Too Early/Too Late

Featuring a justly infamous, even startling opening sequence with a tilted camera pointed out the window of a moving car that keeps driving and driving around a famous traffic circle (forget the name) in Paris for 10 odd minute - a continual 360 that never catches a glimpse of its axis, too perfect - TOO EARLY, TOO LATE is a singular meditation and extended visual metaphor on the theme of revolution (get it??) shot in a variety of locations and cities with a Marxist voice-over reading from famous selections on the subject. Quite unlike anything else you'll see and while obviously not what you'd call entertainment, some of the shooting once you get outside the city is breathtakingly beautiful. Are they trying to implicate us in this collective indifference to social ills by growing absorbed in the natural beauty of the surroundings? I'm not sure, but certainly Straub/Huillet's subtle avant-garde combo filmwork is among the most underappreciated in German and, indeed, international cinema.