Ruthless Magnetism

Software

2011-07-02T16:58:00.000-07:00

contemporaries

2011-05-25T21:02:00.001-07:00

I am a white kid that posts cool black thingz that are sort of white

2011-05-25T20:59:00.001-07:00

Overwhelming

2011-05-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

A Grass Upskirt

2010-12-09T04:44:00.000-08:00

'I' is the pronoun; it lay / I lied…
I'm laying lying prostrate-ical
me eye sacks black, looking torpid
and pussy-full as a raccoon's cheek!

Slowly a new one gathers up
bunching its dress hem
and dithers out in steps dizzy
harps plucking on step one and
second step two pitter patter
suddenly lined up slide rule sharp
and through the thick of it
pulling such an unbelievable face! God!

Everyone here is banking on empathy
as a skyscraper high signal shone
to all and any embellishing or
searching for a way out
of the other guests and their mouthing

Suddenly I am one becoming; one now in the knowing group
of celestial black-hole witnesses! All be converted in the act of
seeing true the shape of that saddening vortex,
eating unchecked at the center of a longing, naked cloth
of party dress hem sucking ever inwards,
into them endless shingle pink butter folds

Crying and whipping my neck to hell
is me in the wet head of revery:
all to shambles as the universe spins and scoots its
peach and plush doily knitted under-bridle, hurriedly
overtop the squamous cinnamons of my flushing face;

Dusting briefly above just little me and little mine,
some spilt ice dripping from underneath this here mane of mine
so true and sweeping, each thatch behaving in solidarity, ending at tails
whose tips I believe am become spirit soaked,
drunken so as to match at the me and his mine, all hanging wild like…

Kiss at me then!
Kiss at my souls and sightings of oblivions sought!
For see... it is that 'I' is me in the pronoun! and so me lay / or so mine lied…
all happily ignored; sat out on the 'floor'-izontal as an outcropping
of some shell-body I left fallen; of which I rob any or all motions!

So all and again, it's hence that you sit look-reading,
after these said must be surely now hearing them harps plucking out all as one, in a uniform tone tuned low and sour, sarcastic.
Now heard are they become thus a mimic of me and mine?
Such a one who makes at a kind of imitating of me
and my sloppily felled person;
mocking it's bashful conquest of space
and that flatulent din that accompanies
what 'I' as me and thus, me as mine only culprit must
advertise and inspire?

I am become what we say is the most desolate way, incarnate!
Am I seeing now in some mismatch or miracle
something of what had spoke thus that Zarathustra then?
Or rather some different, separate sneezing of life into creation?
Craning gullibly to gaze up hungrily instead into some other mute finality?
Me here on my back fixed low in note and vantage point?
Kiss at me then,
with a piteous lip balm;
at me and my staring
at this naughty constellation:
Yes, up and over moving is
only the chubby dirty pearl
of some girl-nobody
stepping over me
and mine.

GASP

2009-11-19T23:49:00.000-08:00

I'm back.

call me fucked.

to come...

Camden Rambles

2009-07-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

C'mon, it's just that good

Back

2009-07-03T02:51:00.001-07:00

2009-05-17T08:11:00.001-07:00

Clogged

2009-05-08T01:23:00.000-07:00

Ahoj.

Played two DJ gigs this week here in Prague (BIG MOUTH)

So naturally, I enduce paranoia by watching a film about a DJ gone deaf:

IT'S ALL GONE, PETE TONG
{Michael Dowse, 2005}

(special treat: my father is the Afrika Bambaata of Skype)

Ain't it wonderful?

Juke Joint Jezebel

2009-04-28T22:06:00.000-07:00

MORTAL KOMBAT
{Paul W. Scott Anderson, 1995}

just to bring the 90's havoc full circle...

(plus it has that Halcyon+On+On song that's also in Hackers)

Get over here.

(Note: My favorite part of this clip is how casually Sub-Zero saunters down the stairs into the fight...like it's getting the mail or something. Hysterical)

2009-04-25T02:45:00.000-07:00

HOLGER CZUKAY

For DC Tung

2009-04-25T02:40:00.001-07:00

Collage College Collage

2009-04-24T00:04:00.000-07:00

MAYHEN
{Abigail Child, 1989}

(IF VIDEO DOES NOT APPEAR, FOLLOW THIS LINK)

My cousin, Aeros, graduated from the Boston Museum School some years ago. She took a good number of film classes while she was studying various mediums (primarily installation and horticultural art) while she was seeing a film student (and now accomplished artist and professor) Cliff Evans. Many of these fantastic classes were taught by filmmaker Abigail Child, who's work I fell in love with while interning at the Filmmaker's Co-Operative in NYC. Aeros was kind enough to pass along some of the course reader's she had kept from her classes with Abigail, right before I left for Prague.

These readers are comprised of seminal texts from situationists, futurists, sound-theoreticians, marginalized feminists, towering film theorists and post-modern critics, creating a sort of penultimate discourse that is of course fucking painfully tautological, seemingly incongruent, wildly erratic in style, and only culminates in that sort of "french argument" system wherein one must tarry a wide loop before finally reaching an understandable thesis.

But, take my word for it, the loop is undoubtedly well worth it. Jeepers, I would have loved to have taken these classes myself. The same style of argument she uses to assemble her syllabi is what, in my opinion, makes her filmmaking such a brilliant example of cinema as disputation. The complexity of her sprawling structural montage of found-footage is as rich as each of these readers I was lucky to get from my lovely cousin to take with me to Prague...

Bloodshot CPUs + Leopard Cutoffs + Acid Burn

2009-04-23T22:53:00.000-07:00

TONS of throwbacks the past couple of days.
The best logical selection following an early punk cinema revival that involves Suburbia and Ladies & Gentleman has to be a fresh, stimulating dose of mid-90's computer-punk magic.

So much offered in these:

❖ Patrick Stewart with a perfect moustache.

❖ The internet painted as an explorable, massive, 8-Bit glowing city within an endless digital vacuum.

❖ Early commentary on the dangers of electronically controlled markets and infrastructures
(blogging this...ironic?)

❖ Gameboy-shell laptops thicker than Little Caesar boxes

❖ Macintosh as a company. Apple as a company. Separate.

❖ Vincent Kartheiser cast playing the role of a savant (antithetical)

❖ Matthew Lilliard with eyeliner. (not really antithetical)

❖ Jonny Lee Miller attempting smeared yankee colloquialisms.

❖ Angelina Jolie in the period of her life where she still ate food.

❖ ...and, the biggest prize, triple XL tee-shirts with Audio company logos and every variation of fishnet ever dreamt up dominating the youth's low-fashion with a fierce tenacity.

Kinda brings you back don't it?

HACKERS
{Iain Softley, 1995}

MASTERMINDS
{Roger Christian, 1997}

A Figure of Speech

2009-04-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK

{Charlie Kaufman, 2008}

...staggering, frustrating, humanizing.

...like a brilliant, voluminous headache of "ism's"...

definitely a re-read.

Nineteen Eighteen Nineteen Eightie

2009-04-19T18:51:00.000-07:00

Double feature yesterday here in the Prague pad...

One punk classic that I love (with Flea!):

SUBURBIA
{Penelope Spheeris, 1984}

and the second, a pre-riot grrl masterpiece featuring an amazing sixteen-year old Diane Lane:

(recommended by E. Davidove)

LADIES & GENTLEMEN, THE FABULOUS STAINS
{Lou Adler, 1981}

Keep Yr Eyes Open.

- H.P.

Everything I would love to be

2009-04-19T18:27:00.000-07:00

Hear Yeee, Here Yiii, Heuhr yehhh...

From hen's-fourth this blog will be updated much more, and stretch to include more than just film criticism, and I will be posting what I am watching with stills (a style Matthew Lax has perfected that I most humbly borrow) so that this blog is more than just academic writing and long, impossible paragraphs. It's all gonna change. Starting with the beauty of a piece above.

Ahoj,

H. P. Willis

Whitney Bros.

2009-03-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

This piece was created with a special animation desk that was rigged out of a second-hand bought submachine gun.

That gun made mandalas. I'm in love.

Peter Jackson

2009-03-09T10:06:00.001-07:00

In lieu of me actually finishing the post below...

Teaser from jawshpw on Vimeo.

THE HAMMER & ŠIKL

2009-03-02T15:03:00.000-08:00

TWO NEW IDOLS OF FILM DISCIPLINE

JAN ŠIKL

(a.k.a. The Slick Mistah Šikl!)

"Czechoslovakia's twentieth century is a history of constant assault on human identity. Whether we talk about both of the World Wars, and then the communist system—, there were many regime changes throughout the century. Even the communist era had different chapters, some harsher than others and people had to adjust to the reality of the time. I think that all of this history is typically viewed only through the lens of power-politics, and the individual histories of people get lost."

(Šikl, Radio Praha, June 13, 2006)

***

As you may or may not know, my latest film (most likely my Senior Thesis at Syracuse) will be almost entirely comprised of a selection from hours and hours of archival footage of my family, magnificently shot by my great-grandmother in color 8-mm. The film will focus on my relationship with my father primarily, as well as discuss the unique disposition of him and his siblings (all five of whom have turned out either homosexual or bisexual). Obviously the personal nature of this type of project will make it very hard to produce.

Here in Prague, I recently had the opportunity to meet Czech filmmaker and FAMU alumni Jan Šikl after a screening of one of his works. My advisor (who is a filmmaker and fellow FAMU graduate from Bratislava, Slovakia) suggested I seek his advice about my own project because of his experience with archival footage. I am happy to say that he has agreed to meet to screen and discuss my footage, which I am absolutely ecstatic about.

Šikl is mainly an experimental documentarian, but recently, he has completed an eight-part series of individual films, each containing the private stories of various Czech families throughout the century. The work is entirely made from donated archival 9 1/2-mm (!) footage given by many willing families around the Czech Republic, entitled "Private Century: I-VIII."

The Individual films are:

KING OF VELICHOVKY

DADDY AND LILI MARLENE

STATUARY OF GRANDDAD VINDA

SEE YOU IN DENVER

A STROKE OF BUTTERFLY WINGS

WITH KISSES FROM YOUR LOVE

SMALL RUSSIAN CLOUDS OF SMOKE

A LOW-LEVEL FLIGHT

Each piece explores intimately the private lives + family lives of different members of Czech society throughout the 20th century, from the 1920's to about the late 70's, early 80's (the hayday of video). Šikl devoted himself to selecting and editing (with a dramaturgic eye) the unique footage of each donor family, in a way that both accurately retells their experiences textually and visually, and touches upon their inherent subtextual elements that form a commentary about Czech society through the ages and its relationship to the world and the constantly shifting political climate of our last century.

The only film I have seen of the series is the second episode, "Daddy and Lili Marlene" which is only one half of a family's story that is so rich, Šikl chose to stretch it over two episodes (the other being "King of Velichovky"). To save breath, for a summary of the episode, click here

"This series of films gives us the rare chance to enter and perhaps better understand particular moments in history—through the story of someone's intimate life. So the people are in the foreground, but it's always the case that events of 20th century Czechoslovak political history enter each and every one of these lives, quite often in a dramatic way, changing them forever."

