[yasr_overall_rating]
Greece. Sometime in the near future. A seaside resort struck by a heavy heat wave. Water is rare and violence is mounting. Ashraf, a solitary immigrant, is looking after a villa while its owners are away. On a dusty road crushed by the sun, he is stopped by a police officer for an identity check.
I like minimalist art, for the most part. To me, the most satisfying art comes in the form of books, music, films, and paintings that evoke profound feelings and stir up turbulent emotions by revealing very little. A simple dot on a canvas can make you cry, if juxtaposed against the enormity of said canvas in just the right way (see Don Hertzfeld’s work). A flinch of an eyelid or a tender hug at the finale of a film may have the capacity to tear a soul into shreds (see the Dardenne brothers’ “L’Enfant”). A repeated note, struck at just the right tempo, can reverberate in your mind, like a liquid ripple effect (see Nils Frahm’s discography).
Minimalist art may easily have the opposite effect, coming off as pretentious. To some, Malevich’s work is profound, to others, it’s just a black freakin’ square. Arguing minimalist art’s validity therefore becomes an ouroboros-like endurance test. I will, however, argue that Joyce A. Nashawati, in her debut feature-length film “Blind Sun,” relies a bit too heavily on prolonged beautiful shots of scorched vistas to evoke feeling. At the same time, it piles on its themes, however valid and relevant they may be, too heavily, resulting in an ambitious and well-shot, but muddled and frankly tedious affair.
Ashraf (Ziad Bakri) is entrusted to look after a gorgeous villa by an arrogant French couple. On a solitary, parched road he encounters a cop, who proceeds to threaten Ashraf and confiscate the poor guy’s documents. Ashraf’s attempts to get them back from the police station prove futile.
Back at the house, the heat and thirst begin to affect the young man, whose vision blurs, along with the film’s narrative. He stumbles upon an archaeological site – and later has sex with the beautiful young archaeologist. A woman visits him and reads his future in the bottom of a coffee mug. The house gets raided by invisible forces and shadowy figures. The visions and weird occurrences escalate, until it all goes down in flames / reaches its boiling point / [insert metaphor here]. Ashraf’s not the best house-sitter, if you ask me.
All of this is set against the backdrop of a smoldering heat wave, protests, and the looming presence of an Umbrella Corporation-like corporation: a water company called Bluegold, that promises redemption in form of crystal-clear hydration. “There’s going to be a war,” Ashraf declares despondently at one point, “and we’re all going to burn.”
“Blind Sun”’s themes of prejudice against immigrants, while resonant in light of the recent European crises, are laid on thickly, the protagonist treated like utter shit at every turn. “I know your type, free as a bird. All you think about is fucking,” Gilles (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing – what a name!), the French owner of the house, proclaims before leaving Ashraf to take care of it. “This will teach you to respect the country you live off,” the racist cop snarls, before roaring away on his motorbike – with Ashraf’s freakin’ passport!
Basked in scorched-orange hues, blinding sunlight and the ear-splitting chatter of cicadas, Nashawati’s film takes wild swings: it has Lynchian moments of subliminal terror; real-life political currents run thread-like through the narrative; an angry outcry against the inevitability of global warming echoes in every fiery frame; a psycho-horror film and a tender touch of a love story appear then dissipate… Oh, and warning: the film is most definitely NOT for cat lovers.
If that all sounds intriguing, somehow, despite Bakri’s best efforts (the lanky actor is in every shot), the film comes off as monotonous and exhausting, with its deliberate pace and roasting soundtrack and depravity and religious imagery and blinding sun and shot after shot of dried-out land weighing you down in the first ten minutes and making the remaining seventy feel like torture. Which, if that were the filmmakers’ intention – bravo, mission accomplished. The only element that’s refreshing about this dry feature is the fact that the characters speak in three languages – Greek, French, and English – giving it an authentic international flavor.
“Blind Sun” takes too long to get going and eventually doesn’t really go anywhere, like looking at beautiful, smoldering embers for an hour and twenty minutes – or arguing about the merits of art. It tries so hard to both be a parable about oppression (human/weather) and an ambitious little art-house horror flick, it never really achieves the right balance. Akin to Icarus, it scalds its wings against the sun it’s blinded by – but points for attempting to soar that high.
Now playing exclusively on Shudder
