La veduta luminosa

The spider’s web is tailor-made for the fly’s eye, says Mr. Emmer in a moment of levity. The strands of the web are spun in such a way that they remain invisible to the compound eye. The fly flies unsuspectingly into disaster. La veduta luminosa is itself something of a web that comes to envelop the viewer – not blindly like the fly, but bewitched by the images, composed of blurred or sharply rendered surfaces, hazy and iridescent. We quickly become aware that the protagonist here is someone whose best days are behind him: the brilliant artist who is unconcerned with the need for social niceties. His name is Mr. Emmer, and his assistant’s role is an unenviable one. The two of them are in the car on their way to Tübingen, where a film project awaits. It’s about German poet Hölderlin, who succumbed to insanity and kept writing anyway. The obstacles along the way are the Alps, the forest and Mr. Emmer’s general state of health. The trip thus leads into a dead end, and the eyes see – depending on how the light falls – either a requiem for the prototypical personality of the brilliant artist – or its dissection. (Berlinale)