On paper, the description of Manakamana will have most people running in the opposite direction. Directors Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez put a stationary camera inside a cable car that takes passengers up and down a mountain to the Manakamana temple in Nepal. They simply observed each passenger (or passengers) as they travelled towards or away from the temple. It’s nothing more than 11 rides in a row over 2 hours, with a seamless transition between each scene. It sounds like daunting viewing, which it certainly is at first, but viewers willing to stick around will get rewarded for their patience.

Manakamana is a product of Harvard’s Sensory Ethnography Lab, the same place responsible for the brilliant Leviathan (the directors of that film share a producing credit here). The approach that Spray and Velez use here isn’t nearly as experimental as that film, but it’s far less accessible. The first several rides will test people’s tolerance, as they’re mostly wordless. The first audible dialogue is heard almost a half hour in, when a woman takes the trip up for the first time with her husband.

People’s eyes will naturally focus on the changing landscapes outside of the car’s windows at first. The wide-open lands and massive mountains make for a spectacular view going up and down the ride, creating a fascinating juxtaposition with the car’s riders. The intimacy of each trip is felt as we’re locked in mere feet from the travellers, while at the same time we see nothing but miles of open space surrounding them. It’s simultaneously large and small in scale, and the way Spray/Velez use this to its full effect makes Manakamana fascinating to watch.

As we go through each successive ride, it’s easy to pick up on a few things Spray and Velez are exploring here. The sequencing of Manakamana (the riders were selected by the directors, who worked with them on other projects) highlights the existence of a vast generational gap. Older riders represent a time period that’s on the verge of disappearing completely, with most of them making comments about how people would travel to the temple before the ride’s existence. That feeling of a division between old and young is felt the most when a ride showing three older women is followed by three young, long-haired men in a rock band.

These ideas aren’t made explicit by the filmmakers either. By observing each ride, people can make their own conclusions from what they see. The amount of ideas that the film generates is surprisingly impressive. The first half, consisting of trips going up, feels slightly anxious (the sound design by Ernst Karel is especially effective here, with the periodic rattling of the cars acting like a jolt to the mostly peaceful atmosphere). It’s in the second half, where we only see people taking the trip down, that things seem to loosen up as a result of their time at the temple. One ride, with an American and Nepali woman, starts out in silence. It seems like they’re strangers at first, but it’s only until they start talking that one realizes they’re good friends.

The two rides after that, with two women trying to eat ice cream and two musicians playing together, make for some of the funniest and joyous scenes of the year. Compared to the other Sensory Ethnography Lab films, Manakamana might be their most humanist work to date, but it’s just as bold and daring as everything else they’ve made up to this point. In its observation of the cable car’s trips, it says plenty about the way spiritualism impacts people. The concept may be simple, but it delves a lot deeper than most other documentaries.

Leviathan opens with a passage from the Bible, a fitting prelude to the immense scale of the 90 minutes that immediately follow. The film itself is far from an epic production though; Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel started out making a documentary on a Massachusetts fishing port but, after going out with one of the boats their focus quickly changed. The force of Mother Nature soon overtook them, with several cameras getting lost at sea.

That’s when the co-directors tried another tactic, one that ended up defining the whole film. Using tiny GoPro HD cameras, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor put them all over the ship, letting the fishermen use them and at times connecting the cameras to a stick so they could dunk it underwater. The result is a film that appears to be unlike anything before it, directed mostly by the elements rather than a human being. It wouldn’t have been too out of place if Nature itself had a co-directing credit.

Much like the cameras are at the mercy of the ocean’s thrashing waves, viewers are also left to endure a full-frontal assault on cinematic and genre conventions. There is no narrative or context given for the footage in Leviathan. The cameras move around in every imaginable direction, with some sequences having no sense of perspective or placement in them whatsoever. Long sections seemingly flow together, making it impossible to tell whether or not there’s a cut or transition buried within all the fury. The sign of a visible cut feels like a breath of air, as if we can briefly re-calibrate ourselves before getting thrown back in. If Leviathan’s lack of control shows the chaos of nature, it simultaneously highlights the chaos of film without a narrative.

That feeling of not being tied down to anything, both literally and figuratively, is primarily what makes Leviathan such an exhilarating and terrifying film to watch. None of the moments throughout are as effective as when the camera goes out into the water, bobbing up and down as seagulls and fish remains from the boat surround it. These moments, when the camera comes up to the surface and shows nothing but water surrounding it, present the terrifying scale of the ocean in a way that’s rarely been seen before. Part of the anxiety comes from the brilliant sound design, mixing the sound picked up on the camera’s microphone to sound like someone gasping for air, but most of the horror comes from the feeling of complete insignificance it creates.

The cumulative effect of what’s in Leviathan is felt once the focus begins to include fishermen on the vessel. Actions become more abstract, with any sense of specificity sucked out from these moments. The focus is no longer on what they’re doing, instead merely observing bodies in motion. The fishermen, like the boat they’re on and the fish they take out of the sea, are small parts of a massive and unforgiving environment. Leviathan truly is a sight to behold, a purely sensory experience and one of the most visceral films ever made. It may only be three years in, but it looks like one of the decade’s greatest achievements has already been made.

Back in September when I covered the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival the movie I was looking forward to the most wasn’t anything from the major fests like Cannes or with major directors/writers/stars. It was a documentary about a fishing boat’s voyage that, going by its trailer, was unlike anything I’ve seen before. Leviathan, made by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, exceeded my already high expectations in every way imaginable once I actually got to see it.

