Word: forested
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...Kenya, then returned to Denmark, where under the pen name Isak Dinesen she recalled her former home in prose as direct and luminous as the land: "Mombasa has all the look of a picture of Paradise, painted by a small child . . . Once as we turned a corner in the forest, we saw a leopard sitting on the road, a tapestry animal...
...great painting can have a powerful effect, there is something magical about the uniqueness of the original, the knowledge that Rembrandt applied his brush just here, nowhere else, and never again. Or somebody did. So we wander into that philosophical bramble patch at the edge of the legendary forest where the legendary tree falls and nobody is there to hear whether it makes a sound. Is the famous Etruscan warrior whom the Metropolitan Museum declared a fake some years ago any less handsome than he was back when we thought he was a real Etruscan? Yes, though it is hard...
Although Gardner filmed Forest of Bliss over a 10-week span (concealing his camera in a green garbage bag so as not to attract the curious masses), he compressed his shots into a single day's medley, sunrise to exquisite sunrise. During the moments after the opening sunrise, we feel baffled, in need of explication. When the sun rises once again, we have experienced what Gardner refers to as "it" and we begin to understand...
This weakness, however, is counterbalanced by Gardner's brilliant application of the cinema verite technique. Forest of Bliss lays bare a Benares we would see and experience had we been there. We are bombarded by sights and sounds: street noise, the silence of the river, the knelling of bells. We are tourists experiencing Gardner's "it," his ineffable sense of place and not an audience simply being led about like a dog on a leash. Forest of Bliss hangs before us nakedly exposed and uninhibited, without the protective cover of explication...
...what exactly is Gardener's "it"? The movie's subtle texture, effortlessly impelled by Gardener's deft editing, reveals that "it" is the sense of death that pervades daily life. Like cinema verite, "it" is based on an oxymoron. Forest of Bliss actually reasserts life by concentrating on the ceremony of dying. Vitality and color, charisma and charm, abound in the visages of the living inhabitants, most notably the fire seller, whose joie de vivre consumes the screen. And this juxtaposition of life with death necessitates audience observation, not verbal explanation...