Frost (1997)
Frost (1997)
DVDRip | MKV | 763x572 | x264 @ 1523 Kbps | 204 min | 2,54 Gb
Audio: Deutsch AC3 2.0 @ 256 Kbps | Subs: English hardcoded
Genre: Art-house, Drama
DVDRip | MKV | 763x572 | x264 @ 1523 Kbps | 204 min | 2,54 Gb
Audio: Deutsch AC3 2.0 @ 256 Kbps | Subs: English hardcoded
Genre: Art-house, Drama
Director: Fred Kelemen
Writer: Fred Kelemen
Stars: Adolfo Assor, Harry Baer, Isolde Barth
Frost is a landmark European film, cementing Fred Kelemen as an inheritor of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog. This three-hour epic 16mm film focuses on a mother and son fleeing her abusive husband in Berlin and wandering the former East Germany seeking a town that has long since vanished. Set during a sunless Christmas, Frost slowly unfolds during their one-week odyssey across glacial landscapes, towards peace. Introduced by the film critic Jonathan Romney.
One of the boldest German filmmakers of the last 20-years, critic Susan Sontag compared Kelemen’s “urgently relevant” work to Alexander Sokurov and Bela Tarr. He garnered attention for his 1990s trilogy – Fate, Frost and Nightfall. Believing in “time and not in speed”, meditations on human dissolution, cruelty and loneliness unfold at somnambulant pace. Set amongst Europe’s late-capitalist underclass of the unemployed and dispossessed, he captures nocturnal urban low-life with beauty.
Frost is a slow and baleful movie shot mostly in eastern Germany in Winter. The film follows Marianne and her young son Misha, although the wind is as ever present a character. Marianne flees her abusive partner entering the hinterands of the east attempting to fend for herself and her child in a depressed, indifferent and anomic atmosphere. Occasional moments of kinetic beauty serve only to briefly punctuate the gloom and each is chillingly doused. Frost is masterfully shot, with complex dollying and tracking that few filmmakers would attempt. Mr Kelemen who shot and directed the film is strongly sensitive to cruelty, the type of cruelty that is unmasked only to the vulnerable. The key to the film is Psalm 8, spoken in a church scene, which talks about a theological relationship between God and children. "You have set your glory in the heavens. Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies". Perhaps the most sublime scene is that of a young boy dragging a piece of metal down a cobbled street. A klaxxon and a condemnation of those who hide behind their door, seeing no evil and giving no charity. Tarkovksy is often brought up in relation to Kelemen, but I was also thinking of the Dardennes.
(click to enlarge)
Frost (1997)
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