Víctor Erice-Lifeline (2002) (Reupload)

Victor Erice's LIFELINE, a portrait of a peaceful afternoon in a Spanish village in 1940, with death and destruction always close at hand: Children play, farmhand reap dry grass, old men play cards, while a baby starts to bleed to death. The beauty and poetic power of the images and sounds is outstanding, only comparable to Tarkovsky (another director with a genuine feel for life on the countryside). Marvelous... (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0304808/usercomments)


"Lifeline" by Victor Erice, the poetic Spanish filmmaker whose only features to date are "The Spirit of the Beehive" (1973), "El Sur" (1983), and "Dream of Light" (The Quince Tree Sun, 1992). Most of the cinephiles I know are dearly hoping this new piece won't be his only cinematic contribution to the first decade of the 21st century, as it merely confirms his exceptional talent--it's one of the most beautiful films I've seen all year. (http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2004/10/25)


The film, shot in luminous black-and-white, offers only the barest narrative situation through evocative dissolves connecting people and objects on a quiet afternoon in the Spanish countryside. A young boy draws a watch on his arm and imagines its tick-tocking, aided by the sounds of a real clock and the rhythmic labor of people around him: an elderly woman kneads dough in the kitchen, men scythe tall grass outside; young women scrub shoes. Beyond these people, children play in a parked car; an elderly man plays solitaire and next to him, a middle-aged man sleeps with the remnants of a cigar perched between his limp fingers. A mother sleeps beside her newborn infant, and there is an atmosphere of stillness and peace. Erice dissolves between the characters and various visual details, some nostalgic (family photographs from Cuba) and some menacing (a newspaper article describing Nazis in Spain). The news and decor place the film within a mid-century timeframe and remind the viewer of Franco's close relations with Germany during World War II. (http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2004/10/25)


Suddenly, a dark stain appears on the baby's blanket and begins to spread. No one, however, seems to notice. Time moves steadily forward as the danger looms. At a critical moment, however, the mother wakes up and cries for help; everyone drops their chores and rushes to her aid. The young boy wipes the image of the watch from his wrist. (http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2004/10/25)


Lifeline unfolds in sublimely poetic fashion, soft dissolves connect its beautifully-lit interiors and strong exterior compositions. Its visual and aural textures are lovingly merged and it's clearly the work of someone who has lived this life and remembers it vividly. (http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2004/10/25)


I've watched the film a number of times now, and it's a deeply compelling mixture of elements--rural life and historical detail, physical labor and a child's imagination--that continually unveils new meaning. On trying to parse the relationship between its disparate elements, Erice's own comments on the film have been helpful: "Chronos, with its watchful eye, attempts to control life... but life drains away." (http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2004/10/25)


Chronos, of course, was the Greek god of time who devoured his children because he was told one would eventually slay him. (Unfortunately, he was tricked into forgetting one named Zeus.) Moreover, the ancient Greeks used two words to describe time: chronos (measuring the ever-diminishing quantity of time) and kairos (measuring the quality of time in special, unique, restorative moments). Erice's citation of Chronos suggests the real philosophical conflict at the heart of his film: chronos identifies Spain at a moment in the early-'40s on the brink of war while an infectious danger spreads beneath its ritualized home life, and kairos interrupts that flow and ushers in a defining moment of hope. Such an interplay could describe that specific historical moment of the people of Spain as well as its larger historical experience. Like Erice's previous work, Lifeline poetically asserts the relationship between personal meaning and history through its intoxicatingly potent sights and sounds that ultimately convey a love of human resilience. (http://filmjourney.weblogger.com/2004/10/25)


Erice felt that the brief for Lifeline was too abstract. "I decided to make it as concrete as possible," he says. He settled on a scene from his own childhood, shot in documentary style in his home region. A midwife fails to properly tie a newborn baby's umbilical cord. The baby lies in a cot, a bloodstain spreading over its clothes, and the world goes on around him. The maid bakes a cake, the men swing their scythes in the field, children play in an old car, a boy draws a clock face on his arm, a youth, one leg amputated, plays with his remaining big toe. A news- paper cutting announces the new Spain; swastikas go up in frontier towns. It is 1940, the year Erice was born. The child's life is saved in the 10th minute.
Erice then does something radical. The film was shot in colour, but he decided that the bloodstain was too pretty. For him, endlessly violent modern films have vulgarised red blood and made it meaningless. The cameraman thought the bloodstain was "lovely"; that seems to have decided him. He printed the film in black and white. It now fits perfectly into the ambience of the time. (http://arts.guardian.co.uk/fridayreview/story/0,12102,1035516,00.html)



Rapidshare.de (100 MB + 71.97 MB)

http://rapidshare.de/files/37344244/Erice-LL.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.de/files/37340596/Erice-LL.part2.rar

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