A Question of Aesthetics?
Unicórnio [Eduardo Nunes, 2017]:
I saw a couple of the above images – taken here from the
Eduardo Nunes directed film Unicórnio (2017) – posted in a movie-related discussion group on
Facebook and was inspired enough to seek out a copy of the original trailer. Surprisingly,
I'd never heard anything about the film previously, and have so far been unable to find a copy of it to watch, either through the usual streaming platforms, or conventional physical media.
I could probably live without the bespoke aspect ratio,
which, without context, seems like a gimmick, however, the command and presentation of
the landscape is extraordinary, finding an affinity for both the romantic
imagery of Caspar David Friedrich, whose famous painting, Wanderer above the
Sea of Fog (1818), shows a similar contrast between human figures left awed and
overwhelmed by the majesty of nature, and the dream landscapes found in the
films of Andrei Tarkovsky, such as The Mirror (1975), or Nostalghia (1983).
It's increasingly rare that I find myself enticed by
film trailers, but this was a good one. Even watching it in un-subtitled Portuguese,
and not entirely grasping what the film is even about, the imagery spoke, and seems
especially captivating at a time when so many new films are entirely monoform in presentation, as if produced
to fit a pre-existing template.
