¡Vivan
las Antipodas! (U) 108 mins
***
The phrase is “digging to
China”, but in fact there are several points where one might theoretically pass
through the Earth’s core and emerge on land the other side. Victor
Kossakovsky’s documentary curio is essentially a high-concept exercise in
matchmaking, pairing and then crosscutting between these polar opposites to
illustrate how the other half lives. Stunning, NASA-precise photography maps
out the similarities and differences: there’s a clear mismatch between rural
Argentina and rapidly developing Shanghai, but shared agricultural interests
unite Chilean Patagonia with Russia’s Lake Baikal, and Kossakovsky finds one
lovely visual rhyme between Hawaii’s volcanic terrain and the hides of
Botswanan elephants. A sympathy for the methods of slow cinema would help – it
digs assiduously, using long takes that gradually reveal the minutiae of daily
life – but its idiosyncratic gaze refuses any we-are-the-world homilies. You
emerge wondering what (and who) might lie beneath your own feet.
¡Vivan las Antipodas! opens in selected cinemas from today.
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