Antoine D'Agata's uncomfortably-honest shots of human bodies in his particularly-haunting aesthetics makes for what is initially an engaging film. Combined with a prologue consisting of clips from many different films as well as real-life footage, he goes off comparing authenticity of fictional films alongside non-fictional recordings. Their distinctly different cinematic nature. But neither will never serve as proper replacement for documentary photography. "Worlds full of good photographers but whats missing is personal perspective", witch Antoine's is truly is the most unique and honest i've ever seen.
However, even then D'Agata challenges the role documentary photography, as his works function more like anti-documentary: they are meant to "contaminate" photography, making those who are used to conventional documentation to be uncomfortable and asking us to question our notions of what we expect life to look like (as per his interview). He is someone who intentionally participates in what he photographs or films in this case, thereby taking personal responsibility and becoming both artist and subject; instead of attempting to remain distanced and neutral, he fully embraces and dives into experiance of his subjects lives . Theres a sequence in movie in Cambodia where he spent 7 month using hard drugs and only took one photograph of him sitting by the table full of drugs. D'Agata, more than anything else, seeks commitment way of living in the world that he photographs.
It is difficult to describe what watching this is like, so all I can possibly relay is the overwhelming wall of despair and suffering of the world. D'agata brings us to every part of the world South America, Africa, South Asia and parts of Europe with 25 monologues including his own witch is pretty narcissistic view of the world. Being narated by spanish speaking female with such a mesamarizing voice witch for me brought such much needed calmness in between chapters. This film delivers trans-like vision of women in rapture inducing by sex and narcotics in a way i never seen before. Movie continuously batters against you during every single minute of this crushingly-long affair. At many points I considered turning it off, but ultimately developed a numbness that allowed me to push on through. Like the subjects documented in here, sometimes we have to block everything out. By combining photography, film and monologues he creates a cinematic and emotional masterpiece
Consider this movie to be remastered version of his previous releases AKA Ana (2008) and Atlas (2013) Everything was put in this 3+ hours long movie with a little bit more new content.
Antoine's lates work is documented photographic images shot with thermal camera in the streets of Paris during Covid outbreak. "It is in this ambivalence between solidarity and contamination he says" and since thermal camera doesn't capture light but heat many details he considers meaningles are ignored and in a way gets inside certain core of essence of human beings.
