In Silent Movie, 2010, a twenty-three-minute film, Laurent Grasso takes the viewer on a disquieting and hypnotic exploration of ruined fortifications in a portion of the Spanish coast near Cartagena. The camera uses multiple alternating viewpoints––floating on the water, rising up above a gun tower, overlooking the bay, following a trench––that seem to put the viewer in a godlike position. Meanwhile, an ominous sound track, which blends natural sounds (such as wind rustling through trees and crickets chirping) with deep industrial-sounding groans, contributes to this overall impression of beautiful strangeness.
Grasso creates a contrast between the innocent eternity of nature and the tormented yet ephemeral signs of human presence. The sunny coastline, with its picturesque rock formations and its waters of deep blue, makes for idyllic scenery, but subtle signs remind the viewer that suffering, destruction, and death are not far off. The military structures, though smoothly integrated into the landscape and nearly invisible, eventually strike the eye, and with them come questions about the stories behind these empty bunkers and deserted gun towers. One’s imagination sets about reconstructing the lives, fears, and pains of the men whose ghosts linger in the decrepit fortifications. This is played off against the indifference of the natural environment, which remains mostly unaffected while human constructions are slowly turned into dust. A shot of a submarine in the distance and a later shot of a faraway group of soldiers on a boat hint that nature has not entirely won the battle: Indeed, the military still controls these haunted sites.