(Šikl, Radio Praha, June 13, 2006)

This film in the series is remarkably powerful, painting the tenuous, closed-lip stoicism of a withering upper-class marriage and the dynamic home life of a well off German/Czech family. Seen from the artful perspective of their daughter, Eva, the narration meanders between dozens of affectionate memories expressing a cherished love now lost and longed for, and the more linear and historical progression of her personal experience. I am amazed at how acutely it psychologically details the dissolution of her parent's relationship and its affect on her life after their separation amidst the chaos of the 1940's and 50's in Europe...

I am inspired by Šikl's ability to condense and yet reinforce the universality of this story simply by controlling the editing and its accompanying sound and narration.

I hope that I can learn from him to apply a similar power of selection, in order to construct my own footage as its own commentary on both the epical nature of world politics, and the troubled evolution of civilized society and the human condition.

The entirety of these eight works are currently being screened in an exhibition at the MOMA in NYC, and have won numerous festival awards (click here to read more).

**********************************************************************************

ALEXANDER HACKENSCHMIED

(a.k.a. Alexander Hammid)

(also not really known by the nickname I just gave him:

Alex The Hammer)

(POST IN PROGRESS...)

(SORRY FOR THE WAIT...)

Internship Shangri-La

2009-03-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

Danila and I are trying to get an internship with Chris Handtke, the producer for Will Ferrell & John C. Riley. He is also the founder of funnyordie.com which is what we will most likely be working on (sidenote: Danila and I have our small comic short film "Mansound" up on funnyordie. Click the link (the word "Mansound") and tell us what you think! Please Vote.

Absolute Films & The heart-breaking mind-fuck!

2009-02-20T19:54:00.000-08:00

My Avant-garde teacher is amazing. His name is Martin Cihak, and he looks like a mix from the short french fellow from The Science of Sleep and Golem from the LOTR trilogy. And that is with absolutely no exaggeration.

This week we reviewed German Avant-garde Film from the 1920's. This consisted of viewing screenings by four artists. The first three are extremely influential in terms of avant-garde as a larger movement, but the fourth and last is my new absolute obsession...

1) Walther Rutmann:

-Opus 1,2,3,& 4 {1921-25}

-Das Wunder (The Wonder) {1922}

- Falkentraum (The Dream of the Falcon) {1923 silent}

2) Viking Eggeling:

-Diagonal Sinfonie (Diagonal Symphony) {1923-25}

3) Hans Richter:

- Rhythmus 21 (Film is Rhythm) {1923-25 silent}

-Filmstudie {1926 silent}

- Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts Before Breakfast) {1927-28 silent}

-Zweigroschenzauber (Two-Pence Magic) {1928-29}

-Inflation {1928}

AND MY NEW HERO:

4) Oskar Fischinger:

-Seelische Konstruktionen (Spiritual Constructions) {1930}

-Studie 7 {1930-1931. Music = Brahms Hungarian Dance No. 5}

-Kreise (Circles) {1933. Music = Richard Wagner, Edvard Grieg}

-Muratti greift ein (Here Comes Muratti) {1934. Gasparcolor}

-Muratti Privat {1935}

-Komposition in Blau (Composition in Blue) {1935. Music = Otto Nikolai, overture from "The Merry Wivesof Windsor." Gasparcolor}

-Motion Painting No. 1 {1947. Music = Bach, Bradenburg Concerto No. 3}

2009-02-20T18:34:00.001-08:00

While studying this spring at FAMU in Prague, I am getting the opportunity to take both practice and theory classes from some of the best artists in contemporary Czech Cinema. Not only will I be learning the art and extreme difficulty of the 35mm format (an experience only myself and the other 5 students from Syracuse accompanying me are afforded, out of our bigger group of about 40 other students) as well as sponge up a more in-depth understanding of European Cinema, especially within the camps of Surrealism and the Avant-Garde.

I'm going to try to write as much criticism of the works we view as I can, which for the most part, I imagine, will turn more into unadulterated praise (because honestly, its all been that good thus far).

Currently we are learning about the basic films of the Czech New Wave in a special screening series (made specifically for international students). This includes the following films:

- The Joke
- Larks On A String
- Closely Watched Trains
- Shop On The Main Square
- Daisies
- Loves of a Blonde

(also, privately, I watched "Little Otik", another film we were recommended to see, on my newfound netflix "instant view" which I've figured out how to use in Europe.)

Each of these films deserves its own post, but would require a second viewing. Perhaps later.

The rest of the work that we've been learning about in our electives deserves a separate post each as well, so I'll save those for later.

Basically, sorry for the delay in posts! Back to work for me!

Na Shledanou!

-H

Pravda Pravda Pravda

2008-12-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

The various dimensions of truth in cinema have always been the onion skin layers one has to peel back in order to derive intention as well as ethical perspective from a film. Each of these layers has a unique vantage point from which the viewer is allowed to observe the subject.

My interest lies in how some films assume the air of unfettered documentation, when at their essence, the reality of their documentation is lost in the act of the cut. The process of selection that is inherent in film editing, whether intentional or not, reverts the control of the documented image away from the camera and into the hands of the editor. Once two frames are juxtaposed in any way, even if the two shots are congruous takes of the same objects (for instance, in Olympia, not one, but a series of shots pan around the Acropolis, seemingly observing the same structure) the filmmaker has branded the piece with what he or she wants the viewer to see.

Furthermore, the simple act of selecting what to shoot is a form of edit in itself. The filmmaker has intentionally decided to capture an image that he or she finds important to photograph, and thus has edited the present reality into a honed, hunted image taken from the greater physical state. of course, this is about as distant as the filmmaker can be from the product of shooting, and so out of the "documentary" films I viewed this week, my favorite selection had to be Coney Island At Night, simply because it only attempted this one take capture of a prismatic reality, with no presumptions made or artifice intended at all.

An Echo, A Gong

2008-12-02T01:20:00.000-08:00

{A DISCUSSION OF SOUND IN CINEMA}

I have a conflict as a filmmaker, one that upsets the tested tradition of how a film should be approached and realized. I have always been a total audiophile, and when discussing other's work, or in developing my own films, I start from the ear and move on to the eyes. This has always been a problematic fixation for me, as stressing the importance of the image seems to be the prevailing orientation for most theory and criticism. So, when given the opportunity to discuss the act of listening to film, I tend to go quite happily overboard...

All of the films we viewed during our discussion of sound in Avant-Garde cinema in my lecture class today had me hypnotized. Whether the score was erratic and impulsive, or haunting and atmospheric, each film is worth discussing in detail. I will try to write one short paragraph about each.

(1) The Edison Kinetescope Films - To find a film that predates the modern timetable of when sound in film was introduced must have been breathtaking. I have never been so fired up about a fiddle in my life. The surprisingly clean recording on brown wax has twice the majesty of sound alone from that era, because of its visual counterpart. I especially like that the massive early phonograph is so present in the frame, in that you can actually see the first synching of sound literally being produced in the image.

(2) Gus Visser and His Singing Duck - Again the quality of this recording exceeds expectations. The image marries the staged, vaudevillian ethos of the early Edison work, with a truly remarkable synch-sound recording.

(3) M - Fritz Lang's brilliant habit of pushing ahead of his time mechanically makes this film a breakthrough in sound design. He utilizes not only negative image space, but also negative sound space to create tension and pass time. The moments of muted horror punctuate the suffocating images he creates, and make "M" a remarkable and terrifying picture.

4) The Third Man - A film that also makes use of astounding imagery as well as impeccable sound, the atmosphere that Carol Reed intends to create is in fact realized by the harmonious nature of the score and sparse but effective sound with the grandiose nature of the footage. A truly wonderful joining of sound and image.

5) Ballet Mecanique - Though I disliked the "mechanics" of the score, what with its lack of order within disorder and its penchant for horns and bells that in my opinion are not well executed or composed, I am able to forgive the maker because of how well the sound matches the pace and rhythm of the imagery. Each bell and whistle carries quite perfectly with the edit and physical patterns of the images, which makes this film a difficult but successful work of sound design.

6) Rose Hobart - Using the found footage format calls for a heightened awareness of how to relate the image and whatever sound is chosen, as the filmmaker is attempting to either create mood or meaning seemingly out of nowhere, with the blending of the two. Cornell mends his footage and score together like a virtuoso, playing with pace and context in a way unmatched by most found-footage works. His piece makes use of the associative nature of film to build an interior narrative that, without sound, would most likely be lost (and, needless to say, pacify the audience quite quickly). I also love the way Cornell attempts to use color and sound as partners to create a sort-of episodic tone in the editing of the piece.

7) Lucifer Rising - Of course you can't really go wrong using
Bobby Beausoleil (which translates to "beautiful light" ironically) to create a composition that fits with a film about ritual and the history of demonism and different perceptions and manifestations of satan. He is sort of a pro in both realms, so its almost like cheating. But whatever, Kenneth is good at making the right friends to score his work. Nuff said.

Kissing One's Own Eyes

2008-12-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

As a huge fan of the long take and difficult material, Andy Warhol's The Kiss as well as Stan Brakhage's The Act Of Seeing With One's Own Eyes fits right to my palette, and provides some important perceptual modes that prior to his work had only been explored in the obscure.

The Kiss follows or even comments on the form of staging an act for the camera (instead of documenting life) first cultivated by Edison's work in the Black Maria studio, where the films shot were highly theatrical and artificial. Warhol repeats the same process here, only the artifice he has worked creates not a distant and theatrical space, but an intimate and borderline uncomfortable gaze. The viewer is forced to stand in place of the filmmaker behind the camera, which for me brings out a very uneasy, almost predatory twitch in poaching the images of these young lovers and their long snogs.

Similarly, Brakhage's piece forces you into a space that is not agreeable to most people. What is different about Act is that the visual confrontation does have cuts, and thus, we are pushed even closer to the subject by the filmmaker. One can discuss the thematic separation between to the two pieces, but what I find more interesting is the way both filmmaker's really strap you to the back of the camera and wrangle you in close to what you may not want to see.

Agencement Sentimentale

2008-12-02T01:02:00.000-08:00

Each of the three selections shown at the close of my International Avant-Garde class' lecture on "Blink" in cinema (Maya Deren's "Meshes Of The Afternoon", Sergei Eisenstein's "Romance Sentimentale", and Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali's infamous "Un Chien Andelou") in their own way champion the use of the "cut" as a means of regulating a fragmented reality. The three intersect comfortably in that they seem to be attempting to render an accessible representation of the "dream state." However, each work's individual artistic intention stands as what separates it from its neighbor. In all three films, every break obviously works to orient and control our perception, but what is more interesting is that each seems to work towards a dislocation or "non-reality" while still organizing each image, in the hopes of mimicking the intangible notion of thought.

Meshes Of The Afternoon was created by Maya Deren in an effort to solicit a mythological experience from her audience. Her specific design of the "dream state" lingers on the insular, recollective confusion of unconscious thought, with no premeditated psychological subtext involved (or at least not directly indicated.) Each cut in this work quite successfully facilitates a fluid line of action while sewing together movements and spaces that could only come to meet in dreams. The film's tone is one of sublimated anxiousness, exhibited in the beautifully cautious movements and choreography tactfully performed by Deren herself. Ever languorous, the artist shifts between impossible spaces with a feline grace and intensity, interacting with a realm that to the viewer appears somewhat magical, or even "mythical."

