Feted Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi’s Notturno was shot over three years along the borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon, the ...
Feted Italian filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi’s Notturno was shot over three years along the borders of Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria and Lebanon, the opening credits inform us. This is about the only direct piece of information in a 100-minute documentary that takes an elliptical view of a region devastated by war and the depravity of the Islamic State.
The Mubi release has precisely timed, ravishingly shot vignettes that blur the line between scripted fiction and observational documentary. Rosi, who has also shot the film, lines up a series of movements which, like a musical composition, glide between action and stillness.
Wide-angled shots of the landscape, often pockmarked with the effects of military conflict and occupation, often give way to characters and vehicles moving horizontally and vertically across the screen. The neat grammar of the shot taking and editing pattern imposes an eerie sense of anticipation on the narrative – the calm between storms that are sure to come.
On deserted streets, men ride horses and boys zip around on bikes. The seemingly normal act of hunting for birds is as tense as the guard duty outside an army camp, where sentinels scan the horizon.
Mirroring images abound. At a psychiatric hospital, patients rehearse for a play on the region’s...
