Sunset is filmmaker Milo Masoničić’s 11 minute affectionate portrait of his grandmother Olga in the last days of her life. It is the period of widowhood, outliving her husband with whom she was extraordinarily close. (Some viewers might remember seeing the couple in Masoničić’s earlier film Grandparents).
He calls the film a “slideshow” and it does consist mainly of still images, each seen for a few seconds, but the presentation is more nuanced than what you would see on a carousel slide projector. Each photo is quickly revealed by a moving light source, as if being discovered in a cave or dark attic by an explorer with a flashlight. Interpolated between the slides, we see animated sections, largely abstract compositions of moving, glowing lines and rectangles, but the slow movement of these lines out of view suggests the fading of light and of life. Masoničić’s restless piano music plays throughout, creating a mood which is tender and pensive, without becoming maudlin or cheaply sentimental.
The photos provide a vivid composite portrait of this vibrant, mercurial woman, whose expression is always changing. She is at times playful, beaming with warmth for her grandson, but also depressed, exhausted, paranoid, lost. Almost always seen with makeup, jewelry and nail polish, her sense of personal style remains central to her, but the extremely cluttered and disorganized state of her apartment reveals her impulsive nature.
Since Masoničić focuses two of his films on his grandmother, with her sense of playful creativity and exuberant self-expression, I get the impression that his identity as a creative artist was influenced and inspired by her. Her willingness (perhaps begrudging at times) to participate in his film projects reveals her underlying support of his artistic projects.
Gradually we see some photos of younger family members and friends, the people who make up her daily contacts, as well as pictures from her youth, and the youth of her son, Masoničić’s father. Inevitably, for any family that lives in the former Yugoslavia (the family is Montenegrin), these include images of war and violence.
This complex, composite portrait does not consist solely of pretty, posed pictures. Some pictures are ones anyone would be delighted to have in a family album, of a grandmother smiling and happy. Many of the pictures have a certain brutality, as they capture her at moments where she looks awful: tired, angry, disorganized, not in the mood for posing. But the foundation of love and respect which underlies the project of the film is palpable, and Masoničić’s inclusion of these less attractive shots is not malicious, but driven by a desire to know the full reality of her widow’s life. Masoničić, who is 30, wants to understand how Olga continues to find meaning and inspiration in a time of old age and loss, just as the specter of his own aging begins to come into view. Those of us who have had beloved elders in our lives know how much they have to teach us, at every stage of life. We learn as much from their confusion and mistakes as we do from their wisdom.
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