Three Films Make A Post: It’s a Cop-Out!

Meurtres à domicile (1982): I’m not quite sure how “great comics writer Jean Van Hamme and director Marc Lobet adapt a story by great Belgian writer of the fantastique Thomas Owen” turned into this often very farcical end product, but if you enjoy your mysteries on the less than serious side, this one’s probably worth seeking out beyond the very different film I initially hoped for. Lobet is certainly good with putting his inspector (Anny Duperey) through many an encounter with her highly peculiar neighbours, and also hits some of the expected moments of anti-bourgeois humour you expect from French comedy of this style rather nicely, so there’s quite a bit of fun to be had here.

Focus on Infinity (2014): Joerg Burger’s documentary concerns the scientific search for the outer ranges of the cosmos and our existence in it, demonstrating individual perspectives, places, and devices through an awed eye. There’s a lot of room for scepticism towards the whole endeavour – though I’m not completely sure the film chooses the best arguments for it – but also for a deep exploration of the very different perspective very different people can and will bring to the Big Questions of the universe and our place in it.

Visually, Burger has a particular affinity for showing the places where science is done emptied of people, in marked contrast to the the very close and personal way his interviews with various scientists, a scientist-priest and an ex-scientist turned depressed writers work. It’s often genuinely thought-provoking, though I wouldn’t have given the last word to the last one of these interviewees, even in my role as a depressed pessimist.

The Cherry Tree With Gray Blossoms (1977): I have already lavished rather a lot of praise on Sumiko Haneda’s Poem of Hayachine Valley. As far as I’ve been able to read up on it, this short documentary was her first truly independently produced piece of work. It is a focussed, highly poetic and personal in the kind of way that also can become universal, exploration of an ancient cherry tree, the people living around and with it. Haneda uses this to explore personal grief, the idea of – for us humans – great spans of time, and how we as human beings can and do relate to these spans of time in the natural world. She does so rather brilliantly.