Romance Sentimentale functions in a similar vein. Eisenstein approaches the unconscious from a kind of spatial modality as well, though with less emphasis on artifice and more on undisturbed emotional imagery. He begins by utilizing less authored segments of pastoral, natural landscapes, slowly interjecting the images of these spaces with highly augmented moments of animation, contrapuntal sound, and other blatant editorial hand-work. This self-reflexive "hand" in the work changes the discussion of cut as "blink" because it implies an awareness, even a form of strategy, in the arrangement of images, which Meshes seems to try and avoid.

The final film of the triplet, Un Chien Andalou, stands well away from the other two works in terms of device and intention. Dali and Bunuel were actively working to create an entirely inaccessible dream space or alternate reality that lacked any order or association. Of course, the pair underestimated the mind's tenacity in creating meaning where none exists. The work is well crafted and contains some startlingly attractive imagery, but the work fails in its intention of voiding the images of their inherent meaningfulness. It would be interesting to see the three films cut together as one massive psycho-space; perhaps then a true "Exquisite corpse" could be stitched from each film's individual perspective of the human mind at rest.

Effective Video

2008-12-02T00:51:00.000-08:00

{WRITTEN FOR PROF. TOM SHERMAN'S VIDEO ART HISTORY CLASS}

{March 2007}

Typically, when sizing up video pieces I'm a sucker for both multi-monitor array and rapid, carefully manipulated editing and color. There are instances, however, when a slower piece can quietly finagle its way into my prized work list. The best example of this being Steina Vasulka's "Pyroglyphics" (1995).
Inherently, fire will always engage the natural pyromaniac in most persons, especially destructive art students. Yet Steina does not flog a mangled trope by documenting metallurgy, but instead renders both a playful and meaningful context to the most raw and simplistic recording of an element. I found myself drawing associations from the work I'm almost totally sure Steina had no intention of displaying.

As the beautifully paced flames burnt out of the projector, I was finding myself (and you'll have to take my word on this) embarrassingly tearing up, wrapped in thoughts about the Holocaust ovens, and then on to cremating loved ones, and other depressing events that Steina had evoked purely by accident in my overemotional, over-calculating noggin. Being able to inadvertently make a nineteen-year-old man cry with completely separate artistic intention is one form of effectiveness in my view, but other artists, specifically late modernists in the eighties and nineties, have made work that spoke new meanings for itself without being prompted by their creators.

In 1991, Stan Douglas' "I am not Gary" was broadcast in America, unintentionally provoking a handful of viewers into making puzzled phone calls, asking broadcasters if the piece was a part of the prescribed entertainment as a "quiz" or candid, or perhaps simply an editing slip up. Once the work and its look-a-like protagonist's subversive imitation were unmasked to the concerned viewers as an "art piece," their bombinate preconceptions were soothed and the work's power and intention were diminished.

The piece was still greatly effective. Much like Vasulka's unexpected, highly specific emotional reaction (so easily yanked out of my whimpering psyche,) in its casual disruption of a previous state of comfortable convention and cozy pattern, Douglas got something out of viewers that he hardly had a hand in, with modern television programming and the affinity of daily broadcast material taking most of the credit.

A second piece that I find extremely engaging and successful was shown to me both in video art history class, as well as video sketchbook. Ulrike Rosenbach's "Wrapping with Julia" (1972) made the one take beautiful for me again, rather than trapping and exhaustive as is the case with many one takes. Until seeing this tape, the majority of one take videos thrust upon me in class wore a rough patch in my skull with their use of image and audio redundancy for its artistic novelty, while obviously lacking in concept or intellectual dimension.

This piece, however, stood perfect and quiet to me, with no text or narrative lorded over the image, nor stuttered monologue uncomfortably gabbed out for eons by the artist (a typically Canadian habit, most notably in the work of Vera Frankel and Jane Parker, but also shared globally, in tapes like Vito Acconci's "Theme Song", or Lisa Steele's "A Very Personal Story"). Instead, Rosenbach alternately chooses to celebrate the intelligence and diversity of her audience.

By allowing her construct to act as a fountainhead for our own associative interpretations, she lets the image parent countless undefined connective relationships to each individual who watches. Along with this humbling of the artist-to-viewer relationship, Rosenbach is also successful in beautifully meshing recurrent sound and unvarying motion without it getting the least bit taxing.

First the simplicity in her composition and warm organic imagery of the young girl wrapped slowly in gauze by her bare mother gracefully contracts the attention of the audience. The gentle portrait strikes a caring maternal tone for me, but as I explained, this is my own individual connection that her simple plain and effortless piece provides.

Second, her tape does this while never dropping to the hackneyed crutch of shock value, or overtly sexual expose (not that these are always bad, just difficult to use effectively). There's no sporadic, unexpected bodily fluid, or cooking oil, or unleaded gasoline splattering the pair at random, purely to disgust or unsettle the viewer. There's no "kiddy porn" vibe, female exploitation, or sexual agenda embedded in the work. There's no threadbare manifesto inherent in the gestures of the pair. All that is fixed and implicit is the performance, appearance, and duration.

Lastly, the piece is totally replicable, like many other straightforward tapes (Martha Wilson's "Four Short Performances", Bruce Nauman's "Lip Sync"). The distinctly European approach of "Wrapping with Julia" comes off as much more sensual than these other similar easy-to-replicate pieces. Though like them, it effectively acts much like a musical score, or a documented object of thought, making the perceptual experience of watching the tape both enjoyable and conceptually dynamic as well.

Transplanting The Self

2008-03-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

To Give Is To Receive Is To Give {Ryan Tebo, 2008}

(okay, this needs a bit of initial background info: the piece under review is a brand new documentary by a graduate of Syracuse's VPA Film MFA program, Ryan Tebo, currently on tour as part of a collaborative multimedia show called "Petting Zoo" with the two central subjects of his documentary, musician Tom Abbs (pictured left) and painter MP Landis. Abbs and Landis, longtime friends + collaborators, recently underwent surgery together during which Abbs generously provided Landis with a new kidney from his own body, in order to counteract Landis' looming kidney failure. Tebo + Co. shot footage of the whole emotional process, and their touring show uses music + painting + video + performance to focus on the complexity of their recent situation, using the documentary as a grounding point.)

WATCH THE PREVIEW

I'm not sure, in the case of this documentary, whether it is really the means that justify the ends, or rather the ends that justify the means. I love the idea of the film being an extension of the "Petting Zoo" principle where a free exchange of input among each medium attempts to dissolve authorship. I especially appreciate that the footage is shot by several different parties, in a sort of 'pot-luck' aesthetic of handing off the torch.

However, I feel that the essence of the film is really made in the edit, and could stand on its own as an arranged emotional progression. This contradicts what appears to be a valid attempt by Ryan to minimize his hand in the work in order to highlight all of those involved.

I blame my calling all of this into question on Ryan's introduction of the work within not only a greater philosophical and metaphysical context, but also within his own aesthetic and cinematic philosophies as an artist. At the same time, I am appreciative of the questions and insight this introduction provided prior to our viewing the work.

Having an understanding of what the maker's ideological intentions can often hinder a viewer's ability to absorb information from a piece, however, in this case I was happy to have a better grasp of the situation (i.e. the context of the tour, the nature of Michael & Tom's relationship and past collaborations) and still see that if not given these through-lines, the film could still be read, understood and enjoyed for what it was trying to document.

Duck and Recover

2008-03-03T10:58:00.000-08:00

Atomic Cafe {Jayne Loader, Kevin + Pierce Rafferty, 1982}

It's pretty difficult to pay any more compliments to this film other than those it has already earned. The device of montage and polar imagery is used in perfect form. The scrutiny of the audio and era-born music provides meat to the overriding social commentary of the found footage. The images they use more often than not speak for themselves.

Of course the majority of the information (or misinformation rather) that is cut together does its job of shooting America's Atomic Age and Cold War policies of hysteria in the foot. However, some elements are taken out of context in a questionable manner. What I find interesting, after further reading, is a specific inconsistency on which several sequences of this film thrive. In the criticism of modern agenda-oriented documentaries, this forcing-of-the-hand would have been red flagged from the get-go.

That inconsistency is the use of "duck and cover" reels that have become so well circulated in contemporary wartime satire. Apparently these segments of footage actually misrepresent the intentions of these "preventative" drills. Along with a few internet sources, I asked my mother over the phone about these drills, as she was attending school during the Red Scare of the Cold War era. She said at her boarding school in Rhode Island, her buildings were all loose mortar with weak steal framing, and ducking under their desks was a measure to avoid debris in case of a nearby bombing. Another source on one internet forum addressing this question explained that many school houses at that time still had very high windows left over from the days before electricity, and the drill was meant to protect them from shards of glass loosed by sonic impact. My impression is that these drills were not advertised as "ways to survive" a direct atomic attack, but rather for more practical civil defense regarding low-impact bombing areas (or in short, peripheral damage zones).

Of course the ridiculousness of many of the frivolous cautionary measures shoveled out by the government during the Cold war stand without question as horrific but true. Also, the assumed air of authority by a government as confused about atomic fallout as the general public still rings as an act of smarmy fear-mongering. This "duck" film however, seems to be heaping anger on a plate that's already full enough with our country's other failures at sanity, without any outside help from clever placement and editing. It's a shame that this is the only hole I can find in the film's netting. The rest of the film seems so hard to criticize, simply because of its (shameful) social and historical accuracy.

Bite Your Lip, Hold Their Nose

2008-02-18T11:35:00.000-08:00

Titicut Follies {Fred Wiseman, 1967}

Pictures that involve reform, in my opinion, all deserve to be produced under the same canopy of "direct cinema" as Titicut Follies. It is this tight-lipped cinematic style that makes the images of Follies cause a similar delirium in its viewers as in the patients of the facility it documents.

Wiseman seats his camera ambiguously in the back of the room, often cutting only between the figures in full, and then to their faces, which carry a range of both vacant and terrifying expressions. We sit in our auditorium chairs as viewers, staring back ourselves with the same vacant and terrifying expressions. Often the patients walk bare across cold cement floors contrasted by a gaggle of guards clad still in their uniforms accompanying them. This regulatory practice of stripping patients to prevent the transportation of dangerous items (razors, rope, etc.) calls into question a different ethical dilemma when captured so implicitly on film. Does the artistic dictum of ambivalent truth really justify the shedding of these helplessly inturned people's most basic layers of privacy?

Also, what of the film's initially passive but ultimately relentless scrutiny of the administrators present in the institution? Is there an understood right of the public to be allowed access to every minute detail or procedure that goes on in the penitentiaries funded by their tax dollars?

In my personal opinion, there is a strange limbo in the limits of privacy that becomes muddled when someone of seemingly little personal or psychological restraint, who having lost some level of control is accused of a crime and sentenced to imprisonment alongside medical treatment. It seems that the criminal act, if judged correctly by our system of law, should warrant the kinds of humiliating but often sadly necessary statutes that exist within these institutions.

That being said, I am of the opinion that the public has a right to know what goes on behind any closed door, and thus, I feel that Wiseman is perfectly within his bounds as an artist and a public servant in making this film. Now whether or not you think this film is a cake walk, is the real question. I personally enjoy how remorselessly Wiseman shoves his imagery down your nose and funnels it in your tummy, whether you're able to stomach it or not. And we all know, censors and of course federal legislators have the weakest stomachs of them all.

