Parallax View

Turkey/Bulgaria, 2009; Reha Erdem

From the moment the distant figure of a man approaches out of the foggy whiteness of a snowfield, Kosmos appears to be a movie bent on allegorizing something elemental. Throw in that the stranger’s name is Kosmos, that he will meet and bond with an only slightly less strange young woman named Neptün, and that the film abounds in elaborate flourishes, enigmatic gestures, and not a few aphoristic lines of dialogue. Is it incumbent upon us to suss out what all this means? Does director and co-writer Reha Erdem himself know?

My advice: Don’t worry about it. What matters is that Kosmos, whether metaphysical mystery or a bit of a mess, grabs one’s eyes and interest at the outset and holds them for most of the ensuing two hours. The title character seems to be at the end of his tether as he staggers onto a bluff above the town—looking as if its builders had been staring too long at Escher drawings—where most of the action will play out. (The location is Kars, Turkey.) Yet upon catching sight of a child being swept downriver, this distracted soul plunges into the icy water immediately—well, after stashing a wad of money under a stone—to rescue the kid. This makes him, in the eyes of the townsfolk, “an honored guest as long as you like” … although it doesn’t take long before his eccentric behavior begins inspiring second thoughts about that.

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