The Sky Trem­bles and the Earth is Afraid and the two Eyes are Not Brothers

Movies, par­tic­u­lar­ly fic­tion fea­tures, have a habit of co-opt­ing and re-arrang­ing nat­ur­al scenery and cul­tur­al tra­di­tion for their own self­ish gains. A film crew might embed itself with­in an unknown clime and set about extract­ing the local colour as way of imbu­ing a mun­dane sto­ry with a mod­icum of exoti­cism and orig­i­nal­i­ty. Cin­e­ma as a colo­nial­ist enti­ty, you might say. But what are the ethics behind this trans­ac­tion? Is it okay for a cam­era lens to trans­form a real desert com­mu­ni­ty into some sin­is­ter back­ward locale from yes­ter­year? Or a rocky cause­way into awe-inspir­ing sur­face of some far away planet?

The Sky Trem­bles and the Earth Is Afraid and the Two Eyes Are Not Broth­ers is a new film by the British film­mak­er Ben Rivers, and it fur­ther bol­sters the the­o­ry that he’s one of the country’s great­est liv­ing direc­tors. He explores this knee-jerk prac­tice in an inno­v­a­tive, com­ic and, even­tu­al­ly, unnerv­ing man­ner by observ­ing the pro­duc­tion of a movie which appears to be tak­ing advan­tage of a vibrant land­scape. French direc­tor Oliv­er Laxe is ini­tial­ly sub­ject and then star of a film which play­ful­ly flits back and forth between fic­tion and real­i­ty, tak­ing us in to and out of the film being made while con­stant­ly manip­u­lat­ing the rela­tion­ship between Laxe and the locals help­ing out with the production.

The film drinks in the beau­ty – both visu­al and aur­al – of the imme­di­ate land­scape, and can be enjoyed (like so many of Rivers’ past films) as a sim­ple, psy­che­del­ic trav­el­ogue. It also acts as a cold doc­u­ment of small-scale, loca­tion-based alter­na­tive film­mak­ing: in one sequence, a young gen­tle­man dressed as some kind of druid is asked to fall back­wards off a small cliff and on to a stacked pile of card­board box­es, and it’s a nerve-rack­ing feat to observe even if we’re see­ing it from a van­tage which neu­tralis­es the intend­ed drama.

The film this most recalls is Jean-Luc Godard’s thrilling­ly banal doc­u­ment of the Rolling Stones noodling in a stu­dio, Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il. That film also begins by focus­ing on the heady process of cre­ation, chron­i­cling how toil and cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion are even­tu­al­ly revamped into poet­ry, before becom­ing a dif­fer­ent beast alto­geth­er. Laxe you could say is con­sumed by his own movie as locals (or peo­ple play­ing stereo­typ­i­cal ver­sions of ​‘locals’) lock him into a body suit fes­tooned with tin can lids and force him to dance for them while tak­ing pot-shots at his feet.

In some ways you could see this as a revenge movie, with Laxe get­ting a taste of his own cul­tur­al-colo­nial­ist med­i­cine. As you’ll see, every­thing here is couched in uncer­tain­ty, as Rivers always remains at a sneaky remove from the heart of the mate­r­i­al, nev­er reveal­ing his inten­tions out­right, which in turn gives the film take on its own, fable-like quality.