Glory at Sea, the Movie

When dealing about courts, if there is an abundance of the former, I don’t care about quantity, I analyze the quality: I really appreciate short form film making, such as Glory at Sea. I have to admit that production and premiere both are as epic as the movie itself: the short movie is directed by Ben Zeitlin and it is a fable of epic proportions and could be described as Herzogian; it resembles Fitzcarraldo.

It is set on the coast of New Orleans; there is a narration, by a dead little girl from the bottom of the ocean; it is the narration of a group of shells hocked residents whom a sense of hope is revealed after a man thought lost to the storm washes ashore and start building a raft, to return to sea on an Orphic quest to find his waterlogged love.

In the movie there are reasons which appear inexplicable the townspeople move to join in this effort, building a grand patchwork vessel, full of old memories and keepsakes. A new community has been formed on the beach and everyone does their part, including the local preacher, who joins the crew.

There is no conventional dialogs, and all is left to the soundtrack; It may be said that the movie represent the will of the man to rejoin the Ocean seen as an existence before to be born: the Ocean is here an amniotic liquid, where persons comes from and where person are going to rejoin. In fact the people have loved ones lost in the sea; and the protagonist, aboy, is going to meet her loved girl, drowned in the sea.

During the navigation all the person on the boat, a part the preacher, will drown and so the meet their loved one.

The destiny of the life is indeed the death, seem suggesting this movie, as these people are going to die as their mission.

But to die means to start a new life, a post mortem life, where it will be possible to meet one own loved ones.

The film director is Behn Zeitlin, that is also the writer.