The Antiquities of Rome

Rousseaus first fulllength feature and one of the best documentariesexperimental films of the past few decades sprung equally from Robert Bresson Michael Snow and JeanMarie Straub who has called Rousseau one of the three best working artists in modern Europe Again hard places played against drifting sounds from unseen sites beyond the image the images and sounds repeated become inflections of each other But this time there are historical inflections Rousseaus film like Straubs takes place in a sort of metahistory as characters and ancient sites each become products of outside light and shadow