The Two Sights

The closing titles say The Two Sights was “collected” on various islands of the Outer Hebrides from 2017–19, but what does the film gather? There are the images, captured on 16mm, which survey all this ravishing landscape contains, taking in its rocky cliffs, beaches and plains, alighting on its flora and fauna and the houses and ships sprinkled over it, picking out currents, reflections and shifts in light. Then there are the sounds, recorded with the mic visible in the first shots, keening birds, the roaring wind, the crashing, gurgling, trickling of the water. In voiceover, a whole anthology of tales can be heard, narrated in both English and Gaelic, stories of dog skeletons, drowned villages, and family members passing away, although songs, silence and the shipping forecast are just as at home there. But like any great collection, it’s not about the individual elements, but how they overlap, about how the crow hanging on barbed wire conjures up another story never told, about how the ripples seem to reverberate along with the woman’s harmonies, about how each anecdote floats over the rushing air. Sight by eye, sight by ear, two sights that ripple and flow together. (Berlinale)