Intimately Lightweight

2008-02-11T00:41:00.000-08:00

Primary {Robert Drew & Co, 1960}

As an extension of LIFE magazine's photojournalistic methodology, Primary does something quite outstanding in progressing the realm of candid art. The economy and mobility offered by the introduction of the first lightweight synchronized sound systems certainly spawned the first instances of true reportage in documentary cinema. Also, the collectivist approach of Robert Drew's team in both the editing and capturing created what has become the modern standard of "coverage" in following cultural and political happenings.

What struck me as unique about Primary is the sense of historical present offered by the absence of both interviews and inserted text. This observational film escapes the limitations of narrative reorganization (whether intentional or accidental) by arranging its material in a forthright, highly photographic manner. It shows the two candidates out in public working, not as talking heads, or up on pulpits. It even shows, without a fixed perspective, the mundanely repetitive nature of the work that these candidates assign themselves. The film makes its purpose one of revelation, not motivation, and thus frees itself from being in any way idiosyncratic or commanding in its examination.

Hypersensitive

2008-01-27T13:15:00.000-08:00

Czech Dream {Vít Klusák/Filip Remunda, 2004}

Czech Dream certainly calls into question a few ideas that are tough to swallow, but do they chew it up for you the right way? Of course there is the obvious examination of our susceptibility to corporate marketing, but more interestingly, the film corners itself into a whirl of controversy by causing us to ask whether a hoax of this size can really be considered an act of artistic merit. At the film's conclusion, when the facade is dropped and the masses who gather learn that they've been fooled, Remunda and Klusak (who have been present for the entire process as the face of this fabricated market,) take the heat well as they explain their intentions to this reasonably upset crowd. However, seeing those who have gone out of their way in search of lower prices reads to me as an unfair exploitation of the desperation inherent in a tattered economic system. I'm one for seeing capitalism bare ass with its pants around its knees, but if you were to trick my grandmother into waddling across a field on legs riddled with rheumatoid arthritis, we'd have a few words.

To me, it appears that the pair of filmmaker's are assigning a grounded vendetta against capitalism on top of what most would consider a rather harmless product of the capitalist system. Hypermarkets dont seem villainous enough for this argument. In fact, they're actually painted here as a relatively positive symbol of progress in an economically crippled and confused country as the Czech Republic.

However, shedding light on the advertising groups who put together these psychologically attractive marketing packages works much better for the pair's thesis. The segments they have of their arguments with the ad executives are priceless, portraying them as a mesh of the utopian idealist, the sleek corporate gear, and the heady, presumptuous "artiste." They do a wonderful job of fooling those involved in commercial exposure and distribution into thinking they are showcasing their talents, while in reality they are really contributing to damaging their own image as a reputable enterprise.

Edward Scissorhands

2008-01-18T14:11:00.000-08:00

Edward Scissorhands {Tim Burton, 1990}

Its really tragic that Tim Burton's inner child as a method of cinematic articulation has had the adverse effect of prefacing a sort of "eyeliner manifesto." For a whole generation of delusional, upper to middle class junior high mall-rats, this film is a fashion staple for those teens bent on externalizing their angst with as much leather as possible. Tim Burton seems to have intended a far more personal allegory dealing with alienation and abandonment, but instead his childhood drawings from which the basis of the film was derived, have been robbed of their originality by the greedy tentacles of gothic cult mania. If removed from its post-premiere ripple effect, however, Burton's magical vision stands as pruned and flawless as one of the eponymous Eddie's garden sculpture's.

The film is a treat for those who are used to sorting a difficult subtext. Its wonderfully straightforward, without relinquishing any of the depth in its social commentary. It's like Burton sits you down in the back yard, in a prim yellow lawn chair, puts you at ease with a shoulder touch of quirky simplicity, and then proceeds to dexterously sheer out a new hairdo without you ever having noticed a thing. Tim Burton makes his film so easy to read that exploring the different platitudes of the story itself seems irrelevant. This is a movie you should just see, as stupid as that sounds, because you'll get it better than if I stammer in this review to summarize this efficient, autonomous piece of film.

Spin

2008-01-18T14:09:00.000-08:00

Spin {Brian Springer, 1995}

Calculated Truth

For me, prescience and poignancy are more valuable than urgency or agenda in any work that attempts to properly canvas our country's modern politics. It is especially enjoyable to witness how a piece like Brian Springer's 1995 Documentary Spin homogenizes a sensitivity to bias with an obvious call to action. The uncanny scrutiny provided by Springer's use of the unique informational source of unedited (or "unspun") satellite feeds from major news networks lends his content a level of validity that comes with any form of dedication to research like the kind he exhibits here.

Along with a fantastic soundscape (ripe with the creepy ambient buzzing pops and cavernous space rattle that could make any piece ominous) and a carefully narrated text that uses his title word Spin as a brilliant foundation for both a literal and subtextual discussion of media content, Springer most eloquently employs motivated edits in a way separate from how our favorite blood-boiling, polarized documentarians tend to use their censor scissors to shepherd an audience into their own opinion corral.

Unlike the favoritism and partiality (insert sigh here) that Michael Moore and Alex Jones have a penchant for, Springer strings only a subtle hint of a leftist approach in his composition. Unfortunately inherent in any filtering (or "spin") of media is an air of zeitgeist that most viewers dont appreciate. Instead, here, Springer simply rattles out a thesis that asks "what are we really missing" without asking it with a raised eyebrow.

Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen (Even Dwarves Start Small)

2007-11-20T03:04:00.000-08:00

Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen {Even Dwarves Start Small} - (Herzog, 1969)

For once, the 48 inch height regulation at most commercial theme-parks instituted as a cut off for who is able to ride the most extreme rides, is thrown fervently to the wayside by director Werner Herzog. This charismatic giant in film history chooses to stand no taller or more prominent than the shortest of human dwarves, in his influential film Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen (Even Dwarves Start Small.)

Herzog is famous for creating allegories for the broad human condition in his films manifested by figures or groups that are commonly rejected or disregarded as progressive to modern human development. In this film, however, instead of having to peruse the subtext of Herzog using a conspicuous category of non-human subjects, like those native cultures seen as "savage," varied social outcasts (artists) or examples of monstrous, blinded misanthropes (conquerors), Herzog hits the viewer right on the head with the "human handicap" he uses in his allegory. He uses, in fact, on of the very few groupings in society where a filmmaker can be solely reliant on the pure physical image of this group to establish both a sympathetic regard or perceptual discomfort, as well as an immediate dissociation from our understood standards of human evolution and progress.

Herzog makes high art out of our bad taste. He uses experience to make invisible the technical mastery of his work, enabling us first to capitalize on our well-learned judgmental nature and the human compulsion towards mockery at any and all forms of deformity, only to later shame us with the strength of his drawn parallels to the absurdities of human nature, overpowering our superficial instincts to laugh and taunt what is essentially only a physically miniaturized (not sociologically or mentally) diorama of our problematic human condition.

The dwarves create an empowered rebellion as is common in a layered society, but its effectiveness seems to falter under the lures of human nature's tendency towards acts of depravity and destruction.

If you treat them (the dwarves) as Herzogian allegorical representations of "us" (the larger dudes,) then sitting and watching the lot of them still unabashedly abusing and slaughtering animals (the poultry and livestock), tormenting the handicapped (the blind dwarves), striving to compete amongst one another (the bug comparisons, arranged marriages, and porn collections) and finally protesting and violently revolting against any form of control (firebombing Pepe and the assumed administrator of the compound) seems to be just your average study of human behaviour.

American Gangster

2007-11-20T01:26:00.001-08:00

American Gangster {Ridley Scott, 2008}

I'm ace-in-the-hole sure this film has been chalked up in an insufferable amount of film criticism blogs. It's wet out of the womb, and so therefore, I'm going to let it grow into itself before I snip its umbilical cord or sever it's foreskin without its consent.

Still, though, I think it is appropriate to apply some first impressions, in order to compare them to my later opinions.

Pluses:

1) Russell Crowe. Typically great actor. Sort of unilateral. Not very Jewish. Not very good at faking a Jersey accent. Perfectly acceptable as a 2007 interpretation of Frank (Paco) in Serpico without the beatnik-vibe or the accusations of sexual deviancy.

2) Denzel Washington. Typically great actor. Sort of unilateral. Not usually a screen devil (though the opening shot of the film nullifies the extremes of his murderous actions for the remainder of the film, simply by surmounting them with the live cremation and execution of an anonymous victim right away.) Very very good at acting the role of a harlem-ite, as well as a noble man within the confines of poverty. Convincing as hell as any form of black activist, from the legitimate influence of Malcolm X, to the felonious impact of a corrupt drug czar or mob boss, just like Fred Williamson in Black Caesar.

3) Ridley Scott did good. Some of his shotwork was brilliant (directional parallels/ orchestrated composition i.e. the plane crossing behind several street markers). Chiwitel Ejiofor (Children Of Men) masks his anglo-speak exceptionally in playing the flashiest brother of co-protagonist Frank Lucas, just as Josh Brolin masks his tendency towards unintentional overacting exceptionally (see Hollow Man and the television series Into The West for reference) in his portrayal of the prick cop in the film who's' the most blatantly "on the take" (a la Serpico) from the criminal bankroll.

Minuses:

1) Hip-hop's big fat nose in this film is quite visible, especially the nose of America's modern hip-hop. This pitfall again seems acutely typical of the implicated 'trappings' that a white (in this case germanic) director faces in making a 'black' film that will inevitably draw a heavier 'black' audience. In an attempt to appease what is currently a ghetto-vitalized populous, the allowance of sluggish, cavorting, badly performed cameos by music media figures (like rapper T.I. [though, not really too shabby] and RZA (who cooly sports his poorly disguised Wu-Tang Clan tattoo no less than a foot away from the camera in one or two shots) drowns what credibility the filmmaker build up. These ego-insertions cripple the work as a strong piece that communicates skillfully among more diverse audiences.

The use of this tactic of "filling out the molds of a type of racial film," to me seems counterproductive. In an attempt at cinematic egalitarianism, why further ostracize, as well as distract more major audiences, by choosing instead to only appeal to an informed, select few attentive to your central subject's racial disposition? If Frank Lucas ever stuck out loudly as a "black man in the white man's world" it was certainly made the loudest in this film.

I guess because I'm more versed in civil rights than the prototypical moviegoer I can cast down these judgments more easily believing I am above the common viewer.

This does not, however, discard the fact that instrumental constructs that often strengthen racism, nationalism, and the West's lust for economic individuality and privatization, are further fortified by the modes and ethics of this film.

2) New York is ___________ this close to being dead as a setting. It is now ___ this much closer.

Conclusion:

If a stage rendition of Black Caesar played in a broadway double-up with a rendering of Serpico, then American Gangster would be appraised as a lousy film rendition of the broadway hit that featured a goody two-shoes cop running down a self-made black mafioso. The papers might say "the camera work and special effects were nice though."

Cinematic Excess

2007-11-20T00:08:00.000-08:00

Cinematic Excess

(response again to an exam question asking what the role of "cinematic excess" is in modern cinema)

The atypical Hollywood narrative structure means to be as readable and stimulating as possible. We are all aware of this, and fall victim to it, switching off for a little more than an hour, behind our popcorn jacouzzi and our odd footing that cuts off toe circulation whilst we're wedged between the duplex soft-chair armrest zones. It is obvious then, in discussing the role of "Cinematic Excess" (in these well defined structural boundaries), that the two (convention and excess) are destined to conflict!!!!

