The Past Is a Spellbinding Open Book

A debut feature by Jack Auen and Kevin Walker, “Chronovisor,” is among the least typical of movies to come along in some time and bordering on brilliant because of it. Much of the film’s intrigue stems from reading or, rather, our having to follow the research of a respected, if notably tense, academic, Béatrice Courte (Anne-Laure Sellier). We meet this professor of philosophy at Columbia University as she pontificates about her recent findings with a pair of colleagues over a glass of wine. It is not a convivial outing.Is it possible to be bookish to a fault? Though Courte is in regular contact with other human beings, she spends a majority of her time wading through tome after tome. The 42nd Street outpost of the New York Public Library is a mainstay, as are other book repositories throughout the city. Mssrs. Auen and Walker clearly adore these places with their dark wood furnishings, desk lamps, and towering shelves. Cinematographer Leo Zhang employs low lighting and the soft grain of 16mm film to amplify their ambiance and historical weight. The library, for all involved, is a sanctuary, but it is also a locus of extraworldly potential.“Chronovisor” is an indicator, I think, of a generation for whom the pre-digital era is a source of wonder, mystery and romance. Though the picture takes place in the present day and Professor Courte owns a cellphone and computer, the resources she employs are decidedly retro: Not only books, but videotapes, cassette tapes, microfiche, newspapers and magazines. By not making a fetish of these devices, the filmmakers create a slow-moving milieu in which there is space granted for reflection and, as becomes the case for Courte, obsession. Inexorable, this movie is, and absorbing.The story is based on fact, kind of. Let’s start with a Benedictine monk, Father Pellegrino Ernetti (1925-94). He was a man of wide-ranging interests, including physics and music: Ernetti curated a suite of albums featuring Gregorian chants, vintage LPs of which can be purchased online. A full-time instructor at Venice’s Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello, Father Ernetti kept his hands busy with other pursuits as well. Among the more controversial was the invention of a device that allowed for time travel and viewing the past. Among the events Father Ernetti claimed to have witnessed was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.In 1972, Ernetti told an Italian broadsheet, Il Gazzettino, that the so-called “chronovisor” was made in conjunction with a group of scientists that included German astrophysicist, Wernher von Braun, and a Franciscan Friar, Agostino Gemelli. If working on a time machine wasn’t enough to set bells ringing then teaming up with a former Nazi and a Mussolini apologist added an illicit frisson to an already dubious proposition. The higher-ups at the Vatican, we are told, twisted the elderly monk’s arm to admit that the chronovisor was a fraud. The conspiratorially-minded claim that The Holy See continues to use Ernetti’s invention in secret.All of which will make the less rational amongst us don our tinfoil hats and burrow more deeply into the darker recesses of the internet. Which is exactly what happens to our heroine, an otherwise rational woman whose scholarly interests lead her on a quest between fact and fiction. Messrs. Auen and Walker not only run circles around our suspension of disbelief, but extend its illogic in ways that are, for the 99-minutes we are under their dominion, eminently reasonable. The audience with whom I attended the film were deathly silent during the final moments of the picture as if the slightest disturbance on our part would break its spell.“Chronovisor” is as unnerving as it is magical, and certainly one of the finest pictures of this year.

The Past Is a Spellbinding Open Book

The Past Is a Spellbinding Open Book

More from the New York Sun

Religion, Guns and Brewskis Highlight Packed Supreme Court Schedule

Up To 20 People Have Been Euthanized in New York in First Month of Legalization, Sun Investigation Discovers

Still Legal, Still Used: America’s Schools Still Paddle Students in 2026

Iraq’s ‘Iron Woman,’ Once Honored by Biden’s State Department, Now Appears on U.S. Terror Watchlist

Austrian Party With Nazi Past Embraces Israel, Says October 7 Was ‘Not Resistance’

Why Do Women Face Harsher Punishment Than Men for Killing an Abusive Domestic Partner?

Turkey’s New Sentencing Law Lets Courts Jail 12-Year-Olds for Life

Every International Force Has Failed Haiti; Now the Latest UN Effort Is Behind Schedule

More from the New York Sun

Religion, Guns and Brewskis Highlight Packed Supreme Court Schedule

Up To 20 People Have Been Euthanized in New York in First Month of Legalization, Sun Investigation Discovers

Still Legal, Still Used: America’s Schools Still Paddle Students in 2026

Iraq’s ‘Iron Woman,’ Once Honored by Biden’s State Department, Now Appears on U.S. Terror Watchlist

Austrian Party With Nazi Past Embraces Israel, Says October 7 Was ‘Not Resistance’

Why Do Women Face Harsher Punishment Than Men for Killing an Abusive Domestic Partner?

Turkey’s New Sentencing Law Lets Courts Jail 12-Year-Olds for Life

Every International Force Has Failed Haiti; Now the Latest UN Effort Is Behind Schedule