The most appealing aspect of French director Clément Cogitore’s unsettling debut feature Neither Heaven Nor Earth is its obstinacy. The film fidgets menacingly within the no man’s land between genres—quieter and more esoteric than a standard wartime thriller, too elusive to be a proper horror or science-fiction feature, and yet far too grounded for the label “surreal.” Similarly, the film withholds clear explanations for its mysteries, leaving clues for the characters and the viewer that seem to lead nowhere. Like The Vanishing and Zodiac, Cogitore’s film is concerned with the anguish of not knowing.
Set in the arid mountains of Afghanistan in 2014, Neither focuses on a group of French soldiers tasked with guarding a particular valley against Taliban incursions. One night, two men vanish while on watch, leaving the remaining troops groping for answers. The commander, Captaine Bonassieu (French cinema mainstay Jérémie Renier), initially attributes the disappearances to desertion, or perhaps a jihadist abduction. Certainly, the nearby villagers are behaving strangely. However, no rational answers are forthcoming—just a mounting sensation that an otherworldly shadow has been cast over the valley.
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Cogitore embeds his tale within the substrate of contemporary warfare’s everyday banalities, heightening the uncanniness of the disappearances. Like its close thematic cousin Picnic at Hanging Rock, the film is not focused on the vanishings per se, but on the plight of those left behind. A foreboding Old Testament energy seems to cling to every fresh (and ultimately fruitless) discovery, bestowing the film’s central enigma with the aura of a theological quandary. Like Tom Perrotta’s Rapture novel The Leftovers, the film is partly a rumination on the meaningless distinction between “dead” and “snatched away by God.” The haunted dissatisfaction that Neither Heaven Nor Earth evokes astutely echoes the anguish that Divine silence elicits in the believer.
Neither Heaven Nor Earth screens Friday, November 4 at 2:00 p.m. and Monday, November 7 at 8:45 p.m. Both screenings are at the Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema. For tickets or additional information visit the Cinema St. Louis website.
