“Not moral hopes or mystical dreams,
but groundless facts are the true objects of contemplation”
John Gray (“Straw Dogs”)
Due to the current crisis in Greece, it is estimated that around 70% of graduates plan to move abroad. The film’s characters leave Greece to escape the country’s financial crisis and find themselves dealing with another, much deeper crisis that might even be the core of the financial one; an existential crisis in search of meaning and the interpretation of a world in the process of change.
Virus is a political film about a couple, in the form of a thriller. The plot evolves around an inexplicable incident; the woman’s pregnancy without sexual intercourse. The crisis brought about in the couple by this mysterious event leads to the conflict of two worlds.
An ideal setting for this is Norilsk. A city in Siberia built under Stalin to serve the needs of heavy mining industry that bears the trauma of the 20th century. Today Norilsk is one of the ten most polluted cities in the world. A place covered with snow 270 days per year with temperatures ranging from -10 to -58 degrees.
In this volatile and precarious world, the two characters, Anna and Petros, faced with the inexplicable, need a rescue plan; they need to find meaning. They choose different paths that hide the same risks. Petros’ quest for a rational explanation leads him to the painful dilemma: trusting Anna or keeping his faith in reason. Anna turns to faith to cover this void created by the unfathomed mystery. Yet, this path hides the same risks and leads to the same extremities. Violence born in both cases seems unavoidable.
The almost detective-type script structure is undermined by the film’s form; a form that borrows the silent, disturbing setting of Norilsk, copying the softness and slowness of the falling snow. The plot is never highlighted by film features. The camera takes distance, moving at its own pace, without portraying the action. It rather seems as if looking for another dimension of the scene, as if looking for the reflection of events elsewhere, in details of places or in imprints of actions.
Slow travelling, approaching the situation from a distance without ever reaching it, strict straight lines, parallel motions in places where central action is part and not the center of motion, things occurring behind half-opened doors or at the end of corridors. As if there is someone watching, observing not from the point of view of the characters, but through an arbitrary subjectivity. The camera weaves a geometric web of lines approaching the core of things that the two characters, trapped in their own subjectivities, can’t see. VIRUS is a film on the relentless crash of subjectivities.
The almost detective-type script structure is undermined by the film’s form; a form that borrows the silent, disturbing setting of Norilsk, copying the softness and slowness of the falling snow. The plot is never highlighted by film features. The camera takes distance, moving at its own pace, without portraying the action. It rather seems as if looking for another dimension of the scene, as if looking for the reflection of events elsewhere, in details of places or in imprints of actions.
Slow travelling, approaching the situation from a distance without ever reaching it, strict straight lines, parallel motions in places where central action is part and not the center of motion, things occurring behind half-opened doors or at the end of corridors. As if there is someone watching, observing not from the point of view of the characters, but through an arbitrary subjectivity. The camera weaves a geometric web of lines approaching the core of things that the two characters, trapped in their own subjectivities, can’t see. VIRUS is a film on the relentless crash of subjectivities.
