Russia (USSR, technically)
Dziga Vertov
This movie is a full cinematic experience. It takes on every aspect of film and turns it around and makes exquisite movie love to your eyeballs. Well, to your whole face, really. The film is simply an experience more than it is anything else. There's the slightest hint of a plot, but really it's just an artistic expose of this time and people.
Just by showing life in a 1920s Russian city through specifically chosen clips and edited in a way-ahead-of-their-time manner, the film is able to keep you captured the whole way through. There were shots I was amazed someone could get at that time considering the technology (bulky ass camera). Perhaps my favorite was a montage of shots of people doing sports (picture shown) and they're played in slow motion as if he had the same frame rate sports shows do today! It's absolutely gorgeous, I don't know how they did it, and I quite frankly don't care (No, I do care.. it's amazing!). The movie seriously is just stunning and can actually be kind of draining the first time through due to its overwhelming awesomeness.
Very experimental style, the score is well chosen, at times too perfect. It breaks the fourth wall quite often, which I love, and it does it in such a way that helps to tell the sort-of story. Worth watching if you love to look at beautiful things, love culture/people, or if you're just wanting something really mind-blowing to watch. I also particularly liked the fact that early animation is incorporated into it. It must have been unbelievably tedious to do the film, but it paid off. Just a masterpiece!
