A woodland world similar to ours in which artificial hierarchies between humans and animals have partially fallen away and people now hibernate through the winter is the setting of Spanish filmmaker and video artist Anna Cornudella Castro’s feature debut The Human Hibernation, a cryptic and mesmeric sci-fi vision with resonant echoes for our uncertain times of climate crisis, which screened in the Imagina section of the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Performance art and speculative science are disciplines that both reverberate through this singular imagining of a community and ecosystem in the midst of accelerated change. Its inhabitants seek to make sense of their place in the surroundings, their grief for a lost past, and their anxiety for an uncertain future, in dank greenery that seems animated by a kind of magic.
A glassy pond in a forest clearing seems to function as some kind of gateway between sleeping and waking worlds. As humans emerge from the hibernation that has preserved them through the bitterness of a snowy winter, as if coming out of a dream or hatching from pods into a new form, they seek each other out, and slowly rediscover a sensuous awareness of their bodies and environment. Relationships between the humans in this community are vaguely defined and nebulous, but it appears that the nuclear family is no longer a primary organising concept, as one individual reflects on having been raised by a mother and three fathers. Human inhabitants are also experimenting with communicating more like the animals that live amongst them, endeavouring to read minds or detect heartbeats, their wordless screams echoing through the forest as the moos of cattle sound back. The purpose of the activities of the humans who dwell here — harvesting the eyes of cows, for instance — is hard to determine in a universe with close parallels to the one we understand, but which operates according to a new and baffling natural order.
Snails writhe together, snakes slough their skins, chicks hatch and raccoons scuttle around, in a natural world alive with the transitions of a myriad of creatures in their seasonal cycles, its dark, rain-soaked foliage and close-ups vibrant with detail atmospherically lensed by D.O.P. Artur Pol Camprubi. Constant birdsong carries an awareness of teeming, multi-faceted existence. But the winter, equally beautiful in its snowy quiet, can be fatal in its bitter coldness, and the inhabitants know that they must prepare, even though the most brutal season’s length is hard to determine.
Much of the film is silent, cloaked in unspoken mystery, and meditative. When humans do speak, the reflections they share with each other present almost as somnambulant or floating monologues, as they voice their existential anxiety for the unknown to come, and reminisce with palpable grief about experiences, such as eating flowers in “better times,” that they will never have the chance to enjoy again. It is evident that, beyond regular seasonal cycles, a deeper, unwelcome transition is afoot, that the world they are familiar with is dying, and finding new ways to survive meaningfully in their environment requires a process of adaptation without rules for guidance. The usual hubris of humanity in believing themselves superior to other creatures and plantlife will not help them here, and, as goats stand about nonchalantly on living room furniture, the people here seem to have long come to understand and accept this. There is talk of a higher power to be sensed in the fields at night, but what this force constitutes is left as mere suggestion. The Human Hibernation is a film which, in its obscure conjecture, formalistic performances, and unexplained, imagistic mysteries, may frustrate those looking for a narrative that clearly works out a plot premise. But its esoteric ambiguity is also is strength, leaving space for audiences to forge their own significances and reflections on our era of planetary crisis, and showing Anna Cornudella Castro as an impressive voice with a distinctive, poetic signature.
Director: Anna Cornudella Castro
Screenwriter: Anna Cornudella Castro, Lluis Sellares
Cast: Clara Much Dietrich, Valentine, Demetrius Hollimon, Jane Hubbell, Brian Stevens
Producer: Gerard Rodriguez
Cinematographer: Artur Pol Camprubi
Editing: Marc Roca Vives
Music: Emili Bosch Molina
Sound: Laura Tompas
Production companies: Japonica Films (Spain), Batiak Films (Spain)
Sales: Begin Again Films
Venue: Karlovy Vary (Imagina)
In English
86 minutes
