BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2023 REVIEW! There are two pairs of hands on the tiller here. According to the credits, this is directed by Mike Gibisser and Mary Helen Clarke. It is unusual, and it’s frustrating because I really loved this film, but I don’t know who did what.  
I stress this because I care. A Common Sequence turns the whole documentary experience into a surreal feast. There is a sequence where a robot searches for apples. Its beady eyes are cheap glass, and its spine is a USB cable. Composed purely of a head for searching and an arm for picking, nonetheless, its movements while foraging still reflect the ghosts of billions of tree-bound souls. Ranks of large robots decimate an orchard like greedy vending machines. Their engineer smiles, but there are dropped apples everywhere. These weird visions chosen by Gibisser and Clarke give perspectives on the birth of man as interesting as those in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Evolution is grafting the shape of the ape onto history once more. 
“Ranks of large robots decimate an orchard like greedy vending machines.”
This film often looks like science fiction. The opening scene is a scorching beauty. We follow an ancient path down to a lake at night. The lo-fi cool of the filming lets the place occupy your senses. At the shore, Purepecha Indians work in torchlight, bringing in a net. It’s minutes before anyone speaks. The men explain that the salamanders are gone for ten years, wiped out when the government introduced carp. The fisherman’s dog whines and then argues violently with another off-screen. Deep in the hills of Michoacan, the pre-dawn darkness has an otherworldly bewitchment, and the directors harness it all.
I won’t tell you I know what it’s about. If it knew, it would have told me. Sometimes, not knowing is half the battle. It has threads I could follow, but I was hooked experientially. I expected to see Constant K from Blade Runner walk past tanks of salamanders stacked in a monastery. The nuns breeding them for herbal remedies seemed as endangered as the amphibians. 
The primarily Mexican setting is a real gift. The old and rural architecture, crumbling and laced with antennae and cabling, reflects the provincial science fiction of George Lucas and Ridley Scott. Does this film know that? The subtitles are in Star Wars yellow. Do the directors even like sci-fi? Whatever, they tell fresh tales of the environment, producing a strange and marvelous keyhole, Koyaanisqatsi. 
They have a stellar approach to documentary, showcasing people and processes that betray how deeply we have penetrated our troubled dreams of the future. Definitely at the cutting edge of contemporary documentary, A Common Sequence is a rare treat.
A Common Sequence screened at the 2023 BFI London Film Festival.