THE CLEARING

The Show

The studio introducing itself, in its own voice, round its own fire. Ten species sit on stumps, a stone and a fallen trunk in a forest clearing while a newcomer asks the obvious question, and the answers get gradually less flippant until somebody says the true one.

It opens on a log being put on the fire, which is the smallest possible demonstration of the thing the film is about: a body reaching for an object, taking it by a grip measured off the object's own geometry, and setting it down somewhere it belongs.

The forest is real in the sense that matters here. Three hundred and thirty-three trees stand where the world put them, twenty-seven were cleared for the ring, and the wind that moves the undergrowth has a canopy, gusts and turbulence that the plants integrate from the world's own clock rather than a looping animation. Every seat declares a measured top face, so a body too small for a stump dangles and a body too tall sits with its knees up.