Last night, I talked about the artists and filmmakers post with an artist friend who passed through town. He pointed out Lars von Trier's collaboration with the Danish romantic painter Per Kirkeby on Breaking The Waves. Kirkeby created deeply romantic landscapes to introduce each chapter of the film. Von Trier points out that the movie's setting, the Isle of Skye, was a favorite destination of many 19th century English Romantic artists and writers.
Interesting because it dovetails so nicely with my other current fixation, is how von Trier envisioned these painterly interludes to Kirkeby: "God's-eye-view of the landscape in which this story is unfolding, as if he were watching over the characters." (from the Journal of Religion and Film)
Moving from interesting to unsettling, this JR&F paper discusses the parallels of Contact and Dante's Paradiso.
Nevertheless, so much of the holy kingdom
as I could treasure up in my mind
shall now be the matter of my song.
-Dante
They should have sent a poet.
-Ellie Arroway
