New book on ancient survey line

[John Bailey]

The grim moodiness; sort-of affectless performances contrasted to
lush, crisp cinematography; the unrelenting sense of struggle; the
feeling that behind all of this is some kind of vast meaning drawing
in religion, military and governmental power and philosophy, with
every object fairly glowing with inscrutable significance; and the
sauna itself, which is a beautiful, mute image that clearly nods to
Tarkovsky (and Kubrick) on a stylistic level.

But it's equally indebted to Japanese horror as Euro arthouse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9H0nWovb40&feature=related

And as said before - it doesn't really live up to its promise. There's
a feeling that there might be nothing deeper behind the mysterious
stuff. Worth finding if you can get it cheap but it's not a classic or
anything.

On Fri, Jul 31, 2009 at 2:44 PM, Daniel Cape<daniel.cape at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2009/7/30 John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com>:
>> Oh, I have a copy of Sauna. That final sequence is truly terrific.
>> Nice nods to Tarkovsky in there too. Not great overall though, I
>> agree.
>
> Before I hunt it out, what's Tarkovskyesque about Sauna? I love T's
> films... and The Stalker has always struck a GR chord with me: the
> Zone and all...
>