Review: Resan (The Journey) - 1987

 

Story - Petter Watkins' global look at the impact of military use of nuclear technology and people's perception of it, as well as a meditation on the inherent bias of the media, and documentaries themselves.

Cast - Peter Watkins

Crew - Peter Watkins (Director)

Runtime - 873 minutes

         

"I think to remove the veil of ignorance from the world is the most direct way at least to achieve enlightenment."

Sometimes it is incredibly difficult to sit and watch a long movie, after all, the way of life in the XXI century has been accelerating to the point that 90-minute movies are consumed in 20 different parts on a tiny screen while commuting to work. This is a world that 15 years ago I would have never imagined. I believe on this occasion, watching a movie divided into 19 different sections has helped me to appreciate and embrace what it is trying to say on a different level.

It is hard for someone in 2024 to understand to what extent the fear of a nuclear war affected people during the Cold War, but this is exactly what Peter Watkins has tried to accomplish in his 873-minute masterpiece Resan. A 14-hour documentary about the nuclear war and how it affects everyone in the world has the possibility to uncover nuances, new voices, and new perspectives. This has opened my mind to the idea that we can't really do an anti-nuclear war film due to the intricacies that making a narrative movie inherently has, in the 2023 movie Oppenheimer the main criticism made while it released is that it glorified the making of the nuclear bomb and that it only focuses on a "white man" while thousands of people across the pacific suffered, of course, this idea that the movie is pro-War or pro-Nuclear Weapons is absurd and can only be taken if you observe the movie in the most surface level possible, but in a 14-hour documentary, Watkins goes above and beyond interviewing people from different parts of the world where the nuclear race has affected and even destabilized their ways of living.

From the corruption of politicians, the supposed loyalty we need to have towards the armed forces of our own countries, the colonization of African and Polynesian countries, and the racism that is inherent to that, the documentary does not pretend to be "impartial" everyone had strong feelings about what it had to be done in order to prevent another Hiroshima. When dealing with political topics, some arguments could be present, shouldn't we be impartial? Shouldn't we leave the information, so people take their own conclusions? I believe that when we talk about good and bad things we should not be impartial, there is no middle point to colonization, there is no middle point to genocide and there is no middle point to nuclear war.

What good does defending our own barriers do if it causes the suffering of millions of people across the world? What good does our own happiness do if it helps to kill, displace, or alienate people who only want a dignified life? Being passive towards these global injustices is not easy when you see that there is no way to justify this.

We live in a post-Cold War world and one could think the efforts of the Nuclear disarmament movement accomplish their goal, but that is further from the truth, while the creation of new nuclear bombs has stopped we still live in a world where a single act could trigger WW3, but contrary to the protests in the 60s, 70s, and 80s we stopped caring because the USSR no longer exists. A key detail that struck me while watching this piece of art was the following idea, perhaps, the global powers wanted to move away from nuclear weapons because it could prevent their next colonization efforts from happening, making the area unusable for many years. With that said, can we discard that the US or Russia don't have even more powerful weapons that could result in a better way to do these acts? I don't think we can.

Is Resan perfect? I don't believe so, but I don't think it is trying to be. Watkins relies on repetition, he embraces silence, and humanity in the form of music, art, and the people who live with us. During its 19 parts, there are instances where it tries to go in different directions, and at times it doesn't go as deep as one would expect, its approach is similar to a conversation, and that is not a surprise given that most of the film is dedicated to interviewing families for long periods. During this time we observe what they yearn for, how they hope the global superpowers could just leave them alone, and their hardships.

I am glad to have embarked on this Journey, it has been a religious experience to see such a monumental task being presented to me, and while I wish to see its 14 hours without any interruption having time to absorb its content left me deeply moved. It is impossible to give a rating to something like this, anyone who has enough passion, voice, and dedication to create such a piece of art deserves all our support and understanding. Sadly, the film is only relegated to Wikipedia's "List of longest films" and a filmmaker like Peter Watkins has been ignored and forgotten in the cinematic canon, but if you give obscure movies an opportunity they can become life-changing experiences and perhaps, what the medium desperately needs nowadays.

         

Final Score - 5/5