The Eye Above the Well
Director: Johan van der Keuken
Year Released: 1988
Rating: 1.5
Coy 'documentary' that shows images from life in a village in India without those nasty narrative contrivances like explanations, meaningful voice-over narration, extraneous dialogue, an introduction or a conclusion. In fact, after watching this my first question was, "What did I just watch?" followed by a trip to the Internet Movie Database to get an idea as to what Keuken was aiming for. Call me thoughtless or dumb or inconsiderate, but this picture is little more than a slide show of India, constructed almost randomly using pieces of film shot there (supporters of this approach will no doubt create a comparison to his style being like 'free jazz') - it shows off the director's photographic skills, but if I just wanted images from a nation, I'll turn to National Geographic.
