Letter Film Difficulty Ranking: 4
Here’s another opportunity for you to see a way of life hidden in a remote part of Russia. Again, Loznitsa’s short-documentary is available to watch on YouTube. So you have no excuses for avoiding 20 minutes of immersion into an intriguing mental asylum.
Why Watch Letter?
- For another Loznitsa short documentary (I’d recommend checking out Factory and Portrait before this one)
- Experience life at a mental asylum in remote North-Western Russia
- See how Loznitsa experiments with blurred vision
- Another dreamy, peaceful way to spend 20 minutes – find the film here on YouTube
The Breakdown
The film opens with a picture of a forest covered in a thick layer of mist. You can hear the wind blowing and a bird crowing. The forest cuts to a hut in blurred vision which obscures the face of a figure that repeatedly walks to the front of the house to shake a white bed sheet. A lightning strike hits and another human silhouette appears against the whitewashed front of the small mental asylum.
Loznitsa documents a handful of scenes from life in the mental asylum. We witness the residents helping out with harvesting the grain fields and feeding a cow that is left to roam the grounds. One particularly memorable shot shows two men standing at the forefront of the frame whilst a man sits behind them playing an accordion. While a cow meanders around the shot, the taller man nicks the shorter one’s hat and puts it on his head. The shorter man quickly grabs it back before they both carry on staring.
The whole 20 minute film uses blurred vision. Whilst it makes it hard to watch, it does respect the mental asylum residents. Their identity and their location are kept hidden, allowing them to continue life in their isolated existence. In addition, the human sounds, possibly sounds of pain, are kept quiet to respect their lives.
Conclusion
Loznitsa’s Letter is a another short and serene documentary. His experimental techniques make it harder to watch than Factory and Portrait, but it is equally intriguing. Loznitsa’s short documentaries are opportunities to immerse yourself in ways of life that you are probably unaware of. Enlighten yourself and watch them all on YouTube.
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