Hungry Man

A remote landscape, children play on the
wreck of an abandoned ship. An exhausted,
injured stranger approaches, whom the
children lock into the boat. A prisoner? An
object of affection? A plaything? Initially
conceived as a documentary film, Philip
Martin's portrait of a group of children
from a secluded village ended up evolving
a feature film plot. He allows his precise
observations to be guided by his instincts
as a documentary filmmaker and photographer.
Proceeding slowly, in the absence of
both dialogue and music and employing a
keen appreciation for the local landscapes,
a thoughtful reflection on the nature of
human behaviour, as it fluctuates between
between sadism and compassion, evolves.
Slowly but surely what starts out as a
crude game takes on a human dimension as
the adversaries draw closer through a series
of movements, expressions and gestures.
With the assistance of a small crew and basic
filmmaking equipment Martin manages
to portray a whole range of interpersonal
encounters, ranging from fear and hatred to
intimacy and compassion, all to a backdrop
of an almost virgin landscape, only touched
by the traces of a seemingly forgotten civilisation.
This landscape serves as the scarred
stage of an anarchical spectacle, the
dramatic understatement of which allows
the viewer to open his/her senses, only to
have any sense of esotericism reduced back
to a primitive, some might say savage core
of human and nature within a split second.