Shot on a variety of small HD cameras which were thrown around on the ship and in the ocean, Leviathan is a disorienting assault on the senses that captures the terrifying forces of nature in a way no other movie has. Cinema Guild has picked up distribution rights in the United States, and it was just announced today that it’ll be coming out in theatres on March 1st. They also unveiled the film’s poster which gives a good sense of what to expect. Look at the poster below, and make sure to see this film if it ends up playing near you.

Official movie poster of Leviathan:

It turned out that the day I was most cautious about was the best experience I had at the festival so far. Thomas Vinterberg’s The Hunt has been one of the hotter titles here, with praise thrown at it left and right from people who got the chance to see it. I didn’t know much about The Hunt going in, and despite my little knowledge beforehand it didn’t buck the current trend of ‘good not great’ that I’ve been experiencing. Kindergarten teacher Lucas (Mads Mikkelsen) has his life turned upside down when a student at his school falsely accuses him of molesting her. The girl has a crush on Lucas, but when he rejects a gift she made for him (which she snuck in his coat shortly before trying to kiss him on the mouth) the girl angrily tells another teacher that he exposed himself to her. What makes this situation even more complicated is that the girl’s father is Lucas’ best friend Theo (Thomas Bo Larsen). The Hunt is a crackling drama that benefits greatly from taking what would be a morally black and white situation and forcing it into a grey area. Every character behaves justifiably (I can’t say the same for their actions), and Vinterberg milks out the intensity of the situation as much as possible. The first hour of the film, with Lucas slowly being ostracized by the town, is mostly predictable until Vinterberg brings in Lucas’ son. The movie shifts its POV to the son, and when we see how the townspeople deem him guilty by association things take an interesting turn. Mads Mikkelsen is terrific as Lucas, but some praise should also go to Bo Larsen who easily sells how conflicted his character is over whether to condemn or stand by his best friend. The Hunt may have been too see-through for me to truly enjoy it, but Vinterberg has crafted a very good movie here.

RATING: 7.5/10

The Hunt

And just as I was lamenting the lack of truly great films at TIFF this year, along comes Leviathan to save the day. As we’ve already mentioned in our trailer post, Leviathan is an abstract documentary that was filmed on a fishing boat working around the eastern seaboard. The opening sequence starts out from the point of view of a fisherman hauling in a catch, but suddenly the camera is thrown into the ocean. As the camera bobs up and down in the ocean we get brief glimpses of seagulls flying in the sky. Describing these kinds of scenes don’t do justice to how visceral watching Leviathan is. The use of small GoPro cameras not only gets some amazing footage, it lends an otherworldly quality to what’s on screen. The constant movement makes it impossible to orient oneself, so when the camera catches a net being pulled in during the night it can easily look like some sort of monstrous creature coming out of the water. I don’t see how anyone could watch Leviathan outside of a theatre and get the same impact as watching it on a giant screen. After being assaulted for nearly 90 minutes, the lights came on in the theatre and I suddenly realized that I seemed to have lost my place. Everything around me looked foreign, like I was suddenly dropped into the theatre and trying to figure out where I was. It’s the kind of reaction I’ve never had after watching a film, and it left me feeling euphoric afterwards. Leviathan is the best film of the year for me right now, the kind of movie that makes me realize why I love going to TIFF in the first place.

RATING: 9/10

Leviathan

NEXT UP: Post Tenebras Lux which gained Carlos Reygadas a Best Director prize at Cannes this year. It’ll be followed by When Night Falls, which annoyed the Chinese government so much that they offered to buy the film just so they could bury it. Plus, a review of Motorway.

Recap of some of my Tweets from today:

Follow @WayTooIndie for full coverage of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival!

In line for THE HUNT right now after arriving early at #TIFF12 today. Don’t know much about this film other than it pisses some people off.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Thomas Vinterberg at a Q&A for THE HUNT which got a standing ovation twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Now in line for the premiere of LEVIATHAN which @cinemaguild has picked up for distribution! That already tells me it must be good #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Someone just asked Vinterberg if he could explain dogme 95. KILL ME.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Overheard someone say they thought Morgan Freeman died a week ago, so anyone who thinks that #TIFF12 is for intellectuals can rest easy

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 12, 2012

Audience sat in stunned silence throughout credits of LEVIATHAN. Here’s a pic of the very shy directors #TIFF12 twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 13, 2012

Leviathan is a new film by directors Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor. Paravel was the co-director on the 2010 documentary Foreign Parts while Castaing-Taylor co-directed the well-received 2009 documentary Sweetgrass. The first trailer for Leviathan has come online and, for what looks like a 4 minute excerpt from the film, it’s already one of the best trailers this year. Here’s a synopsis for Leviathan from the film’s official website:

“In the very waters where melville’s pequod gave chase to moby dick, leviathan captures the collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine. shot on a dozen cameras — tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker — it is a cosmic portrait of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors.”

The trailer feels like its own short film as a camera films dead fish being dumped into the ocean from the side of a ship. Eventually the camera itself plunges into the water and bobs around as hundreds of birds come to eat the floating scraps of waste. It’s a unique, disorienting experience that’s memorable on its own. If the rest of Leviathan impresses as much as this trailer, we should hopefully be in for something special.

Leviathan premieres in August at the Locarno Film Festival, and you can read more information about the film at www.leviathanfilm.org

Watch the trailer for Leviathan: