The Plains | David Easteal

What is there between the working time and the free time, between home and the world, the public and the private? The space of a car, the time for commuting. At least, this is David Easteal’s original perspective in filming his colleague-then-friend Andrew. Through a rigorous and simple filmic dispositive, we embark on a road movie that actually chants the suspension of functional space and time, in order to open a contemplative, existential space and time. Andrew’s voice gets mixed with the ones on the radio; it is up to us to imagine his inner life, or the Australia that he lives in. We’ll accompany his being at the bottom (or at the possible end?) of his family and career paths, as if he were on a balcony that is wide open towards new horizons. This is the moment and the place where the plains will occupy the screen of The Plains, through majestic pauses from the car routine where drone images, for once, make perfect sense, with all their grand and desperate force.