Perspective
2020 · 1m
Directed by Robbie J. Atkinson
Genres: essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, sensual, tender
A one-minute wordless juxtaposition of humankind and nature, tracing likeness between a woman and the wilderness through color and music.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A minute of woman-as-nature metaphor is exactly the kind of consensus-approved lyric essay that gets programmed everywhere; Atkinson's doing competent work here, but there's nothing subversive enough to justify the experimental label.
Atkinson situates this squarely in the lineage of structural cinema and the poetic essay film—the restraint of one minute, the interplay of color and music as formal equivalence, the deliberate refusal of narrative all signal a filmmaker thinking rigorously about form.
The real lift here is the sound design's refusal to sentimentalize: that choice to let the music and natural texture coexist without ever swelling into catharsis is what separates this from a thousand other contemplative montages.
Reviews
The film seeks to synthesize through its cinematography an inherent love for the universal source of our being. By closing the distance between herself and the elements, the woman illustrates a peace found only in giving up worldly signifiers and replacing them with those that highlight the connection with this source.