The Woman and the Glacier

 

The ultimate existential thread: the bond between human and nature, visualised here in the experience of a scientist, who dedicated all her life to observe and study one of the most fascinating natural formations. Fragility, that of the massive glacier, and strength, that of a woman that lives in one of the harshest conditions on Earth. The land, that of Kazakhistan, with a fading tradition that echoes the melting icecap. The dramatic potential is everywhere in The Woman and The Glacier.

The Glacier is a curious amalgam, a solid structure, keen to liquidify, apparently rigid, but always in motion. There is a sense of life that can be perceived in the formation, through the lenses of cinematographer Audrius Kemezys, who carefully crafted impeccable long take shots of the small water streams, the deep crevices. Much like the previous films by Stonys, The Woman and The Glacier is a audio-visual immersive experience, that lingers on the beauty of nature.

There is a sense of liturgy, of holiness to the mountain, the environment of the film. The traditional Kazak music further enhances this sense, and the soundtrack, the only sounds that can be heard over those of nature, only to be broken suddenly by the loud antics of an obnoxious modern tour guide, a sign of the loudness of contemporary society that penetrates this realm. It is in this nostalghia that the film lingers most, in the melancholic feeling that as time passes, something is lost: the glacier itself, but also the station. That the film is set in Kazakhistan is emblematic: a country that suffered extensive cultural erasure during the Soviet occupation, and that seems to be unable to restore its traditions with the approach of the XXI. Century.

The Woman and The Glacier is doubtless the great masterpiece by Audrius Stonys, a work that manages to push the boundaries of the non verbal nature of cinema to its most spiritually enrichening limits.

RATING: 5/5

Original title: The Woman and the Glacier

Directed by: Audrius Stonys

Country: Kazakhistan, Lithuania

Year: 2016

Length: 56 min.

Premiere: /

Availability: Klassiki, Dafilms

Synopsis: the last days of a lithuanian geologist who has been living for 30 years at a scientific station near a glacier in Kazakhistan, the last of its kind, that employed a human scientist's presence on the location to observe the formation.