This week's Hyde Park Pick
HPPH recommends Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry as the film you can't miss this week.
Martha Boyd
The film’s protagonist, Etero, is vividly painted as a really strong character. Although very different in many ways, there are similarities to Wim Wenders’ new film Perfect Days, in its focus being on one ordinary, and yet extraordinary, character who makes you see the world differently. Both Hirayama, in Perfect Days, and Etero, in Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry, have a poetic lens that they see through. They introduce us to their gift of seeing how beautiful, even if melancholic, the world around them is. Their appreciation of things they love, especially nature, is infectious. Both films are quiet but with striking images that are all the more powerful thanks to their meditative atmosphere and these images sing in your mind long after the credits. Etero’s words particularly stuck with me when she said that the blackberries were her ‘parents, friends and classmates’. Both a gutting indication of solitude and a beautiful example of nature’s power to be so meaningful to people; often a better source of solace than other people, like when Hirayama acknowledges that the trees are his friends in Perfect Days.
The film is a refreshing reminder that middle-aged women without Barbie figures exist and should be presented on camera just as much as anyone else. Etero also presents far-too-rarely-seen independence as a woman which, although criticised by her condescending neighbours, is a source of freedom that she relishes. A brilliant line from Etero on this subject is ‘If marriage and dicks brought happiness, many women would be happy. But look around, who’s happy here?’
If lines like that from the wonderful Etero aren’t enough to convince you that this is worth watching, the cinematography should be. When painting Georgia, cinematographer Ágnes Pákózdi seems to share the same pleasing colour palette as Aki Kaurismäki.
Like a shared moment with the beady eye of a blackbird, this film will stick with you.
Blackbird Blackbird Blackberry is showing at HPPH from Saturday 25 May. Book tickets here.
