At the beginning, an aging Italian cinematographer called Giulio is introduced. Even
though a fictive character, he talks directly to the camera. This
opening takes place in Athens during the strikes and protest
manifestations of the Greek people. It is the time of the social and
economic crisis of Greece when the government brutally attacked the
social existence of its own people for a crisis the people haven´t
caused. Giulio is a chronicler and his monologue introduces
his long experience in observing social protest movements, his
opinion about the failure of the neoliberal order and ideology but
also his loneliness. He calls himself a “Nowhere Man”. He is
disgusted by his own country but is attracted in the Greek movement
which is indeed a symbol for an awakening in Europe.
One reason for the vitality of the film
is the playful reflection of arranged images and fiction and on the
other side the facts like the protests and manifestations which
happened at the time the film was shot. Giulio is working on a
project on the protest movement in Greece. He is a chronicler between
resignation and hope.
Later we see him returned to Italy in a
town called Gorgonzola. He visits a woman with an 8 years old
daughter. Finally we learn that the woman Irene is his wife and the
girl Andrea his daughter. He abandoned them many years ago. If the
couple is quite alienated from each other, the girl is almost a
stranger to him. The dialogues between the couple suggests for now
that they have arranged themselves with this separation. As the film proceeds it looks rather like the futile try to preserve a relationship which is already vanishing. The expression in face of Emanuela Zoccos Irene reminds me
in its mixture of stoicism and vulnerability in Lisa Kreuzers lonely
and abandoned women in some early films by Wim Wenders.
Back in Athens, Giulio is hired
by an Australian TV-team. They want to make a film on the protest
movement.Giulio is supposed to find place and finally images which
are not shown in any conventional TV-report. While the TV team begins
to look systematic for images, Giulio uses the focus lens of his
camera sometimes like an extended eye for recognizing things he can not see
with his naked eye. He always discover things nobody else sees.
This just recording images and the looking for details reminds me in André Bazins unfinished but still
fresh questions of reality and cinema. It seems for me that Bill
Mousoulis´ arranged images, the fictive element and the use of the
cinematic apparatus have not other purpose than open our eyes and
sharpen our perception for a reality which always exists as well
beyond the frame.
The borders between document and fiction in Wild And Precious seem to be thin, sometimes even suspended. During the film we see a lot of
cats and often a dog (called “Riot dog” in the credits). The
animals enter and leave the frames and also the arranged fiction or
the documented moments. Their appearances give an idea that even just an
image of reality has always many layers. When we see Greek policemen
with their gas masks and armed with gas munition we are also aware
that they are eager to use them at the smallest sign of riot, an
aspect almost deleted in most of news reports on Greece in 2012.
Wild And Precious is also a reflection
on image making, recording images and what happens beyond. We see the
TV team editing their first footage very focused. What happens at the
same time in Italy with Irene, Andrea and their social environment
seems to happen totally outside of consciousness of the image making
Giulio - like in another dimension. Literally it happens out of
Giulios framing the world.
As his life seems to split in two
strings there are some small but very important links to these “two
lives”.These moments evoke in me an undefinable melancholy like a
bitter taste of homelessness. There is a wonderful moment when Giulio
shoots footage in another Greek town. The first thing we see is a
beautiful white cat passing by. While Giulio is looking through his
camera, a teenage girl addresses him. She is shy and feels like she is
disturbing him. For a moment Giulio turns his eyes from the camera
and says to her “that she reminds him in his daughter." The weight
of this short but intense moment is how he looks at the girl after
tuning his eyes almost reluctant from his camera. Leaving for a brief
moment his safety in "framing the world" in images” makes him
suddenly vulnerable. The strange teenage girl becomes almost to a
vision of his daughter some years later and she will probably a
stranger to him like this Greek girl. A short moment like a
Haiku poem.
Back in Italy for a few days, Giulio
tries to restore the bound to his family he abandoned but his head is probably still occupied by the footage he still is supposed to
shoot in Greece. He is talking to Irene about a place in Milan where
he hopes to meet more often his family. It is amazing how Bill
Mousoulis moved his focus from the protests in Greece, a concrete
datable historic event to the reflection on image making and finally
to the intimate sphere of Giulio, Irene and Andrea. Mousoulis creates
a dynamic relationship between these elements.
As each image might be a choice, the
result offers much more. Bill Mousoulis always opens the attention
for the unexpected accidental moments of life which invade and leave
the arranged frame. These moments have often a Haiku-like poetry.
There is for example a sick looking very skinny cat. Later we learn
that Andrea is very depressed because this cat is going to die. A
neighbour is crying because her cat has disappeared.
At the end, Giulio is on his way back
to Greece. The “Nowhere Man” disappears in the “Nowhere Place”
airport like the film this fragment of the world disappears into the credits.
Wild And Precious is a rich and
wonderful film experience. Even though I was very aware of the
apparatus of image making, I almost can feel how the recorded film ,
a kind of artificial descends into my own biological one where it
gets a life on its own. Suddenly small moments come to my mind like
the film has a life of its own in my memory- and there is nothing I
can do about it.
Rüdiger Tomczak
After its festival circulation the film
is available optional with English, Italian or Greek subtitles under
this web address.
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