Letters to Angel (Kirjad Inglile) By Sulev Keedus

Before viewer can fully understand the storyline there’s a scene of absurd performance, where seemingly costumed angel is put mechanically to „fly” and proclaims as deus ex machina: „Your Angel is in heaven, too.” And this is where the question „Is that all actually a dream?” really strikes. Man whose lips are coloured blue because of the ink he uses to write letters to Angel can possibly be just dreaming.

Director Sulev Keedus has confirmed to media that in 30 years ago he was supposed to join soviet army, his army-call was signed with letters „SNIPER” and probably in year 1979 he would have ended up in Afghanistan, returning thereafter as Kirotaja, mentally and physically broken.

While observing Kirotaja’s attempts in remaining bystander and failing because the place is run by the powerful women, such as Michael Jackson prototype (Elle Kull) or Hamlet-quoting medical nurse (Katariina Lauk), it hits me that Kirotaja might be the only one who is actually awake. It’s the world around him that could be asleep. The film sequence also keeps showing apparently coherent chain of images, which, however, are not necessarily actually connected in neither time nor space, as if director is trying to hypnotize viewer into a state of dreaming. This also has an ideological point of view: in order to build up a morality, one needs to show how audience can’t separate itself from „we” to „they”.

Indeed, film watching becomes a surrealistic act for the viewer, but the world of metaphors may not be surrealistic at all. As in the end Kirotaja runs in a stormy sand-field trying to catch the train, I wonder who then wakes up from a dream called Letters to angel: the protagonist, other characters or the spectator?

By Kerli Adov