An expressionistic melancholy spell. Painstakingly composed and beautifully lit. The texture and hues of the images are remarkable.
The images do very little of the storytelling beyond place, space, and tone. The story itself is almost completely orally told. Even then, words emerge after long ambient soundscapes of unseen "slum life" always just happening beyond the image's frames or on the other side of walls.
Whether it's day or night, it's almost always pitch, with pinpoint spotlighting illuminating only parts of this desolate world and the striking faces that occupy it. Most of the image is in consummate shadow. Until the end, when, finally, emerging from out of our mourning, we begin to see daylight and sky. Most of this sky is in memory, but not all.
The pacing is so languid and the creative choices so deliberate that we have plenty of time to live inside the images and moments.
I felt there was some Bergman here: the disenchanted priest; the memory haunted spaces and characters; the faces floating in darkness, only their eyes revealing the depths of their emotional experiences.
You are forgiven for thinking that this film is boring or could be shorter. You are forgiven for thinking that it is perfect as it is, even somehow fragile; that it creates the exact effect on the viewer that is intended.
You are forgiven for thinking and feeling anything you've ever thought and felt, as long as you turn your face towards kindness from this moment forward... but you must do it quick, before the credits roll.