(F***ING DUH).

(*ahem) With "Cinematic Excess," the plainly material and objective nature of all the elements of a film can be interpreted as "subjective," and makes it a very 'opinionated' argument whether or not a specific film falls victim to such awesomely intellectual critical categories (*cough*).

However, on the basic level, Cinematic Excess (that is, things that are labeled as such) usually rings loud and clear to the viewer or critic simply because it defies the structure most familiar to modern cinema (the Hollywood schtick, one would say).

It is clear, therefore, that like most "movements" or "rebellions" against a tradition or a strict coda, an ebb and floe soon will be produced that undulates between the two opposing points on the spectrum. Eventually, aligning with the cyclical nature of any political or hierarchical structure (which film in a lot of cases certainly represents,) that which is 'revolutionary' solely because of its counteraction of the 'evils of normalcy' within our typical parameters, tragically ceases to be revolutionary after a certain amount of overstudy and varying disagreements. The applicable revolutionary idea made pertinent to defying this societal structure is nevertheless inevitably adapted directly into the same system it initially rebelled against.

An "obtuse narrative structure"* (according to Roland Barthes) is a lengthy of saying the above. Usually, the 'obtuse' label marks that a film is the offspring of the fundaments beneath the above process (that is, the essentials of the typical Hollywood narrative.) Elements or structures that do no fit (such as rearranged chronology, unconventional composition, a spoken or textual approach to storytelling, or most commonly an extreme sense of style exuded from the filmmaker) or that are regarded as "Cinematic Excess" have slowly been transmogrified into working neo-tropes within the Hollywood labyrinth, which they previously riled against.

In a nutshell, what's different is so cool, that it becomes cool and marketable to seem 'different' and the entities that the "different" strive to segregate from themselves in turn absorb that 'angst' and 'nonconformist behaviour' into their condescending, subversive, capitalistic vocabulary.

Cache Opening

2007-11-19T23:42:00.000-08:00

Cache [opening] (Michael Haneke, 2005)

(Also an edited 'exam response' to (basically) the question: "Please analyze the opening scene of Cache (Michael Haneke, 2005) and discuss how the director disregards a typical cinematic language and how he goes about doing so)

Oh those french. They sure do know how to shake things up. Putting an Austrian in charge, well that's a confidently guaranteed shake. Haneke trumps several key conventions in the language of cinema within Cache, namely his vague regard for the viewer in the film's transmission of information. The titling, first, runs over the establishing shot in a paperback novel reading direction, printed in a small and difficult font that makes the credits of this film nearly illegible, (aside from the word Cache, that is,) the first hint that Haneke does not want to spoon feed you his narrative.

His initial shots leave it severely unclear whom (out of the dozen or so persons who meander through the shot[s]) is the subject of the narrative. Then, instead of modern film's inherent use of sound to thread both form and structure to a piece, Haneke lets off-screen dialogue, both diegetic and extracted in post, to drive the images without driving the narrative along as well. This sound and image relationship creates an almost completely disjointed form of dialogue. The revelation of the viewer's involvement in a "surveillance" in the late opening is as obvious a shock value method as Haneke's apparent rebellious test of form.

What to me really separates Haneke's structure of the cinematic language from the conventional comes from his reign over sound and its contrast with the emptiness of certain images. To elaborate on that reign would be redundant of the above paragraphs, so read this piece as a recycle sign (in a loop) and the thesis will become easily evident.

Paisà

2007-11-19T21:44:00.000-08:00

Rossellini's Paisà (1946)
as a film of "Memory"

(Notably shorter as it is an edited 'exam response' to the broad academic question: "Please analyze the opening scene of Roberto Rossellini's (episodical sextuplet) film Paisà (the newsreel segment) and discuss it, paying specific attention to its relation to André Bazin's idea of "realism" and also David McDougall's article "Transcultural Cinema: Films Of Memory"...)

In crafting his opening for this disguised fictional film, Rossellini employs historical reference as well as a reliance on photographic iconography (the highly recognizable image of the 'wartime newsreel') to achieve a notion of realism necessary in driving the action and thesis of his film. The opening footage automatically assigns a reconstructive "memory" that gives validity to the rest of the film, offering, quite bluntly, a purely visual or 'lexical' representation of memory that is quite direct. What is lacking is the expressionism or dialectic strategies of montage cinema, which Rossellini puts at bay, in favour of the "realism" that is well defined by Bazin.

David MacDougall, in his article on *Film as Memory, states that "films condense such multidimensional thinking into concrete imagery, stripping the representation of memory of much of its breadth and ambiguity." It then seems certainly that in Paisà, the opening 'Florence episode' evidently wields the heavy influence of memory in it's conventional, accessible mode (that is, one of journalistic hubris,) in order to smoothly meld an ambiguous psychological phenomenon with the clarity of representation modeled within Bazin's cookie-cutter of "realism." By simply streamlining conscious and subconscious human thought into an organized temporal progression, first with the 'reel,' and then with the film's clear and informative dialogue coupled with the historical accuracy of the mise-en-scene and the heightened drama of the music (par excellence), and even the occasional Rules Of The Game depth of field with simultaneous action detectible within the frame, Rossellini achieves his "easy influence" through the weak but successful use of his notably "easy opening."

*David MacDougall, Transcultural Cinema: Films of Memory

Salo - The 120 Days of Sodom

2007-11-13T07:06:00.000-08:00

Salo - Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1975

There is an inexorable truth revealed about the core of human nature and the psyche inherent in witnessing the exposure or humiliation of another human being. That truth is simply that the idea of the "human psyche" is really a complex electrical argument in our brain that defines what we each consider to be our own sense of "self".

The idea of "self-awareness" has been heavily disciplined throughout almost every society in history to be more than just simply 'aware' of one's own individual material worth. Rather, the efforts devoted to our own self-interest have become inseparable from our rationale; they have grown nearly instinctual. Thus, it is that (ironic) commonality in the highly individual vanity we find so fundamental to humanity that allows the use of humiliation as a mode of critique of man's ingrained sense of self. When our malleable sense of "self" is forced to interpret someone else's loss of "self" as it is stripped away in front of our eyes, the worst of human fear, our fear of losing our own "self-importance", throws us into an existential limbo. This argument between forces causes our sense of "self" to be momentarily defined by the simple strengths of the two extremes and how each contrasts.

This is typically a critique reserved mostly for the arts and other various mediums of creative expression. The artist, having to constantly lay bare at the feet of their peers their deepest of emotions, their innermost turmoils, and often even the frailty of their fragile physical form, this would seem to qualify artists as the most fitting as an examiner of the self, being stripped of that sense of self, and alternately the impact on self encountered by those forcing disgrace on another human. If they accept, the artist has a privileged chance to criticize most effectively those institutions and ideals that perpetuate acts of cruelty and humiliation in our society.

This privilege is of course not devoid of any danger or risk. After all, another notion shared by modern man, is the almost instantaneous negative reaction to an artist's use of any graphic depictions of one person or a group of people being publicly defiled, tortured, or humiliated. Though this is subjective, generally using most forms of violence, exhibiting sexuality in all forms, or including any other vivid, gratuitous imagery in a work can discomfort or infuriate a public audience to the point of censorship, protest, and even violence. Sin, vice, or immorality layed out explicitly by the artist in a social critique is universally taught to be an invasive, unacceptable method of philosophical argument, contending that it cheapens its own assertion by relying on pure shock value.

Specifically in the realm of art, often times our learned initial objection to graphic elements rings true, primarily when an artist fails to fully develop a strong concept for a work's argument, or lacks the necessary expertise essential to executing that argument clearly. The work, without these factors, soon falters and therefore comes to use the crutch of hollow, graphic images in excess, in order to hold the work together.

However, when an artist is successful in the stripping bare of our inherent materiality, a highly skilled balance of the formal and technical structure of the work is needed to stand in contrast with a skilled control over utilizing graphic acts or elements to more wholly define the argument or critique, with a careful filtering

Within a puritanical state of civility, the medium of film is one of the most comprehensive ways of rendering visually the contradictions of these systems into a translatable thesis. Constructing a skilled portrait of humankind's most refined demeanor, wearing the cloak of virtuosity over a quieted closet lust, and obviously disguising the horrifying human compulsion towards violence with the thin veil of civility and control, plainly sets up these facades to be stripped, making the disparity between the two twice as impacting to witness, especially when skillfully captured on film.

Pasolini's Salo not only succeeds in fully exposing the victimized youth forced into shame and anguish depicted in his film, but the film also intentionally sheds the masquerade of refinement and the appearance of acculturation associated with the central, controlling party (baring both the male leaders of the Fascist regime, as well as the loose women accompanying them). This group of political officials is wielded by Pasolini as a capacious illustration of his hatred for the horrors and brutal crimes of the Fascist ideal as a whole.

Pasolini purposefully adorns the tyrants in the garb of the upper class. They wear smoking jackets, with top hats, fine suits, leather shoes and bow ties, even valuable and decadent ball gowns (and not just by the women mind you).

They all board, and coexist for the entire film inside of a large deserted estate, claimed by the fascist regime. There are massive, oak floored rooms, marble promenades, grandiose paintings, and a spotless great room with chairs for each man rowed like thrones. There is never a time in which any of these self-made kings or their harem are separated from their pageantry and posture. Even when they choose perform acts of torture and rape, acts so dirty and foul, they still wear the air of their gentrified society. This forces the viewer to identify the primary locus of the sickening evil they collectively exude, to be a purely internal force or nature, unable to hide even under their most shimmering baubles.

The fifteen boys and fifteen girls on the other hand, who are choked underneath the talons of these monstrous humans and their positions of power, undergo unspeakable atrocities. This power and atrocity are together what make this film a masterpiece in its critique of capitalism, total rule, and fascism. Pasolini exposes their atrocities in both his examination of the extreme corruption that comes with absolute power, and most candidly, the deep perversions so well masked in society that when set free by the limitless powers of violent law and total dictatorship, far exceed even the most solid viewer's tolerance and ability to easily endure a piece as graphic as this film.

Pasolini exhibits a masterful consciousness in structuring the work's four blocks to match the structure of his literary inspiration, The 120 days of Sodom by the Marquis de Sade. His prominent basis in literature and writing surprisingly gleams from under the grotesque dialogue, remaining poetic despite its central topics of the scatological, the depraved, the vulgar and the inhumane. His framing often sits wide and out, with high empty spaces similar to the scale and grace of architecture in a Rococo painting of a Basilica or perhaps a Salon. He lets you sit in the room nude with the rest of the slaves, also seating you in the thrones of the Duke and the other men, enacting a geographical sense of voyeurism.

Careful to remain heterogeneous, Pasolini also cuts from the wide shots to shots that come close in, (almost seeming claustrophobic), for the various times where we follow the groping and other individual travesties unabashedly performed on the slaves at any whim, in public, by the Fascist lords.
This same claustrophobia is what heightened the rancor I felt with each new scene showing one of the enslaved teens being taken into privacy. Watching the children being led off into rooms built off of the main "story" chamber, in order to relieve the men of whatever darkness in their loins broiled to the surface was what touted Pasolini's heavy message of total humiliation the strongest. All the kinds of aberration that man is actually capable of never stopped sounding off his hatred for the fascist regime like a towering gong, throughout the whole film.

