the situation is. Aquarela’s crew, invisible
but ensconced with the seafarers, brings
us into this harrowing situation to make
us ponder our total exposure. We don’t
need to be told that the forces unleashed
by global warming will find us when the
ice has melted—and the film thankfully
avoids all commentary, even refraining
from explanatory intertitles. Although
the film ends with a rainbow beneath
the stunning waters of Angel Falls, we feel
we have only narrowly escaped. And we
shouldn’t deem ourselves too secure:
after this film, terra firma no longer feels
like a given. Reversing directionality
(why is the rainbow below the water?)
and pulling back to situate us vis-à-vis
the world’s highest waterfall provide no
solace or grounding.
Kossakovsky’s film is dedicated to fellow
Russian filmmaker Alexander Sokurov. In
attempting to experiment with new forms
of representation, Kossakovsky, too, sets
his camera free. If Russian Arkbrought
Sokurov to global attention with one glid-
ing, unbroken long take, Aquarela flies as
well, across the globe. The camera’s mobil-
ity allows Kossakovsky to abstract from the
water, creating suggestive patterns from
both afar and close up. Water has held a
privileged place in his oeuvre from the out-
set: his first film, Belovy(1992), is set at the
mouth of a river in a small village between
Moscow and St. Petersburg; the camera is
placed on a little boat and travels 1,000
kilometers to the North Sea. Bornholm, a
Danish island off the southern coast ofSweden, provides the setting for Kos-
sakovsky’s 2000 film I Loved You. In this
case, a window onto the Baltic plays an
important role. In Aquarela, the director
tries to push the cinematic element fur-
ther. Crisp zigzags on ice create a lattice;
water looks like black, viscous oil; an
interwoven pattern of brown and yellow
evokes unfurling tapestry. Aquarela
artfully evokes the legacy of the avant-
garde—such as Joris Ivens’s Rain from
1929—to make a contemporary experimen-
tal work, one that embraces total immersion.
The Dolby Atmos soundtrack adds to
the film’s encompassing experience. It care-
fully transitions between the Finnish “cello
metal” band Apocalyptica, the sounds
of water, and human signals for disaster.
Any comprehensive discussion of this film
will have to account for the syncopated
rhythms, the sound bridges, and the
sirens; near the beginning, the bursting of
the ice on Lake Baikal punctuates the film
images like small explosions, offering an
ambiguous commentary. The conflagra-
tions to come, when sea levels rise, may
move this sound out of nature’s register
and back into man’s. In moments like
the bursting of the ice, the film, in all its
grandeur and careful unfolding, becomes
apocalyptic in its own right. In asking us to
contemplate water’s power and its densely
metaphoric nature, we realize our extreme
dependence on it in more senses than one.Fatima Naqvi teaches German and film
studies at Yale University.July-August 2019|FILMCOMMENT| 73SHORT TAKE
LUCEDirector:Julius Onah
Country/Distributor:
USA, NEON
Opening:August 2Julius Onah’s
Sundance-feted
adaptation of J.C.
Lee’s off-Broadway
play wrings an
intriguing variation
on the witch-hunt
trope, for an era
of identity politics.
Eritrean-born Luce
(Kelvin Harrison Jr.)
is as modest as big
men on campus
get, but his African-
American history
teacher Ms. Wilson
(Octavia Spencer)
suspects something
sinister beneath the
facade. Her skepti-
cism puts her first at
odds, and then—
after a series
of complications
involving mislaid
explosives and
accusations of sex-
ual impropriety—in
complicitous con-
tact with Luce’s
adoptive parents
(Tim Roth and
Naomi Watts), text-
book liberals who,
à la Bradley Whit-
ford’s pater in Get
Out, surely would
have voted for
Obama a thirdtime if possible.
That the 44th
President’s name
gets invoked along
the way concretizes
Lee’s zeitgeist-
baiting aspirations,
and the overall feel-
ing of a work styled
more as a glancing,
fretful inventory of
social concerns is
hard to shake. But
there’s also some-
thing to be said for
placing provocative
ideas in conversa-
tion, and the actors,
especially Harrison
and Watts, make
for eloquent mouth-
pieces. The ques-
tion of whether
Luce’s appropriation
as a symbol of
social progress is
compatible with any
sort of authentic
humanity is ren-
dered excitingly
indeterminate via
Harrison’s perfor-
mance, which sug-
gests a smart kid
figuring out how to
do the best imita-
tion of himself at all
times. When Onah
and Lee go for the
grand sociological
gesture, Lucereeks
of effort, but when it
hunkers down with
its characters and
their complications,
it’s compelling stuff.
—Adam NaymanAquarelaartfully evokes the legacy of the avant-garde—such as Joris Ivens’s Rainfrom 1929—to make a
contemporary experimental work, one that embraces total immersion.AQ
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