The House (1997) User Reviews

Lock this man up!

[sietze · 6/10 · 17 March 1999]

Though I enjoyed the screening of this film, I was quite disappointed about "Bartas' latest". Unlike his previous films The House did not take control of the, in my case well-disposed, viewer.

The separate shots were predominantly fascinating yet sometimes of a very 'controlled' profundity, the lack of continuity on the other hand was embarrassing. At most three consecutive shots formed some kind of a unity.

Therefore I think Sharunas Bartas should be locked up this time, in the editing room for at least a moth and then present a piece that will be worth his signature.

Cold, a little less grey, wordless comfort, almost

[noitsme_habibi · 10/10 · 13 October 2002]

The House was reviewed a little less favorably than Bartas' earlier films (regular cinemagoers having given up long ago), but personally I found it his most beautiful film yet.

Bartas does tend to repeat himself, it's true. Reviewers love his grim shadowscapes, shot in B/W, of anonymous, more or less lonely, drunk or disheveled men and women stumbling through a haze of cold forests, smoky houses and city wastelands in seemingly arbitrarily fashion - but even they get, I assume, weary of it.

(Contrary to what you might think based on the above, there is nothing gothic about Bartas' depressed realities; and he himself insists, whenever somebody dares suggest a socio-political interpretation, there's nothing Soviet about it either. It's existential. No matter, to me his 'The Corridor' still serves as a brilliant visual summary of the comfortless, hopeless human condition of the former Soviet Union).

But The House, the way I experienced it in any case, showed a whole new step. Not just because there was some color. But because abstract, surrealist scenes of indulgence - eating, caressing - and a suggested presence of tales about the house were added to the mere stumbling in the dark, making the film sensual, almost, without ever lessening the impact of how lost (these) people seem.

More than that. Having suspended, first, your urge to recognize or follow any story line, then, even, your urge to formulate any analysis or interpretation of the images he's providing you with - by the time you're just looking at what you see and *feeling* - suddenly you find yourself watching at a fire outside, on the ice in the lake, and there is a glow, and even the sound of unexplained fireworks, and although it's still lonely, it's *pretty*, and you - well, I was, in any case - are moved, sincerely moved.

That's good, if mere images - without plot, without actors, without explanation or meaning even, can move you, to your bones, almost make you cry in grief or relief, that's pretty good. 10/10.