Die Nacht

Films like this cannot be made without complete confidence and trust, and in Clever Syberberg clearly found a sympathetic collaborator who understood his vision and could deal with the demands of this extreme minimalist piece that is generally confined to one dimly lit room. Clever interprets these carefully selected monologues with concentrated intensity, and her body movements create additional layers of meaning that add real force to her passionate verbal delivery. A singular achievement.

Syberberg's funeral oration for Germany, Europe, the West, all the gods in Greece or Christendom, not to mention for Seattle and all the peoples conquered by that Europe, that Christendom, is a long day's journey into night indeed, stripped of the cinematic projections of the "Germany trilogy", reduced to the word itself (too many authors to list here, from Sophocles to Heidegger), the music of Bach and a few others, and the remarkable performance of the singular Edith Clever. My 3000th ranking.