in the kitchen.
I searched in youtube but this was the best version I could find: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7Do4zMx5qk
There’s also a political issue in this popular song, where portuguese villagers, living near the border with Spain, claim for idependence to the saint of Almortão, they ask her to turn her back to the spanish reing of castela, “you don’t want to be castellana”.
Well, Good luck for the cup!
Bartas deserves more recognition

posting my review then I will read the comments

This film is takes place just after the independence of Lithuania from the USSR and in a claustrophobic apartment somewhere in Vilnius.
It is told as scenes of apartment life with no dialog or narrative structure. People venture out of the apartment to do things: smoke, handle a rifle, peep at others but they return to its long hallways, meant to express transition (you never exactly know what is going on done that hallway).

The film is cinema verite beauty, lovely faces and sad eyes. The sounds are day to day noise, trains, babies, water.

Sometimes the films long takes put on in a meditative mind, sometimes one wants to hit fast forward for a moment. But those moments are few and the images here, the fire and water, the feeling of watching and being watched are compelling. This hit me harder than Tarr.

I really enjoyed this experience

Grade A-

I guess I was far from alone when I kept thinking of Tarr when I saw this. Actually the only of his movies I’ve seen I Werckmeister Harmonies, even though no one mentioned that particular film in their comparisons.

I was captivated with this one too. I could have watched that sheet burning all day (but maybe I’m just a bit of a pyromaniac). For a while watching it I was getting a bit anxious to know more of the context. In the end I appreciated it as a beautiful, laconic observation of an alienated community. And I’m a big sucker for that kind of thing.

I would like to check out more of Bartas work, but do think I will pick Kiarostami’s selection this round. It takes a little more narrative in a film to make me really love it. Nothing super complicated, but nice and simple like Where is the Friend’s Home?

Blue K, do any of Bartas’s other works approach more of a traditional narrative with a little more insight into characters’ histories or motives?

Wonderful intro, Blue. And you’re perfectly exact in your comparison of Korridorius to Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (in style/approach) and Tarr’s Satantango (in theme). As I was watching this film I kept thinking of The Mirror and there really is that wonderful organic quality to both films, as if one is following a “stream of consciousness” where thoughts, ideas, sound, and images come and go without conventional organization or any recognizable pattern, but that isn’t to say the film is just random images – it certainly isn’t. Reminded me of a visual interpretation of a William S. Burroughs’ cut-up technique … kinda, there’s some elements of that.

Anyway, incredible film.

Grade: A

Thanks, everyone.

@ Canaletto,
Well, if somehow Bartas and Tarr were to be matched up in this event, I wouldn’t be able to vote anyway as I’m managing Bartas. But if you mean to ask whether I prefer Bartas or Tarr…well, that’s a tough tough question. Tarr does have the two towering masterpieces with Satantango and Werckmeister Harmonies. In my opinion though, I think that The Corridor is as good as Werckmeister Harmonies. And I have seen everything by Bartas so far with the except of his latest film that’s on the festival circuit, and he has not made a single mediocre film. Tarr, on the other hand, seems to have missed the mark with Man from London. It’s really just too close to call.

@ Kai,
You asked if the film is acting as the voice of the voiceless? And I think so. The taciturn nature of these characters works particularly well in this film, because of the specific political setting. Lithuania had just declared independence after centuries of Russian domination—punctuated by a period of suffering at the hands of Nazi Germany. But as a general rule, Bartas does not employ a lot of dialogue in his films. But his films do feature exquisite sound design. I neglected to mention this, but this film is as much of an aural treat as a visual one.

@ Risselada,
No, Bartas does not work within more traditional narrative methods. He doesn’t provide any kind of expository insight into the histories and motives of his characters. But I think he does do so in a non-explicit way, with the exquisite visuals, sound design, atmosphere, and so on.

And a note about the little boy that gets beaten up by older bullies: This is my personal interpretation, and I have really nothing to back it up with, but I believe that the boy may represent the younger version of the man played by Sharunas Bartas himself (the 30-something man with longish hair and a stone face).

^ To your last point, this is exactly what I have been thinking in the days since I saw the film.

Also, I have to second the sound design in this largely wordless film as being exquisite. It doesn’t have to be, since the visuals are strong enough to carry the film without sound, and yet the aural is just as mesmerizing and as important part of the whole.

Of all the films I’ve seen for the Cup so far, this is the one I’ll rewatch first.

Blue K for President.

(Okay, that last part might be the beer talking.)

