Director: Bas Devos
Writer: Bas Devos
Stars: Stefan Gota, Liyo Gong
Synopsis: A Romanian construction worker living in Brussels crosses paths with a Belgian-Chinese doctorate student of moss, just before the former is about to move back home.
Films of 90 minutes or less, like the ones Belgian filmmaker Bas Devos seems to have a penchant for, are often reduced to descriptors like “small”, or “muted”, or “restrained”. And though these sorts of descriptions can feasibly apply to most of his work, including Devos’ latest 82-minute wonder, Here, his minimalistic approach to storytelling isn’t necessarily what defines his filmmaking. Rather, it’s what makes it sing, what makes it stand out as profound and draped with feeling, something rarely found at the movies these days.
We start Here with Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian man working on construction sites in Brussels; this is where the film takes place, though the things it’s most curious about lie beyond the city’s borders. Stefan is about to head home for summer break — back to the familiar — when he encounters another visitor, of sorts, named Shuxiu (Liyo Gong), a doctoral student of bryology, specifically the moss growing in and around Brussels. As Stefan’s urge to return home intensifies, he empties the contents of his fridge to make soup for those he has met while in Brussels as a sort of farewell; Shuxiu, meanwhile, seems to be embracing her newfound home, letting it become part of her as opposed to a piece of her past.
At first, their stories are unfolding and on parallel paths, though they are heading in different directions: One away from the foreignness; the other, further into it. It’s notable that the film starts inside one of the buildings Stefan has been working on, this physical representation of the birth of something bigger, something unknown, perhaps perpetually unknowable. But as we venture further away from the rumbling city, the real birth occurs. Of course, it’s in nature, where the synthetics of the city wash away and Stefan and Shuxiu, both together and apart, are able to find beauty in simpler, natural forms. A drop of water on a leaf; a chirping bird; wind gusts. All things we could hear inside the walls of that building in which we began, now coming into pure focus.
Devos and his cinematographer, Grimm Vandekerckhove, keep their gaze placed high above the city in these first few moments so as to place an emphasis on nature’s perpetuity amidst the ever-changing infrastructure of a growing city. Despite Stefan’s occupation, we are compelled to be more interested in the things he has the opportunity to witness outside of these concrete structures on which he works. And when not in the forest among the mosses and water droplets lingering on leaves after a rainstorm, we long for its gentle hum. Which is not to say the film falters when it retreats back into the city to further structure our man’s potential departure, but that it is aware of how different every environment tends to be from its outside counterparts.
Here could easily be linked to (or double/triple-billed with) two of its fellow fall festival standouts, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days and Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves. Each of these three films concern, in part, men going to work, battling internal conflicts in some form or another, and finding some kind of love and connection, whether romantic or platonic, though it doesn’t matter how or where. What matters, to the filmmakers and to these films, is how much beauty lies in the little pleasures that life and mundanity, at large, have to offer.
In both Here and Perfect Days, the environment, specifically plants, plays a significant role in the lives of its characters; they find serenity when surrounded by nature. In one key moment, Stefan finds a strange assortment of seeds in his pocket, unsure where they came from. Shortly thereafter, he’s safeguarding them as though they’re magic, the makings of a beanstalk. In Here and Fallen Leaves, romance looms, though its fruition doesn’t make or break either work; it’s merely a device deployed in an effort to cement connection between strangers, and far from their connection’s defining element.
In all three films, the act of living life on life’s terms is front of mind. And while Here’s exploration of that idea is not exactly vast, it’s also far from diminutive. Instead, it’s individualized, for both the characters under Devos’ microscope and every unique viewer. Emotions are subtly conveyed in this film, but immensely felt, because that’s what really matters. A lesser film might trigger an emotional outburst of some kind in an effort to prove to audiences that the characters they have invested time in are capable of feeling as deeply as they are. Here, however, is a film that values its characters’ interests and desires almost as much as they do, and thus commands the audience to do the same. If you’ve never cared about moss before, you’ll almost certainly never look at it the same way.
