Films/DVD Asylum

"Liverpool," from Argentine director Lisandro Alonso comes a minimalist film

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in the manner of contemporary directors Reygadas, Tarr, and Ceylan. If plot, conversation, and traditional story-telling are necessary components in your films, by all means skip this one. However, if a more contemplative, visual style can command your attention, can draw you out to actively participate in the slender narrative, this quiet film will amply reward you.
A man upon a massive container ship asks the captain for shore leave to visit his ailing mother in a tiny town in one of earth's most remote inhabited areas, Tierra del Fuego (ironically, during the winter season of the film, buried under a thick crust of snow). We accompany the taciturn, hard-drinking Farrel on his journey to this remote, primitive village---- and to the less-than-enthusiastic welcome he receives from former acquaintances and from his family.
I have no statistics to back this up, but I have a suspicion that people who can appreciate abstract expressionism or, indeed, any art that has violently broken with tradition, are far more likely to be open-minded in regards to this type of "new cinema."
The directors I mention above are the children of Antonioni and Tarkovsky, masters of visual artistry that harken back to silent film. Alonso, and others, have taken film down to its essentials, about as far in the medium as possible and not unlike what Mondrian or Barnett Newman did in modern painting.

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