A Sand Castle (1962) User Reviews

The movie on freedom, which is shown as illusory and haunted by the past

[darko-1 · 8/10 · 27 May 2005]

Maybe this is isn't Bostjan Hladnik at his best, but still the film very well represents his role in the (history of) Slovenian cinema. Already with his first movie Dancing in the Rain Hladnik introduced the aesthetics of modernity in the cinema of Slovenia, which was one of the socialist republics of Yugoslavia. As in the Sand Castle (which is a sort of a road movie or maybe more precise: off road movie) there is not a lot of story - we just get a lot of fragments, which emit double messages of joy and anxiety. At the end the trauma is revealed in a quite abrupt way. The explanation, which is given at the end of the movie, seems even too explicit and it is somehow not in tune with otherwise generally "nouvelle vague" kind of atmosphere of the film. Nevertheless the film is one of the first Yugoslav films, which reflect the emerging urban middle class and new values of younger generation.