STUK

Like Arsenal, Earth collects the natural world into a single, curvaceous, protective membrane. However, it politicises this membrane in a different way, characterising it as the product of collectivisation. To this end, Dovzhenko casts mechanised agriculture as the refinement of nature to a shimmering homogeneity; so many fertile seeds. In doing so, he affirms the conflation of birth and death implicit in all conceptions of collective identity, most beautifully in the opening and closing sequences, which juxtapose the death of a village elder with the burgeoning apple and sunflower harvests. These agricultural objects take Arsenal's naturalisation of the face to its logical conclusion, gazing back at the villagers who are proportionately objectified. It feels as if Dovzhenko's political agenda is a mere pretext for this metaphysical vision and, more specifically, for the access to death that it enables. From this perspective, the cinema screen is continuous with the natural membrane; or, more accurately, explicates that membrane as a tympanum, echoing back the most elusive secrets of the universe. Concomitantly, the ideal audience position is that of another village elder, who responds to his friend's death by leaning against his grave and 'listening' to it. In this way, Dovzhenko makes sound visible, most explicitly in the arrival of the tractor, which is only ostensibly heard before it is seen, and is fact just seen indirectly, as ripples across the sky, before it is apprehended as an object on the horizon.

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