In the biography on Samantha Casella’s website, she mentions that she has great veneration for Terrence Malick among other directors and literary figures. This influence comes through strongly in her latest short film, To a God Unknown. The film itself could be said to be a Mailckean prayer to Being itself. Malick is reputed to be something of a Heideggarian, and this too comes through. The images in the film are striking in their solemnity and power.
And since this is a film that is centered on quotations from well-known figures, I will take the liberty to add one of my own. The opening scenes of flocks of birds moving gracefully through the sky is perfect synchronicity, the woman trudging through a field towards the silhouette of a tree, milk running through a woman’s hands. All of these reminded me of Martin Heidegger’s famous essay, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” in which he describes one of Van Gogh’s paintings of worn-out shoes. The shoes unknowingly bring together all the elements of Being:
“Under the soles stretches the loneliness of the field-path as evening falls. In the shoes vibrates the silent call of the earth, its quiet gift of the ripening grain and its unexplained self-refusal in the fallow desolation of the wintry field…shivering at the surrounding menace of death.”
Like the verses from Sergey Esenin and Arthur Rimbaud and the words of John Steinbeck that constitute the three chapters of the film, Heidegger’s description strikes us a somehow religious. But this religion, as Casella points out with her title, reflects upon, rather than prays too, an unknown and inscrutable God. This God, Casella seems to be saying, has no name, but is the force that moves the huge rolling ocean waves, that shoots a dozen birds out of the sky and that drives a man to suicide in the midst of the wonders of nature. This could be the god of death, but it would be better to say that this is the God who allowed to us the inexplicable gift of life.
All this to say that Casella’s short is a powerful meditation on the most important things. There are three chapters, but no overarching plot. Not that you need one. This film is not about story, it’s about mood and tone, and Casella delivers. She wrote and directed the film, and has written and directed almost a dozen others. Casella is an experienced filmmaker with numerous accolades to her name. She won nineteen awards for her debut short film, “Juliette.”
The middle chapter, which occurs over lines from a John Steinbeck novel, is the only chapter that could be said to have a plot. While the words tell of the unity of a man’s father and the place he lived, the man we see seems overcome with emotion at every leaf and every rock and every bug in the woods. But still, he carries a straight razor and he means to use it. The words and images combine to convince of the unity of man, earth, life and death. It is no wonder that Casella lists as one of her favourite shows, The Leftovers, which, in addition to being one of the best TV shows of all time, also deals with the power of death and grief in the face of an unknowable event.
What unifies the first and final chapters are a clock with no hands that appears in both. On the wall in chapter one, we later find the clock on fire on some ocean beach. A clock with no hands means we no longer need to worry about the hour: we are in a place beyond time.
The first and second chapters also intersperse of images of man, nature and painting. Again, with the Heidegger quote above in mind, we see that the origin of a true work of art lies in its ability to bring together the fourfold: earth, sky, mortals and gods. Art is able to lead us to some awareness of this fourfold in the world we inhabit and to be more fully alive through this awareness. If this is the criterion of true art, then Casella has made a work of art.
© 2021. UniversalCinema Mag.