In These Encounters of Theirs Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet envision five dialogs about, and between, immortal gods and mortals from Cesare Pavese’s 1947 book Dialogues with Leucò. For the most part, each dialog is between a man and a woman, each standing almost static before or against a natural background—in a forest gorge, on a grassy hill, amongst rocky outcrops—and each dialog is shot from three static camera angles, two medium shot close-ups of each character and one two-shot of the couple together. The actors—attired simply in what looks like modern, casual clothing—recite their lines in monotone faux-grandiosity and occasionally make artificially dramatic poses with their hands or bodies, although they never move from their positions. While this framing and elocution seem simple enough, the dialogs, which in fact often resemble interwoven monologues, are themselves quite complex and subtle. The first is between brother and sister gods, the former complaining about Zeus’ anarchic traveling between Mount Olympus and the mortal world of Earth, with the sister defending his actions in light of the surprise and dynamism the god finds in the human race; and the second is between Gaia and a younger god, and the two discuss the mortals’ propensity towards both violence and story-telling, and how their mortality defines these characteristics. It is difficult to tell who centerpiece conversation involves, as they seem neither mortal nor god, but they lament a encroaching flood that will surely wipe out many of the humans, but also praise the human nature that will look for celebration and rebirth in such a catastrophe; the fourth dialog is finally between a mortal and a goddess, about the wearisome, banal existence of humans and the timeless, nameless existence of the gods; and the final is between two humans, held seemingly centuries since gods and goddesses roamed the countryside, and the dialog is about those missing figures and a real belief in them, and how this time no longer has “those encounters of theirs.”

Using simple, unobtrusive, and quietly lush location photography to integrate their actors-as-gods-and-men in the Earthly world, and an immersive soundtrack that places nearly as much importance on direct, atmospheric sound as it does on the epic diction of the actors, Straub and Huillet use Pavese’s dialogs about the interaction between humans and gods to explore the relation between that which is ephemeral—life, day to day existence, specific belief—and that which is forever—memory and storytelling—to construct a generous, exquisite, and humble rumination on what it means to live a human life. The dialectic between mortals and immortals is what prompts these dialogs, these questions about the nature not just of fables and belief, but about the draw and appeal of immortality and mortality alike. Despite the gods’ occasional contempt and lack of understating for the humans, they often express both pity and sympathy for the hope that they see rising from the inevitability of mortality, a hope spawned by a need to believe in a continuation into the future, a rebirth in the form of memory and story. In contrast to the human’s hope, the gods’ have their destiny, an unchanging existence that is simply redefined by the humans. As a goddess says in the fourth dialog, the name the mortals address her by changes all the time, she has been around since before the mortal’s named her, and her existence is like the recording of a memory, full of perception and without time. She and the others of her kind have the ability to see before and after not just the mortals on Earth, but before the gods were the gods, as they seem to exist—in the past, in the film—because the humans gave them names, attributes, and appealed to them. They express an everlasting existence that is interpreted and integrated into stories by the mortals, who seek meaning from the very thing that is out of reach from them—the unchanging, immortality.

While the lovely style of the film may appear simple, there are some notable variations. For the middle dialog Straub and Huillet break their previous pattern by moving the camera, which seemingly roams the forest floor looking for the lesser creatures who have their own discussion about the gods and humans both. This section serves as a transition point that will lead to dialogs involving humans. The final discussion and the only one between just two humans (and two men) starts with a reverse shot of a rocky hillside, as if the discussion is coming from the consideration of the formation, seeing something of the past recorded in nature. And, finally, the last shot of the film is a pan that starts from a litter-strewn stream and moves up to a small town, up to the antenna-adorned mountain hanging over it, and up until all one can see is top of the mountain and the sky. But between the two is the cutting line of a power cable, forever severing the Earth from the heavens. The simple, direct tangibility of the images and sound, the feeling that despite the actors’ rigid theatre there is a relaxed, natural feel to these men and women sitting or standing in these surroundings voicing questions about themselves and their pasts indeed makes These Encounters of Their—the film and the dialogs—feel less prompted by a belief in the gods and goddesses of old than by the natural existentialism of living in this world, which outlasts every individual, and asking questions of it and of ourselves. Recording these actors in these landscapes sayings these words marks an effort—however humble, however small, but not doubt lovely and wise—to capture some of today’s ephemerally in order to become the future’s story, and, hopefully, grounds for dialog.