I watched, as in various acts of fetishism, coprophagia (eating of feces), vulgarity, sadism, sexual disfigurement, gender bending, animalization, slavery, psychological manipulation, horrifying torture, and murder, Pasolini scarred the central message into me with the most extreme visuals I have ever forced myself to witness. As a viewer, I even felt physically brutalized by the actions of these satanic men, who murder their mothers, delight in eating excrement, and revel in being so vile and sexually parasitic. And yet, Pasolini is able to let me justify his unfeeling documentation of these atrocities, using to its limit the foundations of his cinematic structure, mise-en-scene, and quieted cinematographic style and movement.
I was ensnared, visually devouring the mutilation of those who were lost to the world, making me just as submissive to the sadomasochism of those villainous capitalists as that group of Italian teens became. This film accomplished a sort of artistic stigmata, (if you can believe it), in which the pain being projected forced onto one or many of the victims in the film sometimes would literally feel mirrored in your own body.

It is this that separates Pasolini's film from the crutch of shock value, or a failure in critique. Glory was absent from his agenda, unlike some other director with only the shock crutch holding their film aloft. Pasolini means to make the body into a commodity; a sheer veil that is disposable, not only in stripping his actors of their humanity, but in stripping the viewer as well. He wants to disrupt that inherent self-importance, and our instinctual sense of power as an individual, so that we understand that all that matters inside us is what is intangible. He defiles everyone and once they are bare, those who have been defiled, both the evil men and the victims, are nothing more than the spirit that drives them. I was humiliated after watching Salo, and I soon realized why Pasolini made this film. He made me humiliated so that I could understand what it was to feel humility.

Girl, Interrupted

2007-11-13T02:58:00.000-08:00

Girl, Interrupted (James Mangold, 1996)

This film flexes its muscles as a neo-hollywood memoir drama, with everything wrapped neatly with big bows on top and tags that read "Columbia Pictures". There's Those big inviting Angelina lips, Winona Ryder's mastery of the three carrot diet, The amorphous set of a mental institution, and the ace job of the overpaid, sixties-hairstyle and wardrobe experts. There's even a big old dose of Whoopee Goldberg packed in to this Oscar-army, filling out the triple star power triumvirate.

Oh my god, I forgot to mention the twist! Mangold breaks out of the mold with a wandering chronology and temporal dislocation to accent Ryder's intense psychological narration. She constantly keeps giving you that familiar "she's so poetic and unstable" inkling that LA Weekly always just eats up like mad (pun intended).

Ryder and Jolie unknowingly evoke the angst and conceit of my favorite form of entertainment, that of the modern beat-loving amateur teenage writers and sociopaths, with their standard private school educations, dysfunctional but affluent parents, and of course, the expected prevalence of a well acted, attention-seeking faux mental disorder (usually falling under what are considered today as "cool" syndromes like schizo-affective or manic depression diagnoses). We know these characters, and how inevitably the maladies that these liars choose are always those that only exhibit nonphysical symptoms, and can therefore only be assessed in the methods of abstract medicine, (through therapy or by examining behaviors).

In the credits as the film ends, it seems to have become clear to me that it is actually the film itself that suffers from a severe personality disorder. The piece throughout seems to work well, banking on most people's silent fascination with mental disorder and the routines of institutionalization. However, once the plot is revealed as being based on non-fiction, this deception becomes the one thing that ruins the films strength and effectiveness. The film's 'pathos' quickly is instead identified as 'bathos' despite its level of technical execution, simply due to its selective derangement of the film's source material.

Adapted from the novel by the same name, the only "girl" who seems to have been truly "interrupted" is the novel's author, Susanna Kaysen. The bestselling book which Kaysen wrote is, like the film, an autobiographical memoir. Thus her reaction to the film calling it "melodramatic drivel" would seem to denote a major gap in existence between the histrionic cinematic version and the factual accounts given in the book.

Most moviegoers would shrug blindly at this invisible travesty, as the character Winona depicts matches at least in a very general demeanor how Kaysen's battle with her disorder and the record of her experiences actually occurred. They ignore that the author's emotional words have been cheapened into a flashy, trite exploitation showcasing an irritating nervous breakdown, carelessly vamped up for the screen with one single paint coat of slick, canned cinematic dramaturgy.

Including myself in the minority of impassive viewers, what seems to have happened in the case of Girl, Interrupted is, quite conveniently, a situation quite well-mirrored by the films plot itself. In Girl Interrupted the literary work, a young writer suffers from a desire to use her creative work as a vehicle for escaping the throes of an oppressive system holding her by the ankles. This can only happen, however, if he or she can first find a way to create a turmoil or crisis that warrants the inspiration necessary to succeed.

The act of writing Girl Interrupted cinematically instead involved three writers: an established screenwriter, Anne Hamilton Phelan, the director, James Mangold and the playwright, Lisa Loomer, combined in stealing the central role. They collaboratively invented the drama and turmoil themselves by boldly inserting it into the writing even if it was fabricated. The group was similarly attempting to create their first Oscar-worthy vehicle in an effort to escape the trappings of the hollywood system holding their ankles. Unfortunately, they did this while completely ignoring the moral dilemma implicit in their decision to misrepresent the author's original work.

So, whereas Kaysen succeeds in escaping these chains of her literary anonymity by recounting her compelling story as it occurred, as well as learning to curb her disorder along the way, the film edit still remains trapped in the boiler plate factory of hollywood with its vicious traditions, simply by improving upon work that needed little improvement.

The threesome's final script is certainly what 'mangles' the essence of Kaysen's fantastic novel by foolishly 'looming' over the originality of her literary voice and her altruistic realism with overdone theatrics and catchy industry hooks. The film as a singular entity is entertaining and even powerful at times. Honestly, Winona, Whoopee and Angelina deserve every accolade they got for their performances, as they completed their jobs with the utmost emotion and expertise. But the sheer tenacity of the adaptation being heralded for falsifying someone's life-story after being entrusted with their personal work, is what makes me almost ready to be commited myself.

La Chinoise

2007-10-29T11:05:00.000-07:00

La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard, 1976)

Godard's La Chinoise is a film surrounded by luck. It is his thirteenth narrative. If you're superstitious, this will be triggering your "triskaidekaphobia" (fear of the number 13). If you're a christian, you're thinking of the Epiphany, or the number of participants at the Last Supper (noting that Judas Iscariot, according to the bible, was the thirteenth seat at the table). If you're a overweight middle schooler being picked for dodge ball in Gym, you're holding back tears from being the extra one in line, chosen last, and sure to be the first one pegged once the game begins.

In my case, the way luck factors into my experience in attending La Chinoise is simply this: I am lucky that after seeing this film, I didn't slap a bystander on the street and enter into a hysterical fit out in the open on the corner of Bleecker Street near NYU. I was expecting to be frustrated, as La Chinoise was made during Godard's obnoxious transitional phase. I was expecting a political gab-fest. I was expecting Jean-Pierre Leaud. I was expecting big, interruptive block lettering in between every scene in pretentious half-sentences.

What I wasn't expecting was a cinematic test-tube baby, attempting to fertilize the phallic hollywood conformo-sperm with its round head of concrete narrative and its flapping, chronological, dramatic flagellum, with the natural antithesis disjunctive egg, wrapped in an esoteric membrane of jump cuts, shaking the petri-dish with its blatant mockery and rejection of narrative form. However, Godard delivered.

I sat, for a torturous two hours and twenty minutes in the most uncomfortable seats in history, the Film Forum theater chairs, staring at a 4:3 screen and trying to get my eyes to focus after a tiring transit across the city. We sat in the front row, so that we would be the first to receive the images, a la Bertolluci. In retrospect, the film was even worse up close in your face, and I ended up only being the first to receive a slipped vertebrae.

I have to remind myself that I have a heart, and give some credit where it is due. The restoration was gorgeous (see, positivity!) and Jean-Pierre Leaud always adds a little padding to even the most disappointing films. Godard's funny bone, as usual, irked out as much laughter as a bad toast by the best man at your good friends wedding (not a plentiful amount). Jean-Pierre stole most of the laughs purely with his body language, with a few chuckles also burgled by a series of upper-class urbanite pro-communist rhetoric recitals spouted by Anne Wiazemsky clad in an outfit reminiscent of Patty Hearst (sans automatic rifle, replaced instead with a toy rifle that folds to look like a stereo).

Up to this point everything was fine. It seemed as though all the film was going to chalk up to be in essence was a silly little riff on how trite the "plight" of the activist middle-class youth forever trapped by their trusts and inheritances from becoming the full-fledged, card-carrying, patch-laden, jungle-hardened revolutionaries they so longed to be, complete with sex appeal and guaranteed peer idolization. I didn't think it would be too bad to sit back and compare how little the same psychosis still linger in the "revolutionary" youth of today, in fact, the colors were nice and the subtitles were big, I was set to just roll on through and cross another Godard off my sticky-pad list.

Then, the median point hits in the film. Godard begins at first to start cultivating a dramatic underpinning amongst the hectic group-think bottled up in the small apart where the majority of the film remains (which is an interesting exploration of space in a way, to give a bit more credit). Suddenly the dialogue becomes segmented, divided between the reminiscences of one of the flat mates talking about how the situation was too much for him, interspersed with inane arguments between the several housemates, complete with peaking audio that could skin a cat out of fright, as well as sentences that start to trickle into the surreal (which I would have been fine with had it not come so severely out of left field) with poetic linguistics fogging up any clarity Godard had established with the first half of his film.

The film ended with a suicide, a homicide (with two tries no less!) and a finale featuring the...er...older sister? of Anne Wiazemsky's character shuttling around the now abandoned flat, ending finally with her scolding their ridiculousness and their negligence in allowing the suicide to happen. Then there were some block letters and a nice Michel Legrand song in the credits to stop me from punching a hole in the wall. The Chinese are in China, not in France.

A Short Text About Awe

2007-10-29T11:01:00.002-07:00

IN RESPONSE TO:
- A Short Film About Love (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988)
- A Short Film About Killing (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1988)

"A Short Text About Awe"

The Careful Conventions of Krzysztof Kieślowski

by H.P. Willis

It has always seemed to me that the majority of humanities most worthy literary greats have very frequently come to verify the importance of their work all in a similar way. Each building upon their predecessor, these titanic figures of print attain their dignitary status once, and only once they have been able to successfully stretch the bounds of their talent into several careful and congruous volumes. These types of laborious works in several installments most effectively demonstrate longevity, close analysis, a tireless work ethic, and if executed correctly, can wonderfully exhibit an author's capability to command attention at length from even the most skeptical reader.

The ability to successfully work in this difficult mode of textual relation known as "cycle" or "series" separates the lesser temporary ambitions of many from the lasting mastery of the epic and harmonious works of few.

This notion of "the more the effort, the more the reward" seems to remain a generally accepted measure of merit. Provided the content fully lives up to the toil of the conquest, a work will always receive an ample boost solely based on its length and effort. This mode of judgement obviously not only exists in literature, but in the common distinction among all other languages of expression between works of attempt and works of accomplishment; between the frailty of aspiration and the power of execution.

