The trilogy exploring the liaison between man and nature, begun in Mongolia and continued in the Andes, draws to a closure in the Flanders, home country of the directors. Peter Brosens, Belgian filmmaker, and his wife Jessica Woodworth, former actress, Belgian of adoption, depict an apocalyptic portrait of human kind.

A mysterious calamity strikes: spring doesn’t come. In a village deep in the Ardennes the cycle of nature is capsized. WINTER—In which Alice, a farmer’s daughter, and Thomas, a reclusive teenager, are in love. And in which the annual bonfire celebrating the end of winter fails to burn. SPRING—In which the bees vanish, the seeds won’t grow and the cows refuse to give milk. And in which the first victim falls. SUMMER—In which a passing flower vendor brings ephemeral joy. And in which insects abound, panic mounts and violence explodes. FALL—In which all civility has dissolved. And in which the angels take flight.

The theatre of life unravels with all its atrocities as a consequence of man’s frailty. The flock syndrome insinuates in the coward attitude of scapegoating through a tale that seems to find its roots in myth. Peter Brosens reminds the importance of this storytelling device since “Mythology is a story that you create in order to render the inexplicable comprehensible or at least expectable.” The pestilence that causes so much distraught in the villagers blends in their souls and semblance, embodied by the plague doctor mask. Jessica Woodworth explains how this physical disguise becomes disquieting: “The characters disappear into anonymity and this arouses a disquieting mood that you can’t easily rationalise, since an entire society hides individuality behind something that becomes collective.” All chaos seems to converge and implode to a fifth season of the world. Death, rebirth, the big bang towards a new brotherhood of man.

By Chiara Spagnoli

Related Images: