Review: Wondrous ‘Wood and Water’ searches for strands of home in unexpected places

In Jonas Bak’s exquisitely crafted first characteristic, “Wooden and Water,” a widowed German mother’s retirement from her church job and emotions of loneliness spur a visit to go to a faraway son in Hong Kong, which additionally turns into a method for her new self to reckon recollections and loss with an unsure future.

The delineated settings, captured with the intimate grain of 16 mm, couldn’t be extra unalike in power: the verdant serenity of a Black Forest village and the neon-and-steel bustle of a city-state within the grip of historic protests. Bak visually connects these two atmospheres in a patiently virtuosic lengthy take pointed upward from a shifting automobile as fleeting treetops on the sting of the body segue into the darkness and pulsating fluorescence of a tunnel, after which we emerge into what seems like a flower mattress of high-rises. The collapsed distance is disorienting but in addition surprisingly wondrous.

Bak solid his personal mom, Anke, as his touring protagonist, and she or he’s a singularly genuine presence, whether or not alone together with her ideas looking a window or participating with strangers in an unfamiliar metropolis: a younger roaming Australian, a useful doorman, a fortune teller’s translating pal. The son isn’t round, save the one behind the digital camera, a curious and affecting mix of narratively externalized guilt and filmmaking devotion that solely deepens as the fact of her state of affairs sinks in.

Juxtaposing nature’s comforting placidity and an city mélange through which freedom is at all times in flux, “Wooden and Water” breathes with unforced majesty about what’s unhappy and delightful in moments of nice change — story, temper and near-documentary-like remark are in an exquisite concord right here. Within the abiding stillness of its photographs and pacing is a way of life because it’s lived and, hopefully, appreciated. It makes for a exceptional debut characteristic in that respect, since this might simply be a extra veteran artist’s summing up about time spent trying to find strands of residence in locations previous and new.