If the Cinema, still an infant art form mothered with such heavy influence and parallels in the very same classical writings, has produced any masters of worth to the medium, it is those with a firm grasp of narrative who in the eyes of the public have earned their place amongst the immortals. The ability to transmit a concept or argument with only the purity of visual constructs today seems to be secondary in importance to films offering an audience loaded images that are crutched by either the cheap exit of startling effects, or with the use of heavy handed or superficial dialogue.

Still, the cycle work or the "catalogue" remains the dominant means of proving one's caliber regardless of genre. In the least each director primarily aims to create a basic succession of works wherein the chosen content or visuals will hopefully be able to translate across each episode understandably. Where most fail is in assuming that the content they derive is strong enough to carry itself through several segments without being too easily spelled out before reaching the climax of their order.

The few directors whose creative contributions have warranted being called "masterworks" typically only yield one to two of these works celebrated as "gems of cinematic breadth" throughout their entire careers.

Krzysztof Kieślowski, Poland's premier auteur, therefore, is a true rarity in the short history of cinema. His gift has been made apparent in his famous prolificacy, creating his numerous bulk works of near perfection. A brilliant manipulator of alternation, each pack of films acts as a lexicon for his wholesale approach to cinema, as well as and index of the specifics of his artful direction for which he is lauded today.

In his lifetime, Kieslowski chose to transcend the "magnum opus" sought after by most filmmakers of the movements he was surrounded by. He worked instead on perfecting a body of gifted sequential panoramas of society and relationships, posing important questions about the human condition and the political climate of his surroundings as well as the greater population of the world. This pattern of intention is exhibited and studied most famously in works like The Decalogue and his Red, White, Blue trilogy.

Each collection's scale eclipses the common limits of the single feature, with a balance of both linear and disjunctive episodes arranged to more wholly capture the universal themes and intentions Kieslowski chooses to observe. The audience's intelligence (for once) is paid compliment, in that each film in Kieslowski's sweeping compositions, he means to challenge the viewer to draw several unspoken connections between each of his careful partitions. The viewer watching each vignette is gradually made aware of the greater significance in the combination of each of the series' parts. Kieslowski intends for this to be achieved through following the carefully threaded but often ambiguous argument or thesis that he rations out carefully between each section of the final work.

Kieslowski seems to have chosen carefully in his designating which of the two films out of his ten part series The Decalogue he wanted to expand further from their already epic original collection. He again chose to refrain from simply stretching short form into feature merely for the construction of an opus. Instead the two were expanded separately still as pieces of a larger whole, only meditated on a bit longer than the rest of the pieces in his ten piece suite.

Having before only seen the short within the series, I still find deep personal resonance in Kieslowski's communication even though its in short, television format. When viewed in solidarity as a more complete thought, Kieslowski's pieces still managed to maintain that resonance and yet pull it further with added detail, but again without exhausting the height of his narrative and cinematographic ability.

Both A Short Film About Love and A Short Film About Killing accomplish an immaculate inspection of two difficult and controversial situations with a skillful composition that obviously denotes experience. Both employ the magic of glass and reflections, heavy psychological lighting achieved with filters and environmental light, a distinct attention to diegetic sound as well as marginal or fractionalized sound, and most noticeably a uniquely visual approach to character development and the establishment of power relationships, as opposed to the trend of simplistic expositional dialogue.

Although our modern commercial market thrives on various types of voyeurism, the sexual taboo of the "Peeping Tom" (or in this case the polish variation "Tomek") is still not endorsed by most of the general population. Outwardly it seems the majority of the film students discussing this piece last week claimed to find no personal connection to the protagonist in Love, or the subject matter at hand. Most admitted instinctively finding Tomek's behavior reproachable, and said they found it difficult to change their perspective after their initial impression of Tomek as well as the film's premise was established.

In reality I'm sure a good number of those same people publicly discrediting scopophilia have in some way or another dealt with the very same issue, or one similar. To claim naiveté in all matters sexual has become the Puritan's monument left for moral impact upon the psychological history of this and several other countries. Its sad to hear such shame in people, especially in the arts.

It has been my understanding that Kieslowski enacts a unique personal communication in his audiences choosing to abandon the interpersonal in favor of a silent exclusivity. Although it seems he intends the opposite, wanting for the human relationship to become more accessible even in the often dire or troubling circumstances his characters are placed within. One of his few faults may be his uncanny ability to create a psychological interior for each central character with the control he exhibits in detailing their internal lives and private nuances.

Like fellow master, Robert Bresson, Kieslowski highlights only the necessary elements (personal possessions, eating habits, tics or quirks) in each character's introduction. He carefully features each element visually, so directly that without a letter of dialogue he assures that his audience will properly assign close to the appropriate level of sympathy to each of the personalities he profiles.

Yet Kieslowski is mindfully inclusive, unlike Bresson, of the marginal, unessential details closely neighboring the elements he chooses to emphasize. Kieslowski specifically seems aware that the chaos provided by these devalued particulars is what normally fills completely the leftover spaces in real life. He gives weight to the unimportant in order to sate the gaps of empty fiction inherent in film's sterile dramatization. This sounds impossible, for a filmmaker to both highlight directly what he chooses, while leaving all of the other scraps and minutia in the visual conversation. Still, using frame and light to the height of their efficiency, Kieslowski can let the camera watch the important with the most direct priority while never neglecting to underscore the unimportant.

His success in exploring the nature of each primary character unintentionally distances many of the characters he has interact in an effort to support human communication and interrelationship. This problem seems only to have been resolved slightly in the Red, White, Blue trio. In each, throughout the first quarter or half of the film, it is clear that we are expected to distinctly identify with the cerebral depth and subconscious nature of the three troubled women, Julie, the composer's widow, Karol, the immigrant, and Valentine, the despondent student, who at the beginning of each plot seem likely to remain the central focus of our attention and sympathy as the films progress.

Each of the three films somehow defeats this idea of the expected singularity of character by first invalidating the innocence of each girl when one or several outside characters interrupts their psychosomatic empathy
by calling them out in some fashion about their inconsistencies or faults. Then Kieslowski enters simultaneously the psyche of one of the secondary characters while still vaguely continuing his earlier observation of the central woman in each film.

In Red, his final film, the main examination of the film ends up having little to do with the girl we've been following, aside from her importance to the climax shared by all three films (a ferry sinking with characters from each of the trilogy's episodes aboard.) The focus gently shifts away from the girl's mental state, as she suddenly is made to act more as a catalyst or, rather, a pivot attaching two external characters who seem to have very little in common. Finally she brings them together without intending to, enabling the two men to discover their similarities and eventually develop a strong fraternal relationship (the theme so unexpectedly imparted by the film.) These three films are unique in their clear cut departures between focal characters abruptly in each episode.

This is not to say that A Short Film About Love or A Short Film About Killing in any way evade human connectivity. Both most certainly address relationships from a dualistic viewpoint, showing the situation from both the perspective of the predatory as well as the perspective of the prey. Both act as separate political commentary on two debated aspects of modern human existence. The films employ a psychological context not easily achieved in films addressing ruthless murder or voyeurism.

Like the rest of The Decalogue, Kieslowski is able to use the sociopolitical backdrop of economic depression within a communist state to heighten the cravings and dependencies of his subjects, weaving a complex membrane intended to rouse his audience into both an open discussion of external global conditions as well as an amazing internal conference about quality of life.

Tomek is unabashed of his anonymous terrorizing of Magda, not once cowering from being called out to reveal himself and admit his obsessions, a trait uncommon among fetishists. Jasek seems to not understand or even regard self control, human decency, or the value of human life, until faced with the violent theft of his own existence, and it is soon apparent that there is a backwards sort of innocence in his callous incomprehension of his actions.

Kieslowski has effectively created a rarity in his portrayal of two deviants who, to the audience, may actually appear innocent for momentary glimpses, or even longer. In fact, the typically empowered male predatory degenerate who we are used to seeing control a disturbing sexual or emotional latitude in films both become the casualty of their own passions when Tomek's forthcoming nature reverses the scenario in Magda's favor and Jasek desperately explains his upbringing to the young lawyer.

Kieslowski consumes us in the distress between these two characters in each film, both of whom we sympathize with, choosing not to thoughtlessly exclude either side of the emotional spectrum at play in either film. Another oblique approach Kieslowski engages with Tomek's story is the inclusion of "love" in a piece which, disregarding the title, gives the first impression of a more animalistic study of unwanted exploitation.

The intimacy of Kieslowski's filmmaking exemplified in his attention within both films to a careful intellectually disturbing tone and a calm realism in his violence and sexual tension lends perfectly to a very layered discussion of loneliness, compulsion, and a loss of innocence in both elongated chapters of The Decalogue.

The controversy of each film Kieslowski produces rings to me as not provocative enough in a commercial sense to market as a bankable shock commodity, especially in an America with a deep hatred for subtitles. I still remain reverent of Kieslowski's filmmaking, even his solitary pieces like The Double Life of Veronique. Like the volumes of Dostoevsky, of Chaucer, of Styron, of Salinger, or even the loose encyclopedic legend of Kerouac, Kieslowski's silent wisdom is most evident in his ability to so carefully control a length of time that would seem impossible to most to keep so sensible or collected, while never sacrificing his speculative nature, imaginative content, or any of his dynamic approaches to shooting, framing, lighting, and the power of clarity no film maker should ever think to abandon.

Since my first attempt at soaking in The Decalogue, and after reading for a greater understanding about his handling the span of an epic like the Decalogue in his autobiography Kieslowski on Kieslowski, the only effective word I can use to advertise how his films have affected me and influenced me is the word "awe" returning from the title of this paper. Awe simply because his films are both incredibly disturbing and incredibly beautiful in tandem without a stitch in the middle for you to notice the gap. Awe at a filmmaker who can effortlessly move ideologies and questions that few people dare to address without having to reach for the hysterical or the pacifistic in order to translate both his qualms and his satisfactions about life and humanity with such ease. Awe at a filmmaker who can make films that remain just as classic as the words of any classic book.

Control

2007-10-29T11:01:00.001-07:00

Control (Anton Corbijn, 2007)

The first sentence of this review couldn't be anything other than "this film was absolutely the best film I have seen in over a year and is strongly jockeying for a slot in my all time favorites." Shedding away my established obsession with the film's topic, the band Joy Division and the tumultuous life and untimely suicide of the band's front-man, Ian Curtis, as well as my feverish, fan-boy tachycardia at the slightest mention of the film's wizard of a director, Netherlander Anton Corbijn, I would most assuredly be matched in my enthusiasm for this film had I simply been seeing it without knowing the slightest thing about it.

Biopics seem to have been growing into themselves over the past several years, with each character-study piece being released and directed in a variety diverse modes and formats. This has allowed the biopic as a genus to artfully avoid any major commonalities that would render this newborn "genre" too stale or easily identifiable. The black and white brilliance of Control strengthens this individuality of style, by engaging the genius of Anton Corbijn's photographic fashion of filmmaking with both brilliant acting and a compelling emotional fall-from-grace story (case in point: at the end of the film, I cried really hard, along with most of the theater at the Film Forum; even the snottiest of NYU kitsch mongers was bawling; it was that serious).

