In the Labyrinth
1979 · 21m · Canada
Directed by Roman Kroitor, Colin Low, Hugh O'Connor
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Without commentary, multiple contrasting images move through stages of a labyrinth, shifting from joy to sorrow and simplicity to ceremony to suggest each person lives within a personal labyrinth.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1979 essay film that refuses to explain itself feels like a gimme for me, but Kroitor and Low are too earnest about the metaphor—the labyrinth as personal suffering is exactly the kind of consensus gesture that makes experimental work feel safe rather than actually subversive.
This is canonical NFB formalism at its most assured: the progression through joy to ceremony to sorrow is structured with the precision of a visual poem, and the restraint to let montage do all the philosophical work places it squarely in the lineage of structural cinema that still rewards close viewing.
The decision to let image sequences *accumulate* emotional weight rather than build narrative momentum is the whole film—that choice to trust duration and repetition over conventional pacing is what separates this from dozens of other contemplative shorts trying the same gesture.