ABSTRACT
Chapter 10 examines Bazin’s ‘myth of total cinema’ in light of a major trend in recent world cinema to focus on monumental landscapes, in films by Byambsuren Davaa and Luigi Falorni (The Story of the Weeping Camel/Ingen nulims, 2003), Abderrahmane Sissako (Timbuktu, 2014), Mikhail Zvyagintsev (Leviathan/Leviafan, 2014), Nuri Bilge Ceylan (WinterSleep/Kiş uykusu, 2014), Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra (Birds of Passage/Pájaros de verano, 2018), and Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles (Bacurau, 2019). Taken together, these films testify to the remarkable convergence among filmmakers from the most disparate corners of the globe in resorting to expansive landscapes as a totalising cosmos and a sealed-off stage for the drama of existence, where realism manifests itself by means of real locations.
