Letter to a Child

Film can be simple. Just a document. It can just record what you see and what you hear. It can be pure. Why not? At least that seems to be what the maker here is striving for. Letter to a Child looks simple, but it’s about all major issues such as happiness, love and death.
The Slovenian director Vlado Skafar interviewed ordinary people. Or maybe interview is the wrong word; he got them talking. It’s a mistake to think that ordinary people say ordinary things. About happiness, for instance. About love. Or about death. Issues about which few people speak easily, but the people in Skafar’s film do. Occasionally it looks as if he is only focusing on the sunlight falling on their face, and his question seems to be a sideline and without any importance. His partners in conversation remain amazingly calm and peaceful, even as they are saying the strangest things. As if the director really isn’t listening. As if they are standing dreaming in front of the camera.
But the maker is not naive. He’s a dedicated cinephile and knows what film can and can’t do. He also knows what has been made before and realises that only absolute modesty and simplicity can make people forget all those masters who preceded him. (GjZ)