Anyone interested in film will find their way here, but I am supposing you need to steel yourself.
You may come because you know what this woman invented in terms of composition of the interframe. I place her above Eisenstein for both effect and importance.
You may come because you are interested in how film can actually change instead of merely reflect the world. It can, it does.
Or you may simply come because you are fascinated by the woman, a dancer, celebrant of the body, an Arian ideal, sexually active for 75 years including with top Nazis. Shunned by the film world, and finding a new challenge in underwater photography.
But when you come, you will confront a strange form of narrative, the spiritual metaphor, the Goethe model with blunt, plain cosmology. Its that used by Nazis extremely effectively and now appropriated by similar zealots. Extreme differentiation between good and evil: good fundamentally linked to spiritual forces which we do not deserve. Only severe dedication can allow us to deserve to adore it. Its all rather curious how superstitious structures can be sold, and you'll have to slog through it. And with some extraordinarily blunt acting.
("Sir Arne's Treasure" of a dozen years earlier did all these things with natural skill, and they work.)
But what you will get is some astonishing composition, even in this her very first film as director. A striking location that is almost unbelievable, but the most striking thing is her in the local. Every time she is set in the mountain, it is done with such lightness that we cannot avoid feeling visited by the supernatural. You have to see her climbing a vertical wall with bare hands and moccasins, thousands of feet up. You have to see her scrambling like a sprite around the bottom of the waterfall. You even have to see her present a sort of holy pulchritude while sleeping. This alone impresses once it settles that everything you see of her was designed by her. It weaves a fascination for a transcendent earth and womb that's genuine.
So my visit with this was a matter of awe at what a person can do, but I have that from elsewhere. More, it was accompanied by a parallel awe at the pull of the story, the story that I know ends badly and possibly always will, but we follow it.
I suppose that a slight, a very slight adjustment in this woman's makeup would have made a profound difference for several billions of people, and I further suppose that had she been trained slightly differently in dance that adjustment, that introspection would have been implanted. So if we had that fabled, magical time machine and wanted to go back in time to prevent the holocaust, perhaps killing Hitler isn't the right touchstone. It may be spending an evening in deep conversation with the man who loves the woman who taught Leni's dance teacher. Yes, that would do it.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
