For a North American viewer like myself, watching This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection can feel a bit like peering at something powerful that you can’t fully comprehend. But that’s OK, because even the main character, Mantoa (Mary Twala)—a widow in the African country of Lesotho who is mourning the death of her son—finds herself in a strange liminal space, pining for loved ones lost and aching for her own death, yet fiercely tied to a specific, earthly place.
Not long into the film, this place—her small rural village—comes under threat, as government officials announce a plan for a dam that will flood the area. Not only will she and the other villagers be displaced, but the cemetery that holds Mantoa’s relatives and ancestors will be washed away.
Written and directed by Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese, This is Not a Burial casts a metaphysical spell at the very start, as we meet an aged seer of sorts (Jerry Mofokeng) who sometimes addresses Mantoa with his words and sometimes addresses us, the viewers. While pausing to play a warbling pipe (the sound design suggests its own incorporeal realm), he ruminates on the pre-Christian gods who were once worshiped in the region, the “benevolence of God” that Mantoa now struggles to believe in, and visions of the dead burying the dead.
Mosese’s camera is dispassionate, but deeply attentive. From a fixed vantage point, he will slowly zoom in on a character or pan in a certain direction to expand the frame. Each composition—still or moving—has clearly been carefully designed, with drama arising from nature (a lightning storm, flowers in a field) or uses of color (the walls of Mantoa’s home are a royal blue, contrasting against the deep red of her bedding). The boxy, 4:3 aspect ratio is particularly effective when holding Mantoa’s face—an implacable wall, seemingly carved of stone, ancient yet stubbornly alive.
In its consideration of faltering faith (there is a priest, played by Makhaola Ndebele, who confesses his own doubts while also reassuring Mantoa, twice, “You are loved”), This is Not a Burial recalls the existential angst of Robert Bresson. In the way much of it exists in a plane between life and death, it evokes the work of Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Memoria, Cemetery of Splendor, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives). Like those filmmakers—as well as a giant such as Andrei Tarkovsky—Mosese offers a cinema that is intimately attuned to something beyond the veil, something we can grasp for while watching, but not quite touch.
(12/8/2021)
