Evolutions's Step

Overview

Devensky's evolutionary theory... is considerably more subtle. The same man as in CATERPILLARS and ANTS is sitting alone in an apartment with an immerse accumulation of debris, listening blackly to a fragile Kreisler-like melody on an old gramophone. During the film the camera peers at him and his junk and even swoops around in lengthy tracking shots. At times it rests solely on close-ups of his craggy face (another Devensky preoccupation). The man begins to freak out as "phantoms" appear and collapses amid the rubble. The melody appears once more and this time he reacts to it. If the film's title indicate a continuation of thinking in "Proof" then what is seen is modern man surrounded by his accumulation of things, at first fulled and insensitive to beauty (the fragile melody) but finally becoming responsive to it after harrowing rite de passage" –Richard Koszarski, New York American