About Möbius (Film Synopsis)

Synopsis

Möbius is a dreamlike visually driven silent movie. The film consists of two parts. A prelude part traces the intertwined events of an early renaissance green grocer, a shepherd and a Japanese fisher, as they appear in an old market square, at a back alley sake bar and in sub-desert landscapes. A Punch & Judy puppet theatre brings the characters together in their puppet alter-ego form. In the second part of Möbius, the action is led by the shepherd. By engaging in a single-player, nonsensical board game, he steers the events of his surroundings and his own destiny. From a dried-out seabed littered with skeletal remains, he leads a flock of sheep, a gang of banana juggling sailors and a party of rococo styled hedonists up a tower evoking the fossilized shell of an ammonite. When they reach the top on the tower’s spiralling steps, they tumble to the ground, forming new seabed sediments.

Concept and production development

The film explores how the mind forms the world and how the life is narrated through the individual´s collection of thoughts. The shepherd is the story´s protagonist. He observes life from the vantage point of a portrait hanging on the wall of the green grocer in the prelude, and then drives the action as the leading man in the second part of Möbius. The story changes viewpoint between places, side characters, and different times, yet ultimately the scenes are pieced together in the shepherd´s mind, as memories, a dream or premonition of the future.

The scenes for the prelude were shot on locations in Europe, Japan and the US. Our aim was to combine these unique contexts in a rich, visual tapestry, tied together through costumes and set pieces which resurfaces between the locations. Local actors take turns in playing the character gallery. For the second, main part of the film we concentrated the action in live tableaux, spanning the animalistic state of sheep to labouring sailors and decadent rococo gentry.

The Damsgård 18th century Country Mansion in Norway is a key source of inspiration for this work. From location shots of the Mansion, we used the idea of the abandoned house to project ideas about past life into our script. We also reference the colorful wallpapers, faux marble and wall paintings of Damsgård in costumes, sculptural set pieces. The “ammonite steps” tower staircase recalls the baroque staircase at Damsgård seen in the end credits. In the plot of the film it functions as a theatrical devise to visualize a metaphor about life for the film´s characters: An ammonite started life tiny and formed its shell one chamber at a time, expanding outward into a coil. The ammonite tower allows the characters to walk against this transformative order—towards the center. By climbing the outer, spiraling steps of the shell structure, they move upward, but also inward, back to the start. The end of the path is also the beginning.

28 min
Full HD video
Year of production 2016

Sheep

Installation view