Behemoth

So much human sacrifice and environmental devastation have gone to create a false heaven. 

— from a review of Behemoth by Zhao Liang

Once we sang in the sunshine and blithe, sweet air. But now I grieve upon the shattered Earth

—  a trailer for the film


 Image: Zhao Liang

Two seconds of revelation

For generations most things people could see in the heavens never changed shape. The Moon and some comets were obvious exceptions.  Only recently has it been possible to see, with the aid of technology, the dynamism of the Sun's atmosphere, or movement in the clouds of Jupiter.

But images of change at larger scales — such as animations of galaxy evolution and distribution here and here — remain artefacts of reason, imagination and ingenuity rather than direct observation.

Our experience of stars, nebulae and supernovae is still mediated through static though often spectacular photographs.  Given how slowly the stars seem to change during a human lifetime this seems almost inevitable.

In this context, a clip showing fifteen years' expansion of the Tycho Brache Supernova remnant feels like something particularly remarkable, at least to me. At two seconds (blink and you'll miss it), it is the same length as the 1888 Roundhay Garden Scene, and no less momentous.

ἔκστασις

Ecstasy comes from the Greek 'ekstasis', meaning 'to step outside oneself' like the medieval mystics did to experience faith and truth in an ecstatic, visionary form. Ecstasy in this context is something you would know about if you had ever been a ski jumper. You can see it on the flyers' faces as they sweep past the camera, mouth agape, with their extraordinary expressions. 

Ski flying is just an athletic pursuit: it's also spiritual, a question of how to master a fear or death. ...There is a profound solitude in what these men do. These are lonely people who train for ten years to prepare themselves for a few seconds in the air, when they step outside all we are as human beings...

from Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed (2014)

Land of silence and darkness

When I was a child, before I was like this, I watched a ski-jumping competition. And one thing keeps coming back: those men going through the air. I looked at their faces. I wish you could see that. 

from Land des Schweigens und der Dunkelheit by Werner Herzog (1971)

Image: Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Every moment would be like the one that is imminent"

They are in a big, abandoned, derelict, dark damp room with what look like the remains of a chemistry set floating in the puddle in the middle, as if the Zone resulted from an ill-conceived experiment that went horribly wrong. Off to the right, through a large hole in the wall, is a light source that they all look towards. For a long while no one speaks. The air is full of the chirpy cheep cheep of bird song. It's the opposite of those places where the sedge has withered from the lake and no birds sing. The birds are whistling and chirruping like mad. Stalker tells Writer and Professor – tells us – that we are now at the very threshold of the Room. This is the most important moment in your life, he says. Your innermost wish will be made true here. And we believe him. This is the purpose of the journey, to make us the believe the literal truth of what Stalker says at this point. Ideally, one would live one's whole life as though at this threshold; every moment would be like the one that is imminent.

– from Zona by Geoff Dyer (2012)