Here is a meditative documentary from Dutch film-maker Joke Olthaar that mostly consists of monochrome, long-held static shots, exquisitely filmed by cinematographer André Schreuders, of the mountains in Triglav National Park in Slovenia. It opens and closes with some airy voiceover musings about the abyss, solitude and all that jazz, and there are references to “the three of us” which chime with the three tiny, black, human-shaped blobs seen from time to time.
But for the most part, there is no palpable story or shape to the film. Olthaar occasionally mixes in what looks like Super 8 footage of climbers and walkers pictured on a more human scale, and at one point a dead body is dug out of the snow. Yet none of that human activity is given any more weight than the shots of handsome goats hanging out on the crags, or the shifting patterns of sun and shadow flickering across the vast spaces.
