VANDALS: BRIGHTNESS

By Steven Boone

There is a hushed and lovely view of planet Saturn in the movie INTERSTELLAR that makes it worth any amount of congestive techno-expository dialogue and colossal corniness (of which this flick has a heaping amount). Godly beauty. Christopher Nolan regards celestial wonders the way Mike Leigh (via his cameraman, Dick Pope) regards ordinary people suddenly stricken with insight, love or compassion in MR. TURNER: steadily, patiently, avidly. Turner, the romantic painter, spends much of the film hunched and squinting at the world. It's all too much for him. He has to filter. But when his eyes catch something of surpassing beauty, they open and get that rounded, boyish look of astonishment. Nolan loves the universe and its impenetrable mysteries the way (Leigh's) Turner loves the sea and women who bear life's trials with grace. There is a shot of one woman gazing out at the night sky through a window, in profile; another shot of another woman cleaning a window in daylight. Leigh sees them both the way Nolan sees Saturn. The secret is in the light.

By the way, here's YEELEN:


Yeelen (1987) pt. 1 by karimberdi


Photo by Peter Kratochvil.