Epitaph

Walter Ungerer

United States

Synopsis

This documentary explores the issues surrounding war, natural disasters, and society and asks: Is the Earth speaking to us?

REVIEW

In this experimental triptych, renowned filmmaker Walter Ungerer presents powerful visual symbols of birth and death, framed by sounds of the human condition. The power and thunder of sea and sun and sky wash over the viewer in the first segment, as if bearing witness to the birth of the world. Unexpectedly, weathered posts point skyward, amid houses peering seaward. Now the camera scours an endless landscape of dunes. Here is a continent of sand devoid of footprints yet the screen echoes with feet marching. Apocalypse strikes in the second segment: black and white abstracts dissolve in explosion, rockets penetrate the heavens, glare obliterates the screen, the sea turns inside out and weeping is heard. Finally stillness and gray, fog, and distant moaning as sand sweeps hurriedly back into the sea. A cinematic epitaph, an abstract mourning of life and wanton destruction.

-Jeff Gorney