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Life Without Death
7/10/2001
This last Sunday I watched an amazing Film at the National Gallery of Art : Life Without Death by Frank Cole . Its a somber, haunting film about one man's journey across the harsh Sahara Desert in a quest for answers about death. It is stark, quiet, and deeply introspective; devoid of any intrusive exposition to color the viewer's impressions.
The movie does not shy away from nudity, death, or other harsher realities of life, but it doesn't revel in them either. Such level-headed and frank depictions might turn some viewers off, but I found them a great relief from the tidier, more polite offerings of hollywood. When the film shows a mother being cut open and her child pulled from her womb via cesarean section I was feeling quite uplifted and joyous, not repulsed and disgusted.
Its a movie that works that way.
I can't express how much I liked this film. I has instantly become one of my favorites. It just seemed to speak to so many things that have been playing on my mind these last few years. Maybe its because I feel an affinity with Mr. Frank Cole. Maybe its because I've been wanting to take a similar journey for years now. I don't know. I don't share his death obsession, but his quest for answers and the methods he chose to find them... That I understand.
Frank Cole is one of the rare people I've seen in a movie that I would really like to meet. Have dinner with. Talk with. Sadly that's not going to happen.
Frank Cole was killed last year by bandits during a return trip to the Sahara
7/10/2001 | Permanent Link
