Der Tod des Empedokles oder: Wenn dann der Erde Grün von neuem Euch erglänzt

"Nothing is more painful, Pausanias, than deciphering the riddle of suffering." Captures in a remarkable way the singular place of Hölderlin as a poetico-philosophico-political thinker of the rise of philistinism. Could such a figure exist today, and one for whom the same question is more relevant than ever, of the possibility or otherwise of opening a path by which "the green of the earth will glisten once again"? A film that asks whether and how cinema could become a truly political art form.

Similar to Antigone, The Death of Empedocles is an austere and formally rigorous presentation of a Holderlin play where actors deliver dialogue in rigid meters that somehow manage to be simultaneously dramatic and borderline sensual.The contrast between the increasingly tense character exchanges and the calm sounds of nature which subtly frame their encounters is tastefully done, and Rauch makes a compelling Empedocles, and his scenes with Pausanias (V.Barrata) are surprisingly moving.