They say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, a proverb Swiss-Canadian filmmaker Peter Mettler has made the thematic refrain of his multi-layered and monumental cine-diary While the Green Grass Grows (2023).
Shot between Zurich, Toronto and La Gomera, this audacious but never bombastic exploration of the big ideas by which we define our existence reflects on the human obsession with what is on the other side of things, be it dreams of another life (in his family’s migration from Switzerland to Canada), our negotiation with death (he films his parents in their final years), and the process of creation in nature and filmmaking (as something is conjured from nothing.) Though the New Agey leanings of its ponderings, narrated by the director, on Buddhist philosophy, reincarnation and cosmic reckonings may turn off more cynical viewers, While the Green Grass Grows is grounded by perceptive insight and playful levity, not to mention technical finesse, and doesn’t drag once, despite a running time of nearly three hours.
Comprising two parts of what will be a seven-part epic series, it screens at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, and has already netted the Grand Jury prize at Visions du Reel, and the Gold Dove for International Competition Documentary Film at DOK Leipzig. Its impressive scope and mesmeric beauty assures it a long festival run as a major addition to Mettler’s body of work. Active since the 1980s, Mettler is celebrated for his experimental, existential and wide-roaming musings on weirdness and wonder, including Picture of Light (1994), his arctic quest to capture the Northern Lights, and Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002), a cross-continental journey into the many ways humans seek escapism and transcendence.
Death is a labour that must be worked on deeply, like birth, it is suggested in While the Green Grass Grows, which strikes one as a form of mental preparation for the passing of both of Mettler’s parents — a journey we follow in the lead-up and aftermath. Amusing, endearing footage of Mettler questioning his hard-case parents about their lives and what they make of them now at their home in Switzerland takes on a deep poignancy as time does the inevitable. We’re invited intimately into the material reality of the process of the physical body breaking down, as his father is shown on his hospital deathbed, followed by the corpse’s cremation, and the scattering of the ashes, leaving memory in its wake. If all past moments continue to exist somehow, cinema is here to help keep them tangible.
Stunning and inventive footage of the natural world sparks a strong sense of awe and wonder, as Mettler chases the melting waters of spring in the Swiss mountains, and muses on the forest’s cycles of nature with his tattoo artist neighbour Gass, and gardener Maria. Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh’s belief that nothing dies, simply changes form, just as clouds are formulated from other particles, provides a form of comfort as Mettler prepares to say goodbyes. A Covid lockdown in Toronto in 2020 leads the director down more indoor rabbit-holes in search of meaning. He digs out old rolls of celluloid and other forgotten items, including his first Super 8 film The Boy Who Bought A Dream, which even then explored the secret of death, leading him to conclude that he always makes the same film over and over — artistic creation being another cycle of reformulation. Just as rivers flow, capital moves human life forward, and in one quirky, philosophical scene stemming from Mettler’s tendency to defamiliarise everything before him, he contemplates a wad of paper cash (the thousands of Swiss francs that allowed the film project to happen), and ponders the arbitrary power consumerism (and the odd moneyed acquaintance) are able to bestow. Nothing exists in isolation — and it can seem we’re seeing it all for the first time, in Mettler’s thought-provoking and often sublime cine-psychedelic world of endless transformation and cross-pollination.
Director, Writer, Cinematography, Sound, Narrator: Peter Mettler
Editors: Jordan Kawai, Peter Mettler
Sound Design: Jordan Kawai
Producers: Cornelia Seitler, Peter Mettler, Brigitte Hofer
Production companies, Sales: maximage (Switzerland), Grimthorpe Film (Canada)
Venue: IDFA (Signed section)
In English
166 minutes
