Horizon By Paul Negoescu

A tree is facing us, incredibly tall. As if it was rooted in our retina, this tree is standing up in an extreme low-angle shot. Should we fear the danger? An uncanny feeling comes out from this preliminary scene, similar maybe to what you might feel during the Hitchcockian sequence of the sequoia forest in Vertigo… This is, without a doubt, a shot filmed with a wild verticality. This Romanian short film from Paul Negoescu is entitled Horizon. Yet, the director brings us back rapidly to the promised horizontality; after few minutes indeed, this towering tree does collapse in a slow fall, idly… Suddenly, the set changes: the horizon is given back to us, maybe the most beautiful existing, one licked by a shimmering sea under the sun of an ending day. Here the story is tinted with a documentary tone letting us discover on this sea a man with a craggy face and a grayish ponytail. Obviously, this is a master mariner bustling around his nets with gestures he knows by heart. As if we were literally inside his makeshift boat, we witness the fisherman hauling in his nets from the sea, shaken by strong waves. Then, the frame broadens and the camera gets higher to embrace the immensity of a commercial seaport; the kind of soulless setting where men have no place. Back on the sea, the contrast of the small pale blue boat sailing along the black and red flank of a gigantic cargo ship illustrates clearly how threatened this man is in our industrialized world. Is this denunciation stereotyped? Not if we notice that Paul Negoescu inserts regularly in his short film slight and yet oppressive strokes of supernatural. These waves that bang together on the skiff of the fisherman’s boat, aren’t they accompanied by strange knocks? Aren’t these knocks following the fisherman when he tries to anchor a little bit farther? Yes, a predator is tracking down this man and his fall in the waves seems unavoidable. At dusk, an aquatic creature emerges from the sea. How disappointing: the secret should have been kept…

by Emilie Padellec (France)