NOTTURNO

Directing: B
Writing: B
Cinematography: A-
Editing: B+

I’m struggling to come up with more than one or two people I know who would have the interest in or the patience for Notturno, an unusually immersive documentary by Eritrean-born, Italian-American writer-director Gianfranco Rosi, which was filmed over three years in Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan and Lebanon. That still has little bearing on the likelihood of my recommending it.

It really depends on the style of documentary that interests you—assuming documentaries interest you to begin with. There are no talking heads in Notturno (which translates from Italian as “Nocturnal”), nor is there any real narrative arc to speak of. It’s more of a mosaic, or a pastiche, of a region. For me, it somewhat called to mind the incredible 1992 documentary Baraka, which stitched together images both beautiful and horrible from around the world. Notturno is similar, except that it focuses on one region, and is much quieter, most of it with no musical score.

The quiet nature of this film will make it a challenge for people with short attention spans. But losing oneself in it has its rewards, as there are indeed some truly memorably beautiful shots, whether it be a man quietly maneuvering marshes in a canoe at sunset, or even a camera fixed to the floor of a tank. I found myself wondering often about how these shots were set up. At the beginning, I had to remind myself this was indeed a documentary, as it does not often feel like one.

That said, much of it is very, very sad, a reflection of the dangers, horrors and hopelessness of many pockets of the Middle East, as has been the case for decades—a century. Centuries. Opening title cards give a very brief summary of how the region got to this state, specifically in the immediate aftermath of political lines drawn across the area after the first World War. Many shots feature regular people amongst the rubble of what would otherwise have been fairly modern buildings. I see those and wonder what photos there might be of those buildings when first constructed. When might that have been?

And this is another challenge for an international audience of people without a nuanced understanding of Middle Eastern history. It is impossible to decipher when we are seeing images of any of the four specific countries and regions the footage apparently covers. A lot of the footage is silent, subtitled dialogue featured sparingly. When it is used, it is certainly memorable. In the second scene, we see a woman grieving inside the hollowed-out building where her son was tortured and killed. Much later, and this is the worst, we are witness to a teacher having a conversation about the horrors perpetrated by ISIS when they were holding captive. Children hang drawings on the wall which depict scenes they have presumably been witness to, including dismemberments and beheadings.

The primary focus of Notturno is regular, everyday people, which means very little in the way of action, or immediate threat, is seen onscreen. In multiple scenes, whether it’s a couple smoking on an urban rooftop, a the guy in a marsh canoe, or a large family sleeping on couches and the floor in a living room, machine gun shots can be heard in the distance. I found myself thinking about the Black Lives Matter protests last year that were only blocks from my home, which devolved into countless examples of police overreach and brutality—many people I know wondered how safe I was, although my safety was never really at risk. Still, I became pretty desensitized to things like police flash bombs surprisingly quickly. Imagine if they were machine guns. Is it a similar thing for people in more genuinely dangerous area of the world? In come cases, the only choice is to go on with their everyday lives.

Notturno is available streaming on Hulu, so it’s pretty easily accessible, assuming you have a subscription to that particular platform. The best thing about it is its cinematography, making this an exceedingly rare case of a documentary film that I would have preferred seeing in a movie theater. Still, having seen it, it feels somewhat like something I can check off my list. It’s a bit of a bummer but it’s beautiful, and it is not lost on me the position of privilege from which I can make such an assessment.

Plenty of visual allegory to be found here.

Overall: B