‘November’ – Beautiful and Weird
One of the more unusual films I’ve recently seen is the Estonian film November from 2017 made by Rainer Sernat, based on a novel by Andrus Kivirähk. It is one of those films that deserves to be far better known than it probably will be. It hit the Festival circuit in early 2018 and won a few awards, but I am not sure how much cinema distribution it really got.
November is a tale of love and survival in 19th century Estonia. From the first moment on you wonder what you are looking at: it is beautiful, weird, magical, surreal, folkloristic. The film starts with trees, ice and a running wolf, opening a harsh, dark, impoverished world in a barren, northern landscape. And this is all done in an incredible, superb black-and-white cinematography, that made me want to freeze the frame over and over again.
In this forlorn world of misery and hardship ‘kratts’ (mechanical creatures animated by the Devil), demons, werewolves, appearances of the dead and the plague are all very real. In the midst of all this is a love story between a peasant girl named Liina and a fellow villager, Hans. Liina tries to win his attention and love with the help of all the magic powers surrounding her in her world. Hans has unrealistically become infatuated with a German baroness who lives with her father in a large mansion nearby. Both align with dark forces to realize their desires, but these powers do not give them what they wanted.
The story may be hard to capture and now and then seems to wander off, but themes like love, greed, belonging and survival keep tumbling around in your mind. Not received through a linear story development, but through dreamy images, more felt than understood. I’ve probably never seen a film like this and if you can get to see it, I promise you a unique film experience!
Rinus, Nov 2019
*image posted under fair use of copyright material in recommendation of the film
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