Now is here, here is now, Irish folk rockers Clannad sang years ago in their theme song to the television series Robin of Sherwood. In the spirit of those lyrics, James Benning’s filmis an attempt to join time and space into an indivisible whole, both on the screen and in the viewer’s mind. The real-time visual record of a day turning into night is disarmingly unambiguous and charmingly poetic, yetmaintains a mathematical precision. Unobtrusively filmed deep within a forest, where the silence is broken only by birdcalls, Nightfall is reminiscent of H.D. Thoreau’s celebrated chronicle of lifenear Walden Pond, away from the trappings of civilization. In an age of over-stimulated perceptions, Benning’s one-take film aims only at purity.
