This amazing film of a true story is a unique masterpiece of its kind, like no other film, while the associations you get are mainly to the stylistic refinery of Carl Th. Dreyer, who had a knack of making quiet films with sustained inner life all through in spite of minimal action, thus producing a very high level of consistently serene style. The postman here is just an ordinary postman, he walks 32 kilometers every day to deliver his mail, when at the age of 53 he gets the idea to build a dream castle for his daughter. He has no talent but for dreaming, and yet he accomplishes in 33 years of daily toil an architectural wonder comparable with the cathedral of Antonio Gaudí, stone by stone, day by day, in incessant obstinacy against all objections by his wife and neighbours to his work, calling him a madman. Yet his life's work is there still standing today after 150 years, designed a national monument by the state. The film has tuned in perfectly to his mood and reticent character, it is a slow motion picture but of infinite poetry and beauty, and the true story is like a universal sermon that could but benefit anyone. It ends in serenity, crowning the poetical character of the film with an extra sense of timeless beauty.
Review of The Ideal Palace
The Ideal Palace
(2018)
Building a life's work out of nothing but stones and perseverance
4 February 2022