Risttuules

Risttuules (English title: In the Crosswind) is one of those few films that cry out to be shown to every human being: especially when they are young, when their minds are more sensitive, receptive and ready to puzzle over meanings and lack of meaning of things, of life. The film is a poetically made, very emotional story of a woman and her family: the story of politics destroying the hearth of a home, laying barren many lives, irrigated by only tears and dreams of apple trees. For many of those who think politics is something far removed from their personal lives, the film can be a beautiful lesson: and the film can serve as a prescient warning for all those who are swayed by leaders who can use hate politics to serve their tools, from the electorates of France to those of India. And yet, all that the film does is to show the story of a family, a true story of not just one family but thousands.

The film's true power lies in its poetry: almost all of the film is simply still images, explored through a moving camera. Nothing else is moving, except a river's water or a woman's eyelids: silences and beautiful narration mark the film's cadence, as the viewer is swept into haunting stills, which do not need any contextualizing: which mark the battle of hope and misery in every human soul, at its peak in those times when men like Stalin make life as the battle for hope. For it is difficult to sustain any hope, when men are faced with other men in the form of monsters. Everything else, man can bear, and conquer.

The film's story, its shocking course of events, unfolds itself gradually, without taking itself as anything shocking: the most shocking things occur as if it is a matter of fact. Like peeling off layers of paint from a once sturdy wall, revealing a damp, mouldy wall beneath, or like the discovery of caves sans issue in the beautiful ice palace, the brighter exteriors of hope and resolve are peeled off to reveal a life of waste and starvation, of regret and guilt, of servility and humiliation, of loss and void. But yet, the wall stands: even when everything has collapsed around it. The ice palace remains: even when spring has announced itself. Some day, the wall will also collapse: some day, the ice palace will dissolve and waters will flood all memories, all past and all dreams, but till the day spring becomes stronger, the ice palace will stand. A marker of the tortures of winter, a perverted symbol of man's ability to seek pleasures from others' misery: till passed-on memories will come to us, like river to sea, in letters and books and films.

A note to those who lack patience: the film might be a difficult lesson if you are seeking to learn patience. This is a poem: not a Nancy Drew novel.