Reactionary Reviews | Variasies Op ‘n Tema | Dir: Jason Jacobs & Devon Delmar
Variasies toes a line between elegiac and pretentious, and pulls off this high wire act by not resorting to hand-wringing, moving to a subtle, soul-shifting gestalt.
Does Variasies have flaws? Do the non-professional cast sometimes deliver a clunker? Does the script sometimes lack nuance? None of these so very few moments detract from the slow build toward an inevitable moment. There is no conclusion, merely acceptance. Variasies does not end, you carry it out of the cinema with you.
Revolving around the descendants of a WW2 soldier, paid only with a boots and a bicycle, who returned to tend his goats – the theme is simply the mirage of hope. Never mired in moralizing, it simply lays bare the daily rhythm of a small town in a sparse landscape.
As an ageing goat herd still tending her father’s flock, Hettie has grown accustomed to isolation, her family is coming to visit, the neighbours and town’s folk are expecting a pay out from the government for the sacrifices of their forebears. Nothing happens. Everything happens. A menacing foreboding signalling nothing.
Drawn from narrator and co-director Jason Jacobs’ family history and the current anxieties of the community, and starring members of that community, including his grandmother Hettie (her debut at age 80) as Hettie the daughter of the WW2 soldier – Variasies is a slow burn of naturalism in the most acute sense.
Soft spoken suiwer cadences from the edge of the Kharkams whisper the narrative along in observation. Rendered in a palette synchronic of the dry north, resplendent in slow detail, lyrical in it’s silences. Variasies is a beauty hard to look at, lush with minor heartbreak. Cinema of this delicate magnitude is a grief and a joy.