Natural Light (2021)
7/10
Cold, wet and depressing forests
24 October 2022
A few days on the road with Sergeant István Semetka chasing the Partisans through the birch and pine forests in Russia, at the time of the 2nd World War.

I still remember those forests from over 40 years ago and to be honest, I'd rather cycle through the Dutch forests here than walk there in the Russian ones, but that aside.

The film comes across as cold, wet and depressing. You will not hear any laughter and István is not the happiest either. He continues to stoically look ahead and is not communicatively "the first rooster".

Director Dénes Nagy is also very calm in his use of images, you often see scenes by István, staring into the distance or contemplating something and that takes more than 10 to 20 seconds before the next scene appears.

I like this myself, you see beautiful images, but there are probably also viewers who like action and going on, so I don't recommend this film to them.

Also in terms of acts of war, little happens in the film, once you see a skirmish between the soldiers and the Partisans.

Despite that, my rating is more than sufficient because the film fascinated me, there is an atmosphere around it that appealed to me.

A nice 7+.
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