It begins with images from surveillance cameras that casually record a murder in a shopping mall, an act of violence that just happens: A teenager stabs another teenager with whom he has gotten into an argument. The why is uninteresting, not only because the images remain silent. The why is not interesting because an answer does not change the fact. Jonas is dead and Jesse, his friend, stands next to him, shocked, unconscious, paralyzed, petrified. His condition determines the movie.
Violet by Bas Devos - who was born in Zoersel, Belgium, in 1983, has made several short films and a feature-length film and also works as a theater director and lighting designer - records what cannot be said. In long, cool and distanced shots, then again in close-ups and detail shots, largely without depth of field, he creates a space for the incomprehensible. In images that sometimes dissolve into pure structures, the void left by loss becomes visible. Helplessness and wordlessness become tangible, as does the stigma of witnessing. Here, mourning is not a pathos gesture, but an attempt to take one step in front of the other in the face of violence.
