The social and cultural implications of the present pandemic are so incisive, it feels impossible not to see it in any media that we consume. So, even though Oliver Krimpas’s “Around the Sun” was shot years ago, and premiered across a few festivals in 2019, the film’s release to streaming services last week felt particularly apt. Krimpas’s film, which features just two characters, is part philosophy discourse, part romance, part science-fiction and a beguiling whole of something unusual . The plot, in the loosest of terms, sees estate-agent Maggie guiding Bernard, a location-scout, around a large – and very empty –aristocratic manor and its lawns over the course of a day. As the two traverse the grounds and the buildings, their isolation feels so stark and like a manifestation of social distancing. Over the course of the film, Maggie and Bernard walk and talk in isolation and beyond a brief plot-point involving a text-message, the two seem cut off from the world outside even as they are – keyed into larger themes of the universe. It is apt for the current times.
