Manakamana

I was listening to Filmspotting SVU yesterday and heard mention of a new movie produced by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, the directors of the documentary Leviathan. It seems like Castaing-Taylor and Paravel are really marrying themselves to the same style of documentary as Leviathan, this observational, non-narrative style that affords the viewer a fly-on-the-wall look into unusual places and lives. Manakamana is, quite literally, eleven trips up a mountain to a temple by way of cable car with eleven different groups of people. Obviously this won’t be for everyone – even I will probably struggle to watch the whole thing – but it’s certainly an interesting experiment, and makes me question my preconceived notions of what makes a documentary.