I left home at dusk tonight, I returned when it was pitch black. It seems I’ve developed a habit of only going out after dark; a habit that’s grown out of my movie obsession. Film-goer as vampire. Keep that natural light away from me, or at least away from the screen I’m focussed on. So unused to the sun, now . . . watching movies is making me look ill. My outside being only a reflection of what’s happening to my insides, the inside of my head – scared of life, withdrawn. All of the living I could have been doing instead of watching this film tonight, yet another film – Arrebato; showing as part of the Spanish film festival at HOME. Best not to even think of the million other things I could have been doing this evening but wasn’t as I was sat, once again, for the millionth or something time, in the cinema. The screen, this evening, a mirror, reflecting back at me – in an exaggerated, hall-of-mirrors style way, admittedly; though not so exaggeratedly I was unable to recognise myself – exactly what I have become, or am about to become, or could become, or perhaps am at no risk at all of becoming and have just caught Arrebato’s style of metaphorical exaggeration and am employing it myself in pursuit of mere literary effect. A terrific, poetic, multi-layered film. The guy giving the introduction to the film made passing mention of the lack of plot of Arrebato; and, yes, there was no plot as such. My favourite kind of film. Rather than x leads to y which leads to z which takes the viewer right back to the beginning of a, where they came in . . . rather than that I want themes and ideas and explorations of the same. All of which Arrebato provided. It had doubling, the doubling of characters a la Performance and Persona, and no doubt other films beginning with P. The meaning of that doubling being open, though given some of the themes of the film perhaps it’s to do with the process of watching films and how when we’re sat in the cinema there’s us, the viewer, and then there are the people up there on the screen and we must inevitably understand and make sense of the characters up there through the prism of our self, therefore – in a sense – a film’s characters then become doubles of us? Though maybe, on the other hand, that’s just way off the mark and maybe the doubling had an entirely other meaning? There was one intense, committed, dedicated to the purity of his vision film-maker and then, opposite him, there was a schlock merchant working on a werewolf film which he admitted himself was bound to turn out less than good, something he was making solely to establish himself; this latter guy was all heavy drugs and women; the first filmmaker, in comparison, was a virtual monk. They both saw something in the other that they lacked and wanted and/ or, at least, respected and admired? Arrebato remained insistently open and sought to avoid one strict, definitive interpretation I would argue. Undeniable, though, was that it was a film about films – more specifically filmmaking. The visionary filmmaker was obsessed with capturing, on screen, the ineffable – that which, by definition, just can’t be captured. He would consider himself to be having some success at this endeavour only to then sadly realise that the images that spoke so deeply and profoundly to him left other viewers completely cold. Still, though, he held to his vision and his evident belief in cinema as the highest art form because that which – or anyway so he thought – could capture reality as no other art could; very noticeably the character of this filmmaker had no interest in any other art, as did neither of the filmmakers actually, no poetry for them; other arts must have either been investigated and rejected or else never even bothered with as understood, immediately, to be not fit for purpose regarding meaningful expression. An accidental recording taken of the visionary filmmaker asleep, as well as working as a possibly unintentional reference to Andy Warhol’s Sleep, gave him reason to finally hope that his quest might nearly be over, his quest to capture on film images which could send everyone who viewed them into the same raptures that he was able to experience himself over his works. And so the film proved him right – indeed, his quest nearly was over. Though before the film, too, was over, it had – still – a couple more surprises left for us, its audience; surprises which, all the same, made perfect sense given what had gone before in the film. Coming out of the cinema I felt – to return to point a, where we came in, as such a predictable manoeuvre is all my tired brain is capable of at this hour – I felt vampiric. And, as well, due to having seen such a tremendously good film, exhilarated; yeah, I felt exhilarated. R. Barrett.