Presque Isle

Rob Nilsson

United States

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Synopsis

As Danny flees to a wilderness lake island, visions appear to him. Are they hallucinations or flashbacks? Nothing seems certain.

REVIEW

In this compelling piece, iconic underground filmmaker Rob Nilsson spins a complex tale of one man's journey through the challenging geography of his own past.

Returning to his family's summer home in the Wisconsin North woods takes Danny into the rustic terrain of his earlier life. Woods and water become an appropriately primal setting for the realm of the psyche at once laden with symbolism and populated by specters of the past. Among fleeting shadows and flashes of recall, Danny traces dreams, wakens and relives lost moments through visions of deceased family members, vanished lovers, and old friends.

This is a stage where family photos burdened by dust and pots and pans bereft of food or utility wait to be discovered, where sudden storms waken sleeping memories, and sunshine does not necessarily bring warmth.

Here we meet Frazier, Danny's protective father figure, a man as unfathomable and mercurial as the unrequited love he once nurtured for Danny's mother, the elusive Alicia.  Frazier of yesteryear, we learn, was a prisoner of the past, just as Danny is today.

Here we meet yearning ghosts of loves gone astray and relationships unfilfilled.  Here, finally, is the summation of a man's life, a portrait of human reflection, suffering and searching, played out against the haunted universe of memory.

Striking black-and-white photography captures a bleak yet lush natural landscape, paying homage to the rarely filmed north woods of Wisconsin. Carefully chosen images mirror underlying themes of self and precedent, of man and nature: an abandoned necklace, names carved on a tree trunk, virginal forests, cleansing streams, abandoned cabins and primeval lakes, roadside diners and gritty bars.

Nilsson's intense narrative, framed by Kit Walker's evocative musical score, creates a hypnotic landscape reminiscent of the early Ingmar Bergman: a dark and introspective pastiche of time and remembrance, family and elders, and soul-searching realization that within the shadowy recesses of the past there is healing light.

-Jeffrey Gorney