There comes a point in everyone’s life whereby we feel as if we are simply floating through it – the world doesn’t make much sense, and we are simply just beings existing for a brief moment before perishing. While this is a nihilistic view, it is one that has been at the forefront of a lot of contemporary philosophy, which has in turn bled over into other areas, particularly the art. There’s nothing like a well-constructed story about someone desperately trying to make sense of a world that has grown almost hostile while their gaze was diverted. Hannah is one such film, with Andrea Pallaoro turning in quite an ambitious sophomore effort, a film that is an atmospheric, complex look into a few months in the life of an ordinary woman somewhere in Europe (most likely France, based on the language we here), struggling to come to terms with the fact that her husband has been put in jail for a crime he alleges he did not commit (but which she suspects that he did, as does everyone else), which plunges her into a state of existential despair, the likes of which she has yet to encounter, and which she isn’t entirely sure if she can handle. It’s a beautifully-realized portrait of someone who starts to question her own existence while drifting between states of consciousness, which puts her in a position of immense strain as she works to makes sense of her surroundings, trying to figure out what is real, and what are merely fabrications of her uneasy mind. Pallaoro is a truly gifted filmmaker, and his work positively exudes creativity, which perfectly encapsulates the entirety of this stunning film.

One of the first qualities of Hannah that we notice is that this is a film seemingly without a plot, or at least not one that is discernible at a cursory glance. This is the kind of film that benefits from the viewer’s ability to just surrender to the atmosphere, rather than trying to make sense of the narrative, which is nearly non-existent if we are approaching it from the perspective of needing to have a traditional three-act structure, which Pallaoro almost entirely disregards. There are very few details given to us – we don’t learn much about Hannah at the start, and even what we do discover about her are small, almost inconsequential fragments of a life that is clearly much more complex than it seems to be in theory. We don’t learn what the crime that her husband supposedly committed was, nor do we understand why her family has essentially cut off all communication from her. All we know is what we see depicted, so the onus is on the viewer to determine our own individual interpretation, which can be a very liberating way of telling a story, since it shifts the focus away from the need to have an explanation for every narrative choice, and instead becomes a matter of unpacking each detail based on our individual understanding, whether we are drawing conclusions that are closer to reality, or trying to decode the philosophical details, of which there are numerous sewn into the fabric of the film, which will be enticing for anyone who wants to see a character study that is more than just a few moments in the life of an individual strewn together, which is a common tendency with similar films.

Considering how much of Hannah was driven less by the plot and more by the atmosphere, it was of vital importance that the right performer was chosen to bring the titular character to life. As far as choosing such an individual, one can rarely do better than Charlotte Rampling, whose incredible career has seen her play many similar characters. The later portions of her career have been filled with these intimate, poignant character studies in which she is placed in the central role as an older woman struggling with some tangible problem, but who suddenly discovers that she is undergoing some kind of existential crisis as a result. Hannah is not her best performance – as far as her entire career is concerned, this is the kind of standard, practical character she has essentially mastered. However, it’s foolish to think that she’s not delivering an absolutely stellar performance, regardless of the fact that we’ve seen it done before. Rampling’s best qualities are her willingness to play slightly more unsympathetic characters, and while Hannah isn’t necessarily as prickly as some of the other roles she has played, she’s not someone we feel particularly enamoured to, especially since she is defined along such ambigious lines, it’s impossible to get a solid grasp on who this woman is – but herein lies the strength of the performance, since for every moment we feel disconnected from the character, Rampling has a moment in which we get a brief but poignant glimpse inside her mind, which is as revealing as any more traditional method of defining a character. The film is essentially carried entirely by Rampling, since the rest of the cast is merely supplementary to her mighty performance, which is incredibly detailed and beautifully realized, which is exactly what we’d expect from such a gifted and brilliant actress.

If we put aside all the theoretical discussions, and instead focus on what Hannah is aiming to be, we can see that this is simply the story of a woman searching for meaning in a world that she realizes somehow entirely lacks it. She was previously comfortable (although not necessarily happy) in a marriage that may not have been particularly passionate, but offered her a consistent life, which has now been thrown away as a result of her husband going to prison. We often find films that take a more subdued approach to exploring a character and their journey through some hostile metaphysical terrain, but very few of them seem to be as meaningfully constructed as this one, which is based around the constant need for someone to understand life, and the harrowing realization that comes when they learn that such expectations are almost entirely unlikely. Pallaoro has a lot to say about this process, and he infuses so much meaning into a film that teeters dangerously close on being too subtle – there are entire stretches of the film that take place in real-time, in which the camera focuses on Rampling’s wordless movements, which somehow tell more of a story than any dialogue ever could. There’s a lot of intricate commentary that is found in these moments, but it takes a bit of work to fully get there, which is a credit to the director for being able to make something that seems so simple, but has a deep complexity that keeps us engaged and interested in the story being told, which is incredibly beautiful and often quite meaningful, despite the narrative centring on the fruitless attempts to uncover some of life’s more intimidating secrets, which is captured so beautifully throughout the film.

Told with the kind of earnest precision and bleak lack of sentimentality that we have grown to appreciate from this recent movement in social realist cinema, Hannah is a powerful examination of identity and individuality in a rapidly shifting world. It is anchored by an absolutely incredible performance from Charlotte Rampling, who manages to say so much without uttering a single word in many scenes, allowing her immense expressivity and ability to convey a wealth of emotions through the most subtle gestures to take control, turning this film into a truly powerful character study that has its roots in a very stern kind of social realism, but one that is carefully deconstructed as the director pursues something slightly more complex, where the smallest details are disregarded in favour of a more abstract means of exploring the plight of this woman, and the countless other individuals that, much like her, feel lost in a world that is supposed to be relatively straightforward and simple. It’s a wonderfully evocative, complex and nuanced piece of cinema that may be slightly polarizing in how it develops the characters and represents the situations that they find themselves in – but there’s so much nuance in how Hannah explores some deep themes, all of which are woven together into this fascinating, boldly provocative glimpse into the life of someone who is searching for answers to questions that every individual will ask at some point – and while it may not have the solutions, it proves that the journey can sometimes wield all the wisdom we need in order to fully understand the details of human existence, or at least realize that there is virtue in not having such knowledge, a complex but poignant concept woven into every frame of this stunning film.