THE INVISIBLE MOUNTAIN

Ben Russell
Ben Russell continues his path and his rise to the summit with his latest work inspired by René Daumal’s Mont Analogue, a remarkable text that seems to have been written especially for him. From this literary source, we understand what is read to us: a spiritual and collective quest involving the search for a mountain that’s out of sight. Russell transposes this to his own filmmaking – condensing all the meditative power into the image. La Montagne Invisible is a long Trypps (the name of the short, experimental forms produced by B.R.) reconnecting with the mysteries of transcendence and psychedelic pleasures. Russel creates a structure that weaves between a portrait gallery (of touring musicians) and the solitary roaming of a man who sets off to hunt down the fleeting apparitions of the invisible mountain. The lanky figure is filmed from behind in a dolly shot following in the wake of his strides. Come As You Are is the legendary track that opens this film as we savour the scratchy guitars and the layers of sound that make the faces and landscapes elastic. Russell warps space and time, using sliding and circular movements around the faces he films. Although as he progresses, the character crosses varied landscapes, we experience an immobile journey. The “elsewhere” is primarily in the filmmaking, which the director inhabits by moving to the other side of the camera (with the complicity of Ben Rivers), forming an unexpected tandem with his character – a fusion of the imaginary territory of the spiritual quest and the making of the movie. The vastest wilderness and the highest peaks are those within. Finding them requires that we recognise the passages and doors. Music is one of those doors, and Russell’s hallucinatory visions offer us a dazzling cinematographic translation of its perceptible possibilities. Ben Russell’s “mont analogue” is music made into an image, the analogue film of music.
(Claire Lasolle)