Blackwater Fever

We weep not because we are sad; we are sad because we weep. William James

The land resembles a Big Mac, composed of layers of earth from Namibia, Spain and a few other desert regions. Between them some tough vegetation, trimmed by a broad road. On it, a splendid American limo of uncertain age flashes forward out of the distance, as if from a fata morgana. It dashes past us with a roaring din like a passing jet plane. The old tin beast is not completely without elegance, so that it is some time before we realise that the car is nothing more than a sick, blundering body, a piece of wounded game running hunted into the bush. It keeps on re-emerging far away in the locale, and it keeps on rattling, rumbling, ticking and clattering past us. Apparently, it is a clear warning of what is to follow.

Yet as the head of the driver then comes into the picture, we are actually still not ready for what is in store for us. The desperate traveller's week-end beard is still tentative, it can still be shaven off, as if his fate is not yet quite sealed. Only when a woman suddenly appears at his side without really anything changing, do we realize that salvation is no longer possible.

The traveller is then already condemned to himself, he has become a Persona, a mask. The commonplace traveller appears to have become a Traveller. The director of the film is also powerless before this change. The Traveller is a sun worshipper, he continually gazes at the sun directly, with his classic National Health specs as intermediary. One glass is focused; the other, almost transparent, glass works as camera, telescope and binoculars at one and the same time. For the moment Frisch's optical material is not really working for him, although really everything can be discerned on the Traveller's countenance. But the subtly exploratory camera gradually does obtain insight into the quirks of mystical fate written upon it. How, to compensate for initiation into the secret of the Sun, he is felled by blindness and the blackwater fever.

An initially malevolent entrance that after all is said and done, we are to share, weeping, with him as a necessary rite-de-passage.