@ Josh,
Yes, and if the boy is indeed the younger version of Sharunas Bartas’ character, I think this definitely does have to be an allusion/homage to Tarkovsky’s The Mirror in that this film is also a dreamlike biography. And there is also that scene with the young girl staring at herself in the mirror.

Oh, and this film gets BETTER on the rewatch.

really loved this film…this is my favorite shot:

Koridorius (aka The Corridor) – 1994- Sharunas Bartas – Film #4 for the Directors’ Cup

Koridorius plays out with a stylistic feel not too far from that of Werckmeister Harmonies (admittedly less long takes and a bit more of a grim, down to earth feel but nonetheless having a similar visual flair with its black and white cinematography, never verging on intimate and always feeling very much an observer, and also taking place in a similar locale to Werckmeister merely replacing houses for a more built up infrastructure. It should be noted I want to say Satantango as even having not yet seen Satantango the similarities between it Koridorius are clear, but I will wait until I have actually seen Bela Tarr’s seven hour long depression fest before attempting to compare them) crossed with the structure and nature of Tarkovsky’s The Mirror (stream of conciousness presentation of someone’s memories, albeit this film being concerned with a rather immediate collective memory rather than the more distant personal ones of Tarkovsky’s masterpiece).

Like both those films Koridorius has a very measured pace in its look at the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR. Set in the now independent Lithuania the film looks at the lives of these ordinary people who are caught in a period of sorrow, of flickering and unspoken hope, of a melancholious yearning, where words are rarely if ever spoken (there are only a few lines in the film) perhaps out of sadness, or an aknowledgement that they will not change things, or an attempt to hide from the present by never mentioning it. Misery and a feeling of being lost and struggling for the right expression all permeate this film and very quickly began to dig their claws in to me, albeit in a startlingly gentle manner. At one point I began to cry for quite how much the mood of the film was putting me right in this position of restrained and doubtful hopefulness.

Perhaps the most striking scene is a dance where for the one and only time in the film we see the people living on this corridor letting their hair down and enjoying themselves, except not quite. For whilst the dancing seems like the one moment of joy for these tenents in it there is a great deal of pain and anguish. In one of the dances a woman proceeds to slowly poor drink down over her and it becomes desperately obvious in what is surely the most moving scene in the film (though other scenes come very close with many sad faces resonating, a clothesline slowly burning feeling like an emotional deathblow albeit one that has a desperately slow release as the flames slowly spread over a matter of what may have even been a couple of minutes – you lose all track of time in this film -, a struggle as a boy is pushed repeatedly in to a puddle showing a stubborness and resilience) that this dancing is not so much escapism through entertainment but rather a rare way in which these tenents can express their anguish.

The corridor in which this all takes place ties neatly in to an early comment of the film being concerned with the collected memories of a people, for it is in the rooms that memories lie all linked together in a grander scheme of things. The film looks stunning throughout and the soundscape is also hugely effective adding up to a film that struck me deeply, though one that I couldn’t quite fully comprehend (which perhaps serves to make it all the more striking).

9.5/10

Thanks Blue, that was spectacular. I dug Kiarostami’s film but damn this is an easy choice for me.

Very good film. A bleak portrait of the times in post-USSR Eastern Europe. I see the similarities with Tarr, however I prefer Tarr over Bartas. I enjoyed the party scene a lot. I really couldn’t shake the feeling that their joy was going to be short lived. I’m glad that Blue K pointed out that the little boy was a younger representation of Bartas’ character. I saw the visual comparison between the two but wasn’t sure if it was just a coincidence. This matchup will be very hard for me to vote on, luckily I still have a couple more days. 8/10

I see that people liked the scene where the girl (or boy?) is repeatedly pushed back into the water but to me it verged on the comic. Did anyone else have that reaction?

I had never seen Bartas nor Tarr before this competition. However, I watched Tarr’s Damnation before watching The Corridor, so while watching this film I immediately thought of Tarr. But I liked Tarr’s film better because I thought he had more striking images. Also, his slow methodical camera movements imparted a nice fated and bleak quality to the film. Strangely, the bleakness of The Corridor didn’t connect with me. I really liked the dancing scene near the end though.

Also, how many of you watched the youtube version of this film? Because the quality was really poor. For a movie whose visual style is built upon black and white contrast, the quality has to be good enough to capture the deep blacks. So some of the images that were very black heavy were simply hard for me to make out.

I liked this film but ultimately I prefer Kiarostami’s.

There’s a torrent out there for this film, that’s how I watched it. I hate watching films on youtube, but then again, sometimes you have no choice.