The Outsiders

Few of Us (1996) - Bartas









We are introduced to a vast wintry landscape below through the helicopter windshield. A young woman (Katerina Golubeva) is dropped off in the remote village where its inhabitants seem like the Eskimos in the far north. She shares a smoke with an old reindeer herder. There is a bit of magic realism with the bedroom overgrown with vegetation. But the welcome is short lived. At the gathering of the villagers at night, Kat watches their drunkenness in silence from one corner of the room. She sticks out like a sore thumb, since she is taller than everyone around her. Did she come to the place looking for acceptance or solace? After a knife fight with a couple of drunken local men, she flees the village on foot. No one helps her. Some even pretend not to notice her struggle.

Few of Us is no anthropological survey or gooey, touch-y feel-y travelogue where everyone gets along. It's a cold, unforgiving world for the Bartas' outsiders. Their loneliness is accentuated here with breathtaking scenery and the village's physical remoteness. The film is gorgeous as usual. Bartas holds the static shots for good 2-3 minutes, so they can come alive before your eyes . Again, his no dialog approach fits much better here with the isolation and sadness of the characters than other interloper films like Varda's Vagabond (which I love very much but now obviously not as much as this). I loved it. It surely becomes one of my favorites of all time!

Fleeting Present, Free Future

The House/A Casa (1997) - Bartas





Except for the brief narration in the beginning, the film is wordless. A young man wakes up in a grand decrepit mansion. The house is inhabited by various people in many different rooms. There is no decipherable communication among them. They eat and drink together at the table under the grand chandelier. One room is occupied by a man who plays chess against himself, one filled with naked giggling children, one with an accordion player, and so on, and so on. Everywhere you look, it's a beautiful decay. The house is steeped in cold, damp melancholia.

A Casa is perhaps the most visually stunning film I've ever encountered. Time stands still in this mansion. Yet present is too fleeting: one can't be sure if it really exists. Its dreamlike visuals are neither nightmarish or overly pleasurable. There is something deeper at work here. I resisted the temptation of regarding each room as some type of metaphor and seeing the film as a Mathew Barney style slick moving art installation. Watching the film, one can still feel the dark days of the former Soviet rule lingering in those soulful faces. They speak thousand words with their stares. And no one captures Eastern European melancholy like Bartas. The film climaxes with the Christmas Supper scene and fireworks. I was in non-narrative film heaven. A truly rapturous experience.

My Sharunas

Three Days (1991) - Bartas






It's a gray Lithuanian port town. Some young derelicts are trying to find a lodging (to sleep together?) but the town is full of groggy, unfriendly people. That's about it. Not many words are uttered and there is no music, other than the ones from the dance hall across the street. There are no distinguishable characters or names. Some unique faces here and there. It's also drama free. Decrepit lots, basements and cold, wet surroundings. Nevertheless Sharunas Bartas sees glimpses of beauty everywhere. It's in gestures, flickering lights, that uncontrollable, sad laughs of young Katerina Golubeva, the sight of a thousand years old blond street urchin smoking.

Unlike other films of this kind (Gus Van Sant's Death Trilogy comes to mind), Three Days feels deeper, that there is history behind this dreariness and quietude. It's not alienation nor loneliness I feel. It's a moment of awkwardness, a moment of kinship that counts. No words necessary. There is a scene right after they get kicked out of a lodging house. In the dark alleyway, Bartas camera first lingers on the three protags where baby Golubeva laughs hopelessly, then takes off to the side to show another vagrant eating an apple under the dim lights. We still hear her laugh but the camera remains on the old chum eating voraciously.

Bartas, where have you been all my life? R.I.P. Yekaterina, I'll miss you.