Belgium | 2010 | Directed by Koen Mortier
Logline: A mall security guard apparently survives a suicide bomb attack and in the immediate aftermath suffers acute anxiety and encounters several of the victims’ ghosts.
The second feature from the Flemish director who unleashed the brilliant assault on the senses that is Ex Drummer delivers a disturbingly introspective follow-up, as uncompromising in its attitude as it is studious in tone. This is a character study where humanity is stained with the blood of morality; this is a deeply personal narrative that meanders and weaves like a lost child in a giant crowd.
Mortier achieves a disquieting hypnotism with his mise-en-scene, his Phantom camera tracking and dollying through the urban concrete jungle and psychological landscape, each as haunted as each other; the palette as grey and cold as the calculated intent of the young terrorist. But there is no political agenda on the mind of the young bomber; he is serving something much more personal and confronting.
The main thrust of the narrative focuses on Sam (Sam Louwyck), a security guard, who is standing at the entrance of the mall when the bomb is detonated inside. The blast knocks him to the ground. Covered in dust Sam does his best to pull some of the victims from the carnage. When hysteria overwhelms him he flees from the scene only to meet one of the victims, a woman who demands to know why the bomber did what he did, as if Sam is somehow responsible.
Innocence and guilt are intertwined as several other victims visit Sam and as he watches in a flashback the bomber preparing for his destructive deed. The death of his young daughter in a bicycle collision with a car holds a deep significance that isn’t revealed until the end of the movie; mortality and karma dance on a precarious edge.
Surrealism is a creative tool that Koen Mortier uses freely within his storytelling structures and 22nd Of May hovers between experimental narrative and stream-of-consciousness. There is a palpable feeling of journey that this movie evokes, of time and place, of moment and instance. The fragility of humanity, the ephemeral quality of existence; death is just around the corner peering … Be careful you might just catch its eye.
Slow and deliberate 22nd Of May doesn’t suffer fools gladly. This is an acquired taste. The taste of spit and cigarettes from ex Drummer is replaced by the taste of explosives and debris. Questions of longing and resignation are slapped around and sat down. This is violence for the intellectual, ugliness in beauty. A fantasy dysfunction.
22nd Of May is released by Accent Entertainment.
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