Observations in Time

Fredrik Wenzel won the Sven Nykvist Cinematography Award in 2014 for the The Quiet Roar, directed by Henrik Hellström. He selects a film whose cinematography deeply affected him.

I saw Observations in Time on TV one Christmas morning and realized that I was standing before a giant in Swedish film. I assert that what comes to the fore here is a new type of cinematographic narration. An associative, vibrating, forward movement with beatific serenity in focus. Films that consist of strong images only are rare, but in Nina Hedenius’s case they are the norm. Add to that the fascinating narrative structure, to some degree related to Terrence Malick’s later films, but where the latter often moves through the ethereal and the cryptic, Nina is not deterred by the simple and the direct. Here, there is no contrived aestheticism, only curiosity and a patiently witnessing gaze – as if the camera were merely an excuse to observe the wondrousness of being.