Saw The Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey, a film about a band of medieval villagers who follow a young boy's visions into a hole in the earth which brings them to modern New Zealand. I assumed it was going to be a comedy, full of culture clashes and confused medieval dudes reacting to billboards and punks and so on. It is that sort of, but it takes itself way more seriously than I'd thought. There's moments when the medieval dudes react with horror to cars of course, but we're always looking over the shoulders of the protagonists. The cars are indeed frightening.
It feels like a Tarkovsky film, full of abstract visions and tight close-ups. The film itself has a wild, medieval feel, focusing on timeless parts of our society and on dreams and visions. I may be taking it more seriously that I'm supposed to but I thought it was tremendously moving for its premise. It also has Tarkovsky's deep ambiguity. The ending especially casts the whole film in doubt, muddying both what happened in the film and what the film is trying to achieve. Very interesting!
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