But some things remain. In one place, obviously, it's the film itself, the artificial product of one person's imagination, multi-faceted and fractured as it may be. A slim young man in striped swimming trunks and cap runs forward with a megaphone, from time to time glancing to us with a weird smile, waving his hand. He is followed by his own shadow, printed together now with its own negative which lags just slightly behind, announcing a menacing figure of Death. Frightened but composed, the runner seems to look forward into the future, his smile and waving gestures like desperate and diabolical farewell gestures.
Life is running on, death goes with it.
In many of Brynntrup's earlier films death has been a major preoccupation. But in all cases, even without being explicitly addressed, his films oppose the temporal flow of time with an existential movement forward into oblivion. In his obsession with skeletons and the uncanny accessories of death, Brynntrup takes up traditions present in Catholic culture, traditions that have found their liveliest expression in the European Baroque, but remain alive in parts of southern Europe and Latin America. During the past decade AIDS has made death a daily reality. This catastrophe has moved Brynntrup to confront death in a less macabre, but nonetheless direct fashion.