MOUNT ANALOGUE REVISITED
2010, High Definition Video 51’
The film Mount Analogue Revisited is based on a reworking of Rene Daumal’s book ‘Mount Analogue’ which was Daumal’s final work and remained uncompleted due to the author’s premature death. The book is an unfinished story of a voyage to an unknown island, where the voyagers seek an improbable mountain which is seen as a means to link Heaven and Earth. Central to this book and the inception of the voyage, is a text about a symbolic mountain which was written by one of the protagonists but was challenged by another as being factually based.
Walker and Walker take as a starting point for their film, a short passage from the book, where upon the boats arrival at the shores of an island, its crew are escorted in silence to a municipal building, and asked by an official there to give an account of who they are and the purpose of their visit. Within the confines of this meeting, Walker and Walker fabricate a conversation between three of the crew members, the official and the author himself.
They speak of the difficulties involved in making a journey to a superior world other to our own, where the truth cannot not exist, given the limits of reason and rationality. The events play out though pure dialogue within a single room and this serves to ground the fantastical nature of the film. Although the film holds true to the book, it is not a literal adaptation, for the conversation that ensues references a broad number of writers, such as Novalis, Stanislaw Lem, Edger Allen Poe, Maurice Blanchot, Hermann Hess, William James. All of whom serve to inform a proposition for the loosening of the limits of rationality in the pursuit of a more utopian society. The ending remains unresolved as the viewer is left unaware if the voyagers arrival at this place is instigated by the inhabitants of the island or by their own efforts. It is an adventurous philosophical tale, encompassing poetic passages, leading to a spiritual quest, bordering on science fiction.
See also The Owl of Minerva
2010, High Definition Video 51’
The film Mount Analogue Revisited is based on a reworking of Rene Daumal’s book ‘Mount Analogue’ which was Daumal’s final work and remained uncompleted due to the author’s premature death. The book is an unfinished story of a voyage to an unknown island, where the voyagers seek an improbable mountain which is seen as a means to link Heaven and Earth. Central to this book and the inception of the voyage, is a text about a symbolic mountain which was written by one of the protagonists but was challenged by another as being factually based.
Walker and Walker take as a starting point for their film, a short passage from the book, where upon the boats arrival at the shores of an island, its crew are escorted in silence to a municipal building, and asked by an official there to give an account of who they are and the purpose of their visit. Within the confines of this meeting, Walker and Walker fabricate a conversation between three of the crew members, the official and the author himself.
They speak of the difficulties involved in making a journey to a superior world other to our own, where the truth cannot not exist, given the limits of reason and rationality. The events play out though pure dialogue within a single room and this serves to ground the fantastical nature of the film. Although the film holds true to the book, it is not a literal adaptation, for the conversation that ensues references a broad number of writers, such as Novalis, Stanislaw Lem, Edger Allen Poe, Maurice Blanchot, Hermann Hess, William James. All of whom serve to inform a proposition for the loosening of the limits of rationality in the pursuit of a more utopian society. The ending remains unresolved as the viewer is left unaware if the voyagers arrival at this place is instigated by the inhabitants of the island or by their own efforts. It is an adventurous philosophical tale, encompassing poetic passages, leading to a spiritual quest, bordering on science fiction.
See also The Owl of Minerva