Critics reviews

To make clear that these are not the real subjects, these amateur actors from Urk stiffly declaim their dialogue, facing forward, their faces and bodies strongly lit and seemingly engraved into the pristine 35mm black-and-white stock. No faux verite here, no transparency: The film is rigorously Brechtian. We are mere observers locked out of the narrative.

Shot in bracing black-and-white and interspersed with lengthy text scrolls explaining the project, it's almost like a riposte to the total immersion of Leviathan, taking some inspiration and its title from La Terra Trema (which was originally subtitled "Episode of the Sea" and planned as part of a trilogy).

Pulling inspiration from... John Ford's episodic, chiaroscuro seaman's portmanteau The Long Voyage Home (1940), Straub-Huillet's techniques of staging recitations from non-professionals, Peter Nestler's deeply observant and sharply political documentaries, and with a spiritual link to the best of the National Film Board's form-challenging portraits of marginalized communities, the result is a porous portrait working many different tacks yet unexpectedly and compassionately coherent.

Although the high archness of tone can get wearying at times, it's hard to recall another film so disinterested in the traditional trappings of the documentary that is at the same time so brazenly willing to shout its documentary status to the world.

The result is a highly austere formulation reminiscent everyone from Straub to Robert Bresson in its aesthetic presentation, to, in its more humorously stilted dialogue exchanges, Finnish master Aki Kuarismaki. But the influence of these predecessors is assimilated rather than simply nodded at, bringing multiple strains of cultural and cinematic history together in one self-contained work.

If there is one film this year that I would implore you not to miss, to rearrange a day's screenings to accommodate, it is Episode of the Sea, a work of art that is as singular as it is classically inevitable.