Of all the things circulating out there in festival land, I am most intrigued by Dumont’s latest film, Hadewijch. There is a great intensity to the way Dumont’s films evoke spirituality as a formal device, and his latest sounds like another step towards Bresson in this regard.
From the interview:
These days I am very interested in mysticism because it goes way beyond philosophy. Mysticism takes us to areas that are beyond questions of reason, beyond speech, and beyond our comprehension of the world. It takes us to an area that is very close to cinema, and I think that cinema is capable of exploring that area and expressing it. That’s why, necessarily, I am attracted to mysticism. At the same time, it’s a complex area. I’m not myself religious—I’m not a believer—but, I do believe in grace and the holy and the sacred. I’m interested in them as human values. I place The Bible alongside Shakespeare, for example; not as a religious work, but as a work of art. The Bible has the definite values of a work of art.