Blue Planet.

"Shot over three years and brilliantly honed in editing booths and mixing studios, Blue Planet combines epic aspirations and restrained storytelling in a way subsequent micro-documentaries like Microcosmos forgo," writes Benjamin H Sutton in the L Magazine. "Despite modestly beautiful cinematography, Piavoli's editing and sound design set his films apart. Often, watching one is like hearing a great DJ: catchy synchronous samples build, pleasurable connections are laid out for the viewer to make, and a cyclic rhythm runs through."

"The banal organizing principles of Blue Planet - the cycle of seasons, day flowing to night and back - are complemented by a pervasive tedium in the montage," writes Nathan Lee in the New York Times. "The movie doesn't move; it's a slide show, lacking intelligent image-rhyme, counterpoint or melodic progression from shot to shot."

For the New York Sun's Bruce Bennett, this is a "paradoxically modest (in subject) yet extraordinarily ambitious (in scope) filmmaking tour de force."

"Piavoli is reminding us of our primal natures, but his human subjects behave as if they've been rehearsed—weeping incredulously, rolling stones, running through rooms as if being chased by ghosts, and waking up in the night to point at and mumble over a map of the land," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "Fight nature hard enough and nature will fight back, which is probably why the decay Piavoli captures toward film's end is so haunting, but direct your human subjects too much and you end up with a Tarkovskian pantomime."

Earlier: James Van Maanen.

Currently at NYC's Pioneer Theater for a week; the series Celebrating the Earth: The Films of Franco Piavoli runs at the nwFilmCenter in Portland in July.

Posted by dwhudson at June 13, 2008 2:53 PM