A burly guitarist stood in the corner of the road trying to master the tone of the ‘twinkle, twinkle little star.’ A man who passes to listen carefully and imposes coins as an appreciation for the effort. People who pass know something or two about starting from the beginning. An epidemic that does not seem to have causes or drugs. A lucky person to have a family member who came to pick them up from the hospital.
People who pass are the unnamed protagonists of Apples:
The Greek filmmakers Christos Nikou forced, if it was rather polite, the director’s debut. One “unknown,” he was convinced by doctors at the neurological hospital to register for their “new identity” program. Which is aiming to help this empty combustion begin to live. Installed in an apartment that is rarely equipped. The man accepts a regular “task” of the doctor’s. It heads through audiotapes that he must complete and provide evidence with photos. The tasks are getting more convoluted and psychotic, ordering the protagonist to hit a car, jump from a height, and the worm back to the household that just died.
The element that triggers Apples narratives, and supports our curiosity, is a mystery around the man’s relationship with his past and uncertain about his future direction. Characters wander across the playground, theater, discotheques, clubs, pubs, and parking lots, completing eccentric tasks that take it vaguely through childhood, adolescent, and adult signs. There was a feeling that he did these tasks with the sole purpose of turning it into a polaroid souvenir. The condition of thousands of years is directed. This obligation to make a new album event on life. To prove that he has undergone these moments, replacing the experience of this event itself.
Pathos The main character’s efforts to tell their lives are undercut with the instructions:
That it may not be entirely the Tabula flavor that we carry. It might consciously escape from the past and, in fact, not Amnesiac. The instant rare where he let his guard down show that what might suffer because of memory.
Part of what is fantastic about Apples is that, far from intending to deceive the audience of the truth about the protagonist’s condition, it proposes a double character as authentic itself.
For this purpose, the director refuses to let us enter into the protagonist’s mind and play instead basically. The character, which can be dressed as an astronomer at a costume party, is never enough anywhere.
Played by the bearded severalize Aris.
Who cut the philosopher Stoic figure who jumped into a modern Athens. The protagonist said very little, expressing even lower. Even when he sang or danced, he seemed to execute the idea of songs and dances. Nikou dedicated the film to his father’s memory instead of fixing the actor’s shot, sitting or staring into the distance. Seeing it bitten one Apples after another, we wondered if it located something behind his vague and silent gaze.
Thin Apples on incidents or narrative exposition and the mode itself above all is a cipher study. Like de Rigueur in this kind of cinema, Nikou shoots superficial focus, moves its composition on the face of several sculptures and the upper body. It’s reflecting the loss of character and feelings never integrating into the landscape. Outside other women who are “unknown” (Sofia Georgovassili), which the protagonist encountered during one of his tasks. The several full characters pushed Nikou to get away from gunshot patterns.
Contemporary Greek filmmakers operating in this narrative mode:
It can hardly escape comparisons with Yorgos Lanthimos. Idiosyncratic, Apples working high concepts have many similarities. In addition to borrowing its main actors from the Alps (2011), Nikou channeled compatriot in their taste for the development of unreasonable plots, the composition of shots that were not orthodox, clinical indoor settings, and handling secondary characters, which were precise with the benefits of the main character.
However, Nikou, the film pitches at the level above realism. Which might not stand logical scrutiny – but some notches under parables like Lanthimos. He highlighted discrepancies by the anachronism calculated: The film looks contemporary and futuristic but scattered with 40-year-old props. While predetermined satisfaction as a 4: 3 aspect ratio of this film is now an academic.