Dust | DVD Review

Dust seems so insignificant. It’s something we interact with on a daily basis, but the only time most of us even consider its existence is when we wipe down our kitchen table or vacuum our carpets. We don’t often think of it as a world effecting or world creating substance, but director Hartmut Bitomsky has taken the time to seriously ponder these very ideas. In his newly released docu from the 2007 selected Venice Film Festival, Dust, Bitomsky examines the particles themselves and how they effect the world they inhibit, on both a microscopic and cosmic scale.

Bitomsky begins his journey in the most obvious of places: What is dust? From there we weave between its many homes, in abandoned warehouses, on forgotten shelves, hidden away in attics, and on display encased in jewelry. Humans have a love/hate relationship with dust. Humans use specific particles to create all sorts of valuable and useful things. Some of it might make up colors within a painting, while others might just find a resting place on that same canvas until some museum janitor dusts it off. We fight an unwinnable battle with it as it starts to recollect while we clean our houses. The often toxin carrying bodies can potentially cause disease or could wreak havoc on our respiratory systems, but this same dust might be the key to unlocking how stars are constructed and galaxies are formed. It all depends on where these particles came from, which way the wind blows, and how humans choose to deal with them.

Like the recently released Nostalgia For The Light, Dust observantly finds greater ideas within a seemingly one dimensional subject, and does so by traversing a wide range of contrasting terrain that expands our appreciation of dust’s mysterious wonder. That said, it does so with less finesse. Its often scientific interviewees speak specifically, in technical terms that often leave the us detached. When we witness a homeowner dealing with dust with OCD-like cleaning tendencies and the topic intuitively shifts to the hand assembly of vacuum cleaners, it feels natural and well crafted, but not revelatory. It’s a film that’s extreme focus and patient story telling bring about clarity on the unobserved everyday. Dust won’t leave you pondering existential issues, but it will give you an appreciation for the dust bunnies under your bed and the clouds above your head.

Icarus Films has put a watchable bare bones release together for the film. Presented in its original 1:1.85 scale, Bitomsky’s doc looks neither breathtaking nor bland. The image is generally crisp and possesses fine detail in its recently shot material, and expectedly poor in some selected archival material that highlights particle damage and dust storms. Bitomsky’s low register narration is projected by an adequate, but unchallenging stereo track. There are English subtitles in place to translate the German that is spoken throughout the film. Not one extra is included on the disc.

It’s nice to see this graceful and enlightening film get a home release, but it would be nice to see some extraneous insight into the project’s production or the film maker himself. As is, this DVD might just gather some of that hated powder on your shelves from lack of revisitations.

Movie rating – 3

Disc Rating – 1