Cycle index

Burrowing

Man tänker sitt

dir. Henrik Hellström, Fredrik Wenzel / Sweden 2009 / 76’

subtitles: Polish and English

New Horizons International Competition $e11.ou7! – Sell Out!, A Lake, Burrowing, Dazzle, Exhausted, Face, Helen, Hunger, Iréne, Mock up on Mu, Ne change rien, Oxygen, Spyder, Twilight Dancing Section index

Cast

Sebastian Eklund, Jörgen Svensson, Hannes Sandahl, Marek Kostrzewski, Bodil Wessberg, Silas Franceen

Film description

Maladapted, convention-exhausted ordinary people hug trees and plunge in a river. With what is left of their instincts, they search for the only power which distributes rights and opportunities justly.

Burrowing is narrated by a boy who watches the world around him: bizarre neighbours, sports fields, meadows, streets, nearby forests. He would rather throw his mother's souvenir watch away, drink muddy water from the river, be covered with dirt and walk on swamps than sing Happy Birthday at a party with everyone.

The film's motto is a quotation of words by the American philosopher and author, Henry David Thoreau, an anarchist and transcendentalist who rejected civilisation and civil society, leading a contemplative life in a hut on a lake in the woods. Everybody has a right to his own rhythm, to be bored, to wander, to do things which make no sense, which are controversial or risky. One doesn't have to prove anything, to mow loans, to repair, or to meet one's father's expectations. It suffices to live. The film's characters want to smell soil, feel its texture, they want to belong to nature, to the reality without anything resulting from this belonging: no obligations or tasks.

A poignant film with excellent music and beautiful cinematography, utterly devoid of any unnecessary argumentation or decoration.

Paulina Sieniuć