Black Lake
**Seen at the 2020 Women in Horror Film Festival**
**I also wrote about “Black Lake” as part of Film for Thought’s “Ultimate Choice” blog on the Top Films of 2020 here.
Twelve hours after K/XI’s “Black Lake,” I’m still grappling with its challenging, haunting images. Even after listening to the filmmakers discuss it for about 20 minutes afterwards, it’s still a tough nut to crack. But truth be told, few movie experiences I’ve had thus far in 2020 have held my rapturous attention quite like it, and I doubt many others will. I do not know if I can say it’s my favorite film of the festival, but it’s probably the one I’ll remember the longest afterwards.
The main character, Aarya (played by the director herself), begins the film by isolating herself at a house by a lake in Scotland. She has come to work on her art, and she finds herself engaged by the environment in a way that only an artist can. Her aunt (Aditi Bajpai) has sent her a red scarf she found as inspiration, but the longer Aarya finds herself isolated, the longer she has the scarf around her, the more her psyche seems to fracture, and she come to discover that even the most beautiful things can carry traumatic weight with them.
Here are the only things I will say negative of this film- the sound mix, and sound quality, feels very erratic at times, and there are times when the film’s focus on the character’s emotional state, and how it deteriorates, gets in the way of trying to tell an literal narrative for the Aarya. But the former, though a demerit in terms of technical filmmaking, can be easily overcome by how it tells its story, and the latter is not as big a detriment to the film as you might expect- K/XI has made a deeply personal film where the emotional journey of the character IS the focus over a narrative, and her remarkably beautiful cinematography, and an engulfing soundtrack by BurningTapes (which I’d recommend checking out on your preferred streaming music service as soon as possible), is as big a reason why we stick with the film every step of the way.
One of the films I’m most reminded of when it comes to “Black Lake” is the 2011 film, “The Symphony.” I screened that one at home via filmmaker screener, and it’s almost like the film never existed now, but it still made my list of last decade’s best films. I do not see the same fate in terms of availability for “Black Lake”- and not just for obvious reasons like how I first saw the film, and how I’m currently listening to the soundtrack as we speak- but there are a lot of similar ideas with regards to intense creative inspiration and emotional trauma going hand-in-hand, and the ethereal, mesmerizing way the filmmaker’s tackle their subjects. The trauma Aarya experiences throughout the film is not self-inflicted, however (like it is in “The Symphony”), but the remains of a trauma things around her bring to the forefront. How the film explores that concept is powerful, lyrical, yet visceral at the same time. “Black Lake” is meant to rattle you, and it accomplishes that in spades.
