What a mischievous, funny and eloquent film! I watched The Trouble with Nature on the big screen at a festival screening and could not help being drawn into this strange minimalistic alpine fantasy. It follows philosopher Edmund Burke (played by Antony Langdon), who wrote a book on the sublime back in the 18th century, during a deep midlife crisis that has send him on a trip to the alps to restore his reputation by writing a new edition in the field. Without further notice the film opens in a lavender field where Burke is sleeping, already lost in nature and his own project. Where will I find the sublime ? Good question and one that becomes the subject of the film. I was afraid that this would lead into pathetic terretory, but surprisingly the film stays true to the question and not the answer. We later learn that Burke has lost all his money investing in his brothers plantation in the west indies and now finds himself traveling with a servant send to him by the brother to even things out. Her name is Awak (superbly played by Nathalia Acevedo) and she slowly becomes the central character of the film. Burke who has never been outside London soon discovers that he does not like nature at all. It is messy and will not provide him with a simple answer to his question. The sheer volume of it disturbs him, trees everywhere, ants and endless hills in his least favourite color; green. Meanwhile Awak makes easy connections with everything around her, she drinks straight from the streams, collects mushrooms and interacts with wild animals. In one stunning scene she has close contact with a wild Chamois, in another she has an erotic encounter with moss. This all disturbs Burke who grows jealous of her unspoken alliance with the very subject he cannot connect with. Burke speaks non stop to himself and all around him in long rants that made me laugh several times. In one scene they stumble upon ruins of a farm and Burke accuses nature of a massacre on this poor attempt at civilisation. The film slowly gains height both physically and philosophically as the subject of man and woman's relationship to nature becomes more central. It is difficult not to see the film as a feminist statement, not just because of the silent poetic portrait of Awak as the full human potential for connection, but because Burke represents such a stubborn male view of nature that still dominates the world today. In that sense the film is a comment on our times and I can highly recommend it for it's witty dialogue, odd story and stunning cinematography that shows the sublime without pointing at it.
