Josef Gatti tells us little that we don’t already know in “Phenomena,” and that’s pretty much the point. In his first feature-length documentary, the Australian takes a seductive, hyper-sensory approach to the kind of educational filmmaking that any sixth-grade science teacher would be glad to use as a classroom aid — and in so doing, makes fundamental facts of the universe seem once more beguilingly mysterious to us. Using a combination of simple home experiments and intricate analog filmmaking, Gatti physically illuminates the forces of nature (energy, gravity, entropy and so on) that we often mistakenly think of as impalpable.
Gatti may structure his overview of everyday physics with textbook-style chapter headings, each based around an illustrative practical procedure, yet “Phenomena” never feels prosaic or instructional. As the experiments (modestly conducted in the filmmaker’s own backyard shed) play out in hypnotic explosions of color and movement, patiently observed as the director’s own chatty narration gives way to the mood-altering soundscapes of German composer Nils Frahm. The result is a kind of woozy, ambient bath for the eyes and ears alike, though not one without intellectual or philosophical purpose: In magnifying the reverberating real-life manifestations of forces we take conceptually for granted, Gatti encourages in the viewer a renewed tactile awareness of a natural world rapidly changing as we live and breathe.
The climate-change warning in all this iridescent petri-dish spectacle is clear enough without the film having to be rhetorically explicit about it, making “Phenomena” — a True/False festival premiere subsequently showcased in CPH:DOX’s Science section — a suitable fit for a growing subset of environmental film festivals, alongside its more general programming appeal. Theatrical exhibition, meanwhile, will best serve the film’s substantial visual and sonic riches. That the film’s dizzying images are captured entirely on camera with no modifying visual effects is both a selling point and an essential principle of the project: “Phenomena” proudly wears its “no A.I. used in production” disclaimer in the closing credits.
The film began life as a series of heady musical shorts later presented as a web series by Australian public broadcaster ABC. This feature-film incarnation does little to disguise those origins, dividing itself into ten phases, each centered on a core scientific concept — beginning with “light,” continuing through “matter,” “energy” and the like, and ending with “life,” touching on slightly more academic ideas in between. Each is explained, however, in terms cheerful and elemental enough to prod the knowledge many of us have kept dormant since our classroom days: Gatti himself is the son of a high school physics teacher, and though he admits upfront that he always gravitated more toward art than science, has inherited the bright, inviting tone of a particularly eager educator.
But it’s the practical experiments that hold us rapt. Captured in intricate close-up, straightforward chemical reactions play out with kinetic, kaleidoscopic sweep; amber-colored tree resin becomes a volatile, dancing entity; granules of pollen fall into stunning military formation in response to mild sound frequencies; magnetic fields riff and ripple through liquid with jazzy serenity. It’s all better seen than described: Gatti’s endearing narration frequently admits to its own inadequacy when recycling age-old clichés that exist for a reason. “Everything in the universe is just energy and matter vibrating,” he says, almost sheepishly. “That might sound like I’m tripping, but it’s true.”
“Phenomena” doesn’t shy from the psychedelic in its atmosphere and aesthetics — save for the crucial twist that its imagery is entirely authentic and organically generated, making the film a wide-eyed paean to the surreal wonders woven throughout our everyday reality. Only the throbbing, immersive soundtrack, mixing existing electro-classical pieces with original compositions by British ambient techno artist Rival Consoles, brings a degree of manipulative human imagination to proceedings: a sinuous aural interpretation of the fully explicable, yet somehow still unfathomable, life forces moving before our eyes.
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