Amén
2013 · 14m · España
Directed by Alberto Pons, Álex Esteve
Genres: drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A journey through this apparently normal society in which we all live, a journey to the miseries of the everyday, a hard journey that condemns us to our own self-destruction: 'The mind is more complex than the universe that surrounds us…'
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise reads like a TED talk about consciousness, which should be a death sentence, but Pons and Esteve actually commit to the *experience* of cognitive vertigo instead of explaining it—which is either brilliantly subversive or pretentious as hell, and I honestly can't decide which I respect more.
This sits in a lineage of philosophical essay-films (Tarkovsky's long shadow, Koreeda's meditations on the mundane) where form and concept are inseparable; the restraint of the editing and the deliberate pacing prove these directors understand that the real subject isn't the mind but our complicity in its traps.
The single choice that anchors this—the decision to let scenes breathe without explanation, to trust negative space more than narrative—is what separates this from a philosophy class and makes it actually *feel* like consciousness collapsing in on itself.