#happy as lazzaro

SeeingThe Shining for the umpteenth time in the Filmothèque du Quartier Latin three days ago, I whispered a corny joke to my friend as Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s ominous synths started weighing upon the room : had the film been made in 2018, the opening sequence would have been shot with a drone rather than a helicopter. After the screening, we rambled about the presupposed ugliness of drone shots and how their cheap aspect tends to pierce through the aesthetic integrity of films. Drone shots are too real, too close to an imaginary of post-film school advertising gigs and road-trip-in-Iceland edits. Most importantly, they disclose too much of a budget-constrained production space with rarely enough aesthetic interest to balance it out.

Yesterday, I went to see Heureux comme Lazzaro at L’Épée de Bois on my own, save for the three fellow spectators present in the room. At some point, two drone shots appeared on the screen, the first showing the crown of forest trees, the other skimming the sharp surface of a lombardian mountain range. The latter particularly caught my attention, because it actually didn’t seem to tear apart the fine beauty the film had carefully woven until then. For a few seconds, the camera managed to show the geological quality of the landscape, seemingly getting as close as possible to the edges of the mountains. I didn’t really doubt of the possibility for a drone shot to turn out beautiful, but i started wondering whether for it to be, it would have to get as far as possible from mimicking what a helicopter would always do with greater soulfulness, and try instead to exploit the material possibilities its very lightness offers ; namely, to explore topographies on a carnal mode, and give way to a ‘volumic’ connection to the land through physical proximity, with the distortions of the wide-angle lenses showing something of the material presence of a ground in the profilmic space. That was, to me, the subtle prowess Rohrwacher and cinematographer Hélène Louvart’s camera had achieved.