The familiarity of Corbijn's distinctive composition and use of ridiculously deep contrast and de-saturation fits this film and its subject matter like a glove. Corbijn, (very seldom recognized despite the success of his work) is responsible for directing some of the most iconic 1980's black and white music videos of his era, many of which are still are played on today's music television. Corbijn worked closely with Curtis and Joy Division from very early on, volunteering as their official photographer. He then later moved on to make dozens of music videos for many renowned music groups, such as Depeche Mode, Echo and The Bunnymen, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, and most famously his prolific work with the band U2). Many shots in Control were big on the same empty framing and use of lots of negative space, as well as an affinity for hard edges and settings with little ornamentation, all traits that are often associated with his music videos.

Sparsity reigned with triumph throughout the work. Scenes were driven by the majesty of performance for the most part. The backgrounds, conversely, were designed to amplify through minimalism the alienation and tight-lipped poverty of the British countryside during the sixties and seventies.

This design was followed closely, unless, that is, Corbijn awarded that an object was intended to reflect a psychological preoccupation or a physical frailty, in which case lo-fi, hand-made elements, or daily items of the working-class were made to represent their users through association. For example, Corbijn includes the homemade leather journals used by Curtis for writing Joy Division's lyrics, noting that it was this writing that clearly detached Curtis from his quite, antisocial persona.

Curtis also appears with common, boring, or unattractive objects in the film, chosen to better introduce the restless existence of living within the suffocating atmosphere of 1970's rural-gone-industrial Great Britain. We see that Curtis travels several times in the film, with his mysterious look and simple wardrobe, always carrying a large, solid-color royal military rucksack with one long strap hung over his shoulder as he walks. The hulking bag works repeatedly at painting him to be some sort of returning hero fresh from battle, each time lugging it casually as he walks up the lane to his home after a long tour, at least four times throughout the film.

Sam Riley, who played the lead singer of a band called The Fall in another film that briefly studied Joy Division, Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People, manages to manifest perfectly not only the pale, sullen severity of Ian Curtis' physical demeanor, but even the spirit of his music. Riley actually performs with his own voice along with the surviving members of Joy Division, recording a near perfect live rendition of Curtis' songs for the film's several concert sequences.

Riley being a spitting image only lends slightly to the actor's talent and ability in reifying the troubled singer's overbearing need for release. Corbijn and Riley obviously put a massive amount of effort into a realistic performance. Samantha Morton, playing Curtis' wife Deborah (who produced the film, and wrote the biography it is based upon) delivers a heart wrenching role as the rejected spouse who falls victim to the temper of a tortured genius, as well as the infidelity of a husband who is also a touring musician. Using the same subtlety and minimalism in her performance, she dramatically achieves the same notions that Corbijn emits with his spotless cinematographic mode.

The actors playing the remaining three in the band (who later formed New Order) are somewhat diminished characters, but they still hit the appropriate emotional tones each time they are brought forward within the narrative. Toby Kebbell cast as the mouthy manager Rob Gretton splices in the necessary lightness in this heavy piece, winning the audience with his verbose insults and seedy quick-talking negotiation tactics. It seems as though, miraculously, anyone who occupied the frame at any time during the film was most certainly highly trained in the art of convincing performance. At no point did I ever drop out of the realm of the film because I recognized anyone's problematic acting.

Curtis in his life suffered from advanced epilepsy, causing him to have seizures off stage, and on stage, during which witnesses of these events claim that he would incorporate the writhing and spastic movements of his fits into his sporadic dancing style. The film chronicles his realization, adaptation, medication and frustration in dealing with this disease, ultimately a factor in his choice to end his own life.

The finale, where Curtis hangs himself in his own kitchen, is too loaded to describe. You have to see for yourself, because that scene, shot-for-shot, trumps all suicides I've ever seen portrayed in films, for a thousand reasons.

Corbijn achieves a Herculean task in aptly recounting the life of such a complex iconic figure in modern music. Control is the first biopic I have seen to extend past the novelty of physical resemblance or "a good impression," as this film almost burglarizes history. This piece penetrates the restlessness of Curtis' byzantine soul, his dark and poetic philosophy, his thick literary perspectives, paradoxical ideologies, and even the confused anger and unpredictability of his neurological distress. Anton Corbijn hasn't made just a biopic, he's made a worthy memorial.

Vagabond

2007-10-29T10:59:00.002-07:00

Vagabond (Agnes Varda, 1985)

Being left out in the cold is the role of a vagabond, a transient, a bum. It is not the role, however, of a viewer or critic, which is exactly what Vagabond does both unintentionally, and yet with total intention at the same time. It is fitting that both the title Vagabond as well as the release title in France, Sans toit ni loi (meaning "without roof or law") immediately conjure the distinct image of a despotic transient, trapped in an existence where the rules neither apply nor provide any order to the unforgiving world around said individual.

Agnes Varda seems to be working without any set of cinematic or conceptual laws at all, regardless of whether these laws appear helpful or hindering. In her disorderliness, Varda sadly leaves her ideals and intentions neglectfully exposed to the harsh elements, with no roof to house her aesthetics or ideologies, providing nothing to protect them from the almost certain thunderstorm of criticism looming directly above this film. She has unfortunately refused to use any form of readable exposition or minimally translated revelation to move the elements along, however they are ordered, within her film. She appears to be striving in vain for a difficult form of artistry at the excessive risk of dismantling both her film's worth and understandability.

Vagabond slips hard onto its side while struggling so valiantly to strap on the boots of Robert Bresson and his removal of significant events in a narrative. Varda apparently believes her profundity can only blossom out of a dogged reliance on pure imagery and silent expressions to drive her artwork (which is a highly valid argument that I normally would jump to agree with.) However, her belief in the power of image gradually loses its efficacy through her mostly poor execution and redundancy of form. As more and more the film's progression crutches its content on a dissembled chronology meant to add the "wow-factor" to the content, the emptiness of this story leads, as the title implies, to no place of shelter.

Mona (Sandrine Bonnaire) steadily tows the viewer in so many different visual directions that without Varda somehow cushioning this classical model of alternative narrative with any subtext, emotion, or even the slightest object of sympathy for the audience to identify with, one begins to wait impatiently for the film to end. Manipulating the temporal elements of the film usually spices up a bland piece of writing, but combining the cut and dry narrative with quasi-documentarian camera work and a disjunctive plot progression, after a point, becomes not only obnoxious and overdone, but it makes Varda seem flashy and condescending, a notion one never wants to project to a critical gathering.

Beautifully shot, Bonnaire at least provides, (as petty as this sounds), some form of eye candy. Also, the setting luckily does not always remain so aggravatingly static (the vineyards were nice) and therefore Varda nabs some points out of the visuals she hangs on to so hard. However, aside from what Bonnaire is able to irk out with her facial muscles every now and again, and a couple of nice choices in framing and shooting hour and location, Vagabond ultimately succeeded in making me feel cinematically homeless.

Maybe if the film's public defense was that the intention of the film was to actually displease the audience beyond the common problem of attention span, by literally creating the anger and dejection within the viewer of the common vagrant, I would have significantly more praise for Vagabond's structure and direction.

Instead, this film's meandering becomes more and more intolerable with each step. The accidental Hubris of the director wears the skin in one's heel like a bleeding blister, soon exhausting itself quite thoroughly to a point of sheer delirium in both its reception by the audience, as well as its actual production. A quaint, realist attempt at intellectual expanse, this piece tragically goes no deeper than the road it treads, ultimately collapsing only to freeze to death in the cruel, well traveled ditch of anti-chronology and failed insight.

Blue Velvet

2007-10-29T10:59:00.001-07:00

Blue Velvet

I like to imagine that if Bobby Vinton, the crooner who's rendition of the song Blue Velvet so eloquently ties down the structure of David Lynch's masterpiece by the same name, were to sit today in a small, lush home theater and screen this film to himself in solitude, he would soon realize how unexpectedly his song translates into the world of rape, murder, and masochism.

Upon viewing Blue Velvet for a third time, I find myself less at the helm of the investigation at hand, and more able to behold the intensity of the heavy, tenebrous psychodrama that Lynch so aptly cloaks with the guise of a discernible thriller.

On first viewing, Lynch leads your nose to snooping with his trademark mystery wandering as though it actually has an end, embellished by his penchant for americana as well as elements of autobiography. His misleading build-up throughout the first half to three quarters is not meant to sucker in mass audiences (although this is often a laughable side-effect) but rather to establish an organized, logical world with which his baroque violence may later be compared.

In this style, the denouement's abrupt turn towards the cryptic still succeeds in allowing Lynch the freedom of real expression and time to cater to his obsessions (disfigurement, depravity, and hallucinatory episodes to name a few) without alienating his audience. He does not tire a less savvy crowd of viewers with the immediate onset of his artistic presence in the film, allowing instead a gradual comfort to accumulate wherein only moments of discomfort allude to the baroque fourth act of the film. It is the trickery of his seemingly purposeless narrative that lends the interference necessary for Blue Velvet's success in using diversion to communicate concept.

Jeffrey Beaumont mirrors the pet-shop naiveté of the virgin audience, trying to make sense of all the out of place and somewhat gruesome interruptions that seem to be appearing out of nowhere within the easily reproducible working-class landscape surrounding him. On this go around, however, I purposefully removed myself from the comfort zone of MacLachlan's impeccable comb-over to better observe the loose threads Lynch leaves sticking up out of the carpeting, unraveling each bit of evidence Lynch loosens intentionally to its shocking source.

The masculinity sought after by Jeffrey's Heineken lust works as a notion to be dwarfed by Frank Booth's rampant drug and booze virility. The somber severity on the faces of several of the men (namely Frank Booth) during Dorothy's performance at the Slow Club works to hint at an unstable male interaction that later snowballs into sadomasochism and forcing Jeffrey to strip at knifepoint. The over-pacifistic tone of Sandy's father when discussing the severed ear Jeffrey discovers rings softly of hushed control covering some internal mania, whispering some sort of connection between the figures of authority and the criminal conspiracy Lynch unveils suddenly towards the end of the film.

It is in these bread crumb trails that the mastery of Lynch's hand as an auteur is most strikingly beautiful, weaving an accessible neo-noir artifice with dozens of his obvious rations of absurdity. Lynch does so in such a calculated way that even as conspicuous and jarring as these moments appear, the audience still happily digests enough of Lynch's spoon-fed madness to send them fat and happy over the edge just as the plot deviates towards Blue Velvet's feast of lunacy and vicious hallucination served as the final entree of the film.

Lynch's talent for distraction and irrational attention allow his ambitious ideas and images, his intricacy in all aspects of design (mise-en-scene), his sense of language and sound and their powerful flexibility, and his reverence for human nature, human sexuality, and primal instinct, to seep into his governable viewers typically with little to no resistance. Unaware for most of the film of the cardinal directives Lynch is portraying, things usually seen by common society as difficult are discussed amidst the film's totality because Lynch is willing to be patient with sharing his theorems and ideologies, showing a respect for his viewers that is mindful of the individual appetite for new thought held by each different member of his audience.

Introduction

2007-10-29T10:57:00.000-07:00

Hello inter-world

I have a bunch of these blog things.

This one's strictly for film reviews/essays.

If you're reading this you probably got linked from my site or elsewhere

Or you have a really strong google search and you're stalking me.

Stop it.

-H.P. Willis