Elements of Disintegration in Profile and Anfas Peter Brunner is a young Austrian director, a student of Michael Haneke, who refuses to shoot “in imitation of the master”, and thus saves himself as a creative unit, and the fruits of his work. Behind his shoulders are two feature films: the debut work “My Blind Heart” and “Those Who Fall Can Fly”. This is the second film and I would like to say a few words.
Filitarily talented work with the most powerful problems of accepting death at its core causes colossal rejection almost on the physical level. I want to leave the hall even for those who have never allowed themselves such excesses during their audience career. I did not allow it, but twice (!) was mentally ready to leave, but, persuading myself to stay, in the end did not regret it. Rejection is partly due to the acute sensation of manipulation, play with the viewer’s perception, which can hardly be dismissed if we look at something that can shake our psyche, calling to action its most effective defense mechanisms. After watching, you can fall into ostracism and irrepressible criticism, but it is impossible to deny the obvious - all the elements of your body have been rebuilt. Something in you died during the session. On the contrary, life has seen something.
The picture is filled with symbols: color (mourning black-passionate red-life-affirming green), and animalistic (pigs are associated in this context with the nascent sexuality, aggressiveness and unpredictability of the shadow material of the human psyche). The endless viewing of the video chronicle with the participation of the deceased grandmother is essentially a form of emotional masturbation, and the confused rhythm of breathing in an asthmatic seizure gives rise to the sound of future ecstatic pleasure on the verge of moaning.
The naturalness of the life cycle, in which life is replaced by death, and life comes again, finds its embodiment in the principles of breathing: inhalation (life) – exhalation (death), but stopping at this stage can lead to self-destruction. New breath. The cycle is closing. However, Katya's body reacts to the crisis with interruptions in breathing. On the body of Pia - a rash of a clearly psychosomatic nature. The body in Brunner’s painting is not just an external shell, but a living embodiment of all spiritual impulses, sensitively registering and reacting to any internal movement.
All the characters are women. They represent childhood, youth and old age. With the death of the grandmother (old age in the sense of old attitudes, an old situation, for example, childhood, which is irretrievably gone and will never be repeated), youth (Katya) must be transformed into maturity, killing the infantile gut (Pia). How is the infantile gut destroyed? Through a sensual understanding of death. The death of another is always the forerunner of his own. The worst episode is a young child trapped in a pen. “Do you want to know where your grandmother is?” The seemingly unjustified cruelty is transformed into a saving loophole: you cannot build a new without destroying the old. You can’t grow up without killing your naive old self. The theme of farewell is also a red thread across the picture, for farewell marks not only the actual “goodbye” said to the deceased grandmother, but also humility before the inevitable transition to a new level of existence.
The treatment of women as daughters of chaos, capable of reaching the edge and knowing its (chaos) structure, is characteristic of Lars von Trier, whom Brunner candidly quotes, recalling the Antichrist. As in the Antichrist, the theme of the special connection of women with nature, which in the perception of von Trier is the Church of Satan, is postulated. Women not only generate life, but also take it: the scene of the evisceration of a fish appeals to an episode of another film by another director, namely Tarkovsky’s Mirror.
With his painting, Peter Brunner sets a very high bar not only for those around him, but also for himself, thus challenging and testing himself for strength. Let's hope things get better. Even more perfect, if only our eyes can bear that perfection.