While I tend to hate spending too much time on describing a film in a review, I feel like I don’t have much of a choice with Ben Rivers’ The Sky Trembles and the Earth is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Brothers (certainly one of the more memorable titles at TIFF this year, and a blessing for any writer trying to get their word count up). Part documentary, part fiction, and part adaptation of the Paul Bowles short story “A Distant Episode,” The Sky Trembles comprises of two distinct halves. In the first half, Rivers’ camera follows a director (Oliver Laxe) as he works on a new film in Morocco. The production looks a bit troubled, with some difficulty working with the cast and trying to get specific shots down. The director eventually flees the production to free himself, which kicks off the second half (and where the Bowles adaptation begins). After wandering around in a town he’s kidnapped by a group of men who beat him, cut out his tongue, and then force him to entertain them by dancing around in an outfit made entirely out of tin cans. Unable to speak, and reduced to a role that seems beneath a jester, the director goes mad as he’s eventually sold off by his kidnappers to someone else.

Fans of Ben Rivers’ previous work shouldn’t be too concerned over The Sky Trembles since it continues to show off his greatest strengths as a filmmaker. Shooting with 16mm film on location in Morocco, Rivers (who also does cinematography) provides plenty of hypnotizing compositions that highlight the make landscapes the most well-defined presence in the entire film. But the playfulness with form and minimal, diptych narrative will have varying levels of appeal to viewers, leaving people either engaged or bored out of their minds. I fall somewhere in the middle; I wasn’t particularly interested in Laxe’s troubles on and off set, but Rivers’ formal mastery is always impressive to watch. This is especially true in the film’s excellent finale, where Laxe finds himself alone and wandering a mazelike series of passageways before running off into the desert. The image of the protagonist hurtling himself into the vast, empty desert is a striking, sinister case of wish fulfillment. He may have gotten the freedom he wanted by abandoning his film, but there’s only one outcome where he’s going.

The central figure of Ben Rivers and Ben Russell’s A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness takes the form of a silent man (musician Robert A.A. Lowe). The film is comprised of three acts, with Lowe providing the only connective tissue between them. We first see him as part of an Estonian commune, where members seem to spend their time relaxing or engaging in philosophical discussions. Rivers and Russell abruptly end this storyline, transporting Lowe to a forest in Finland where he tries the solitary life. When that doesn’t work out, Lowe ends up in Norway performing black metal at a bar.

Rivers and Russell don’t give too many details about background or story, opening the door for different interpretations of what their central character’s journey(s) represents. The three stories may not be continuous, but the use of an equilateral triangle as a transition between acts suggests they’re different sides of the same ‘shape,’ so to speak. What Rivers/Russell’s structure does is make for a fascinating and existential film, using form to explore different grand-scaled ideas.

Lowe has an incredibly commanding screen presence when he’s front and centre (a shot of him staring directly into the camera is soul-piercing), but the filmmakers surprisingly tend to turn their focus away from him. A viewer without any prior knowledge of the film wouldn’t know Lowe was the main focus until the sequence in Finland, as he mostly stays in the background during his stay at the Estonian commune. Even when Lowe does end up living alone, Rivers and Russell prefer to lock their camera on still life shots of nature, or keep their subject far away from the camera by only letting him be seen in long shots.

This exclusion helps create a feeling of alienation, making Lowe’s abandonment of each lifestyle feel justified rather than inexplicable. The same tactic also keeps the focus on landscapes, and in doing so highlights just how much a person is defined by their surroundings. Rivers and Russell use different formal techniques for each act; the commune is mostly handheld, resembling a pseudo-documentary; the Finnish forests is made up of stationary long shots, and the final act is done entirely in long steadicam shots. These distinct styles give each location a unique sense of beauty to them, and Rivers/Russell end up highlighting the appeal of each way of life.

While Lowe’s nameless character may not end up finding a place where he belongs, wandering off into darkness to presumably try out something else, Rivers and Russell have crafted a truly satisfying film. Watching one man’s repeated upheavals of his life, combined with the two directors’ excellent craftsmanship, evokes the feeling of something supernatural and, ultimately, transcendent. It may be somewhat early in 2014, but A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness is already one of the year’s biggest cinematic achievements.

Originally published on 4/16/14. A Spell To Ward Off The Darkness opens in New York on 12/5.