Ofelias blomster (1968)

Ophelia’s Suicide soliloquy is staged by a forest pond against the backdrop of a stretched piece of blue fabric gently quivering in the accidental breeze. A few years earlier, Jørgen Leth and Per Kirkeby had put on a highly stylized production of “Hamlet” at the Svalegangen theatre in Aarhus and from there comes the idea of Ophelia’s soliloquy literally “going to pieces” according to this principle: when Leth in the wings, strikes two wooden blocks together, the actress halts her reading and starts over. As the actress is halted again and again, the soliloquy breaks up according to the accidental principle, which is unpredictable and enervating. Controlled like a marionette, her lines are reduced almost to pure sound. The focus shifts from the text to her face and movements – she is sensually alive, standing there in her airy garments, yet she is completely lost. The camerawork is designed according to a complex system of two cameras moving on two parallel tracks. A zoom-in and a zoom-out bracket the soliloquy. When Ophelia finally vanishes into the pond, the unpitying camera has already abandoned her. We are at a distance again and she is no more