Classical Period

What are a few references among friends? But for Cal and his circle, it’s hardly a few. They barely conduct a single conversation that doesn’t revolve around architecture, literature, theology, history. Each set of ideas leads seamlessly into the next, until the flow they form is endless, there are always more footnotes, theoretical perspectives, cantos, translations to cite, so many ways of keeping everyday life at bay. When Cal, Evelyn, Chris et al. exchange all this absurdly specific knowledge, they do so with such earnest relentlessness that it’s hard to suppress a smile, although melancholy is never far away. Cal is frequently by himself, turning pages in silence in shadowy rooms, while Evelyn paces the streets of Philadelphia when she can’t sleep, at night, alone. Even when the group gets together, they often remain apart in the frame with no wider shot to connect them, one face holds forth, another stays silent, are they even in the same place at all? Evelyn wishes it were possible to speak more directly, but perhaps that’s the defining feature of the period, not the classical one, this one. You speak, you listen, there’s nothing in between. (Berlinale)