An experimental film should be approached in the same open-minded spirit in which it was created, but I must confess to being more or less defeated by this opaque, inert, micro-budget work from Canadian director Rhayne Vermette, who has worked with Guy Maddin in the past. Levers is set in the Red River valley in Manitoba, and much of it unfolds in a kind of gloomy darkness; the title, which is French, means Sunrises, and the interplay of light and darkness is a key image.
A gigantic eclipse plunges the world into shadow; the event would appear to have an occult connection with a certain sculpture and sculptor. But the eclipse is to pass, resulting in a series of sunrises around the globe, and one person undertakes to investigate what exactly has happened.
The director has released a statement indicating that the modest material she had to work with included “three broken Bolex cameras”; well, nothing in the resulting footage looks at all broken, although perhaps only a philistine would suggest one way around this damage would be to shoot on, say, iPhones with apps that digitally fabricate this kind of footage.
The director herself comes from Canada’s Indigenous Métis people, and Métis culture is referenced here and in her previous feature Ste Anne; it is a culture and worldview that might easily be obscured or effaced. Levers is clearly something which has been carefully authored with scrupulously intended meanings and associations. Yet it does not really come to life.
• Levers (Sunrises) is at the ICA, London, from 24 October.
