“To look,” John Berger once wrote, “is an act of choice.” What do we – as a society – choose to look at, and how?
For the West Germany-born Berlin author Esther Kinsky, this is a major question for our time, especially as the cinema gets replaced by streaming – that is, by the bingeing of algorithm-dross on a laptop on one’s tummy while simultaneously scrolling and texting. (The medium is a mess.)
Kinsky has been interested in looking throughout her career; she takes photographs, writes about photographs, and deploys a photographic literary style. In her latest brilliant novel, Kinsky addresses the topic head-on. The tale of a woman’s attempts to reopen the shuttered cinema, or Mozi, of a remote Hungarian town is interwoven with bittersweet stories about the town’s inhabitants and moody old photographs.
Kinsky also reflects on the cinema as a “place of wonder” and a shared cultural institution – one that lets us see beyond the grubby individualism of everyday life. “All eyes in the same direction, each gaze on its own horizon.” Her case for the Kino is softly spoken, yet profound.
- Available now from NYRB Classics.
