If we know the cinema of Pierre Creton, a gardener-filmmaker based in Normandy in the Pays de Caux who cultivates his land literally and figuratively, we can consider this documentary co-directed with his colleague Vincent Barré as a side step in this saga friendly, sentimental and aesthetic.
Here no immigrants, no families, no romantic intrigues, but exclusively an object lesson, in the botanical sense, taught by Mark Brown, a famous British landscaper who created in the region, in Sainte-Marguerite-sur-Mer , an astonishing primitive garden. Seven walks with Mark Brown is a priori a spin-off of Creton’s previous film, A princewith several of the same protagonists, professional or amateur gardeners.
An unknown and wonderful world that lies at our feet
Without going back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a great herbalist thinker, this exploration of the Cauchois hinterland is reminiscent of it by inciting a revolution in outlook and habits. Far from picking pretty flowers or swooning over the picturesque hinterland, Mark Brown – accompanied by Vincent Barré and a micro-film crew who films close-ups of plants in parallel with a 16 mm camera, during that Creton records the epic digitally – emphasizes the singularities of wild plants of which ordinary mortals have not the slightest idea.
We only see wild weeds, good or bad, because in general we only give consideration to groomed and domesticated plants like roses or hydrangeas. Mark Brown opens up an unknown and wonderful world that lies at our feet.
However, this is not a course. The botanist often moves in the distance, while his voice seems close, like that of the other participants in this exploration, because it is picked up by an HF microphone. We are essentially witnessing an analysis of the Norman landscape and some of its unsuspected components whose charm is inseparable from the poetry of words and names. “Are you a brown cypress mountain?” » Brown asks humorously about a swamp plant. Or he exclaims: “A non-chlorophyll prothallus is unheard of! » which sounds like coded language for vulgum pecus. Beyond the exoticism of Latin jargon, we glimpse infinite perspectives.
See the example of the ophioglossus, a primitive fern dating from before the dinosaurs, whose antiquity and rarity Mark emphasizes. Of course, the path is not easy for those who are part of what we call the “general public”. You have to agree to let yourself be carried away and forget preconceived ideas about nature. This view of the world can be fascinating. The walks are completed by a herbarium, made up of still shots of plants encountered during walks, filmed on 16 mm film by Antoine Pirotte (main actor ofA prince).
A way of dotting the i’s beautifully, this gallery of portraits of seemingly ordinary plants is commented on in vitro by Mark Brown, who details the names and properties in a more doctoral manner. What could be more striking than this dive into a reality that is both close and foreign and seems to belong to another world?
Seven walks with Mark Brown by Pierre Creton, France, 1:44 a.m.
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