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‘Here’ Review: Bas Devos’s Exquisite Ode to Human Connection Via the Natural World
The year's best release titled 'Here' could be described as a miniature, until you adopt director Bas Devos's acutely magnified way of seeing.
Following the superb 2019 one-two of “Hellhole” and “Ghost Tropic” — respectively, a solemn reflection on urban alienation in the wake of terror attacks and a revelatory nocturnal commute through its unloved fringes — the Belgian capital gets a more summery, sanguine valentine in “ Here,” albeit one still preoccupied with the city’s outsiders and outlying attractions. Adjust your gaze to the director’s more fine-grained perspective and “Here’s” simple gestures become seismic, its images of the everyday — a cowlick of moss weathering an afternoon breeze, a scattering of unidentified brown seeds nestled in a man’s hand, a cast-iron pot of homemade vegetable soup puttering on the stove — imbued with urgent emotional possibility. Though Devos and his “Ghost Tropic” DP Grimm Vandekerckhove shoot in warmly tactile 16mm, using predominantly natural light, there’s an enflamed, iridescent quality to many of the film’s compositions that feels colored by a determination to see ordinary city sights anew: a tree, a building site, a restaurant window illuminated amid heavy rain.
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