The Path of the Skeptics was like viewing an exhibition in a museum more so than watching the film it actually was in the Landmark Theatre Thursday night. Perhaps it was that, having been my first experience with a short film (it ran exactly 30 minutes), I obsessed over every frame. I was taken by the extreme amount of grace given to each shot and the amount of care given to those things in the shots.
By Italian filmmaker Filippo Feel Cavalca, The Path of the Skeptics (La passeggiata dello scettico) displays just how significant some meetings are. The story is Danilo’s, an agnostic philosophy student, on the anniversary of his mother’s death. His mother, Celeste, was an artist, which explains why the film could be made into a series of stills and sold as framed art. As Danilo remembers it, she was “enraptured in blue.” Throughout the short, blue flower pedals, very much alive and very much a symbol of her, rain down turning the screen into a spring dance.
When the priest, Don Luciano, comes to bless Danilo’s house, the two find that they share not just a common love for philosophy but a need for God as well. And so their paths cross, putting both men’s existence into context: “Freedom can frighten a man,” says Don Luciano. With that, they are both left with a choice.
Cavalca didn’t let one minute go unused in The Path of the Skeptics. A film done so well is like stepping into the rooms of an art gallery, for if the gallery also uses the entire potential of its space, the visitor is left open-eyed and full.
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