Balamos

Here is a curious film, suggested to me as a 'gentler El Topo' and one that I watched two times back to back to fully absorb. This is an expansive story, in some manner the precursor of Cloud Atlas, and definitely it has elements common to El Topo. The film also has its own charm, the extremely personal way the film is shot and how the landscapes become an entity with the movie. The latter is achieved by strange way, he shoots both day and night as naturally close as possible. There are phases of darkness with only the moon and ambient noise, and nature becomes a breathing part of our protagonist's journey towards Olympus. In way this is the very same idea Inception is based on, but its used here with different connotations, very philosophical I believe. Our man wants to buy a horse, probably in reality probably not, and in his journey to do that he indulges into dreams that take him through his own past lives. He pictures himself as a slave in the middle ages, around Christ's resurrection, making his journey towards Olympus. The horse remains a recurrent motif throughout and somewhat elusive to our character. But this film is not much about the story as it is about symbolism and that is where similarities to El Topo come in. This is a quest of a man for the final truth, much like the Mahaprasthan undertaken by the Pandavas in Mahabharata, only that it remains ever elusive. The film is shot in low light and sub-par production values but it is transcendental in its core belief and sometimes stimulating, sometimes not. At places I found it to be a bit opaque and the story is easy to miss if you're not attentive because its really buried under the symbolic narrative, but the film does have some great moments of eternal truth. And through mostly simple, sometimes unreadable imagery. Probably I did not pick up all the Biblical references but the usage of the horse as a symbol of an illusive object of desire in reality as well as dream world was a very interesting element. I guess this is a movie that is actually 'obscure', considering the two reviews in IMDb are written by people who have put no effort into watching it. These are my thoughts on first sight, but I hope to understand this work better because it's indeed very interesting.

Even art-house wanking has it's limits but this takes the cake. To say that the plot is loose would be an understatement. Basically this is the story of a gypsy fairy-tale figure, Balamos, who is looking to buy a horse. From some point onwards, the film becomes a series of fantasy sequences: Balamos as a slave in biblical times; an encounter with a prophet who witnessed Christ's crucifixion; an encounter with an oracle; Balamos as some sort of vampire etc. In the end he returns to real life.

All the film is shot in documentary style, ie it seems unedited and cheaply shot. This is as cohesive as a bad dream, it's a series of chaotic images, almost dadaist cinema. The point is that in order to make this sort of thing appealing, you have to present really striking images, but Stavros Tornes is a talentless hack. This is like Felini's "Satyricon" without the vision.

Granted, SOME of the sequences are mildly interesting, and as an idea it sounds nice, but generally it's torture to watch. And what's the point really? What I find really disturbing is that this film was co-produced by the Greek Film Centre, which is founded by us taxpayers. I want my money back.

There is something very authentic in Tornes' film which has stayed with me ever since I saw it for the first time. Tornes, avoiding all conventional means, creates a world which looks far more real in some deep sense. All convention is based on assumptions upon which we usually build a supposedly common framework of communication. Despite this we experience constantly how ineffective this framework is and how limited is our ability to understand each other. Tornes goes beyond the apparent into the raw material of human spontaneity. By working at this level he seems to be able offer insightful answers to contemporary questions regarding art: How to engage in reality without depicting the "real", in culture without presupposing the "cultural", in meaningfulness without presupposing the "significant", in desiring without presupposing "values". How to get deeper into the "being" of the world through a deconstruction of its presumed objectivity. Balamos has a holistic coherence which does not allow someone talk of its images as separated from words or intentions. Had Tornes lived longer, I have no doubt that his influence in world cinema would have been unparalleled. What a talent!