lights in the dusk

A Voice in the Wilderness

2011-11-20T12:18:00.002Z

I thought this might be of interest...

In late September, I set myself a personal challenge. The challenge, which is still on-going, is to write a short comment of roughly 420 characters in length for each of the 670 titles currently listed under the 'favourite films' section of my profile at the cinema-related social-networking site MUBI (formerly known as The Auteurs). In the great scheme of things, I'm still very much at the beginning, but the project so far has been liberating, and in a strange way, far more satisfying than posting my work at 'Lights in the Dusk'. You can read the first 37 comments (thus far) by clicking the link below...

Lights in the Dusk on MUBI:

Quelqu'un m'a dit

2011-10-09T11:36:00.001+01:00

The voice of the man cannot travel between these two spaces; these inner worlds where lost souls attempt to express the feeling of longing through individual pursuits; plucked chords or the dance of light, illustrating the bittersweet embrace of a love that is unrequited. He's attracted to her, in the physical sense, but he cannot hear the sad words that she sings. His light burns brightly, but perhaps not bright enough. The inability to communicate is here in this single movement of the camera. It exaggerates the emotional distance between them by making explicit the physical closeness. Open your window and scream it, at the top at your lungs. I love you... but?

No. He breathes a sigh, lets out a silent declaration, but is content to chase the shadows. He carries a torch, but he can't hold a candle. She doesn't see him (won't ever see him); she's seduced by the muse. The siren, with her song, no longer calling the sailors to their deaths, but attracting, like moths to a flame, the hopeful and the hopeless. What was it Julie Harris said at the end of East of Eden; "it's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world" The man is plunged, back again, into the darkness, all hope gone; snuffed out, like the candle. Then someone told me...

This is the Caraxian fascination with obsessive love (dangerous love; a love that destroys) as a counter to Bruni's coyly poetic lyrics. Like Denis Lavant in Les amants du Pont-Neuf (1991), the man, Aurélien Recoing, shirtless, breathing fire, wants nothing more than to be in the presence of this woman - whose light burns bright enough to illuminate the darkness of his own existence - but he can never possess her. He cannot hold this light for fear of destroying it, corrupting it's beauty with his own cruelty; like Alex with Mireille in Boy Meets Girl (1984), or Pierre with Lucie in Pola X (1999). "Look away" says Nick; "look away... and never more think of me"

Quelqu'un m'a dit directed by Leos Carax, 2003:

Close-Up

2011-09-10T20:59:00.000+01:00

For the first few moments of its short duration, this early piece of genuine cinema history is no more adventurous or remarkable than the early experiments of the French-born pioneer Louis Le Prince. What we are seeing, in all actuality, is a basic one-take tableau vivant observation of a single scene, devised as a work of fiction, but no less indebted to the presentational - or, what would eventually be termed 'cinematic' - approach established by Le Prince in the films Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) and Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge (1888).

In wide-shot, a little girl feeds her ailing kitty cat some medicine from a spoon. As an action, this is adorable, but alone, the presentation suggests only the intention to record, on film, for commercial purposes, an action to melt the heart's of the kindest old ladies. So far so-so... Then something extraordinary happens. A connection is created between two images. A jump, literally, from far-away to close-up.

The Sick Kitten directed by G.A. Smith, 1903:

The English filmmaker George Albert Smith had pioneered the use of the close-up shot in his previous films, As Seen Through a Telescope (1900) and Grandma's Reading Glass (1900). There the technique was more of a novelty; a way of presenting a new perspective: one of exaggeration. However, in this film, it is practicality that dictates the use of this new technique. The director wants to emphasise a moment that would have been missed had the camera remained at a distance. The kitten's face as it gladly laps up the medicine can now be seen by the audience, allowing us to follow the action more directly.

At this precise moment, cinema finally breaks free from the influence of the stage and establishes something that is unique to the language of film. From this point on, the camera would be able to offer the audience new perspectives; emphasising details and showing the emotion of actors in a way that would have been unfeasible without the benefit of this new innovation. It was now possible for the audience to go from this...

...to this...

...without having to physically bring ourselves closer to the work. A revolutionary moment in the development of the medium and one that indirectly makes possible the extraordinary montages in the films of Sergei Eisenstein, or the expressive, detailed shots of eyes, mouths, hands and iconography in the films of Sergio Leone. This single moment would change the way future film were produced; opening up a new world of creative possibilities, as well as bringing with it the potential for a more intimate form of cinema. Less broad, less theatrical; a cinema of small gestures.

The Phantom Ride

2011-09-09T14:55:00.001+01:00

The camera shunts along the tracks, headlong into darkness, into the unknown. This is innovation, the movement of the camera giving the audience the feeling of a journey. As an event in the development of cinema's history, this film is as important as Auguste and Louis Lumière's The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station (L'arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat, 1895), which suggested, through a single moment, the possibility of cinema as spectacle. In George Albert Smith's The Kiss in the Tunnel (1899), the opening and closing shots represent the reverse-angle to the Lumière's remarkable film. Now the audience could experience not only the arrival, but the journey as well.

All of a sudden the cinema was no longer a medium for static observations, but something that could move between worlds.

The Kiss in the Tunnel directed by G.A. Smith, 1899:

The kiss that occurs in-between represents the embrace of the new, this kingdom of shadows called cinema. An artistic medium somewhere beyond the influence of literature, theatre or still photography; instead, a magic act of movement and emotion, where the light at the end of the tunnel becomes a premonition to the light from a film projector as it burns against the darkness of the screen. As the camera continues along the track, out of the darkness, into the bright future of this new world of artistic expression, the movement, eloquently described by Mark Cousins as a "phantom ride", suggests the possibility for future films to transport the audience, both figuratively and literally, into the unfamiliar territories of the heart and mind.

The Ghost Story

2011-08-26T10:46:00.001+01:00

Though it is the final shot with its wonderfully surreal depiction of scattered pages being blown though a dusky London street that has become the standard 'iconic' signature moment from Roman Polanski's eighteenth feature-length film The Ghost Writer (2010), there is a quieter, much less provocative image earlier in the film that for me is far more suggestive. The shot depicts an abandoned car on a ferry as it arrives at the port of some fictional New England peninsula. The car's apparent vulnerability as a lone object, exposed within the otherwise vacant, cavernous interior of the ship, already insinuates the sadness and the loneliness of the dead body that will soon be discovered.

This image - which, unlike the closing shot, doesn't manipulate or mislead the viewer - suggests an immediate air of uncertainty. Already we suspect, simply through a static single-shot observation of the scene, that there is something more to this discarded vehicle. We begin to sense the influence of something sinister at work beneath the surface of the thing. A feeling of dread that recalls the familiar psychological terrain of Polanski's most famous films; where an unseen system of forces (usually supernatural, though not so here) is later found to be manipulating events from the outset.

The Ghost Writer directed by Roman Polanski, 2010:

Our fears are eventually confirmed in what I feel are two of the most extraordinary images in Polanski's oeuvre. In the first, the car - still abandoned, still vulnerable - is inspected by a security team suspicious of a potential terrorist threat. We can see the ship departing in the background of the shot, as the muted sirens and the flashlights of the security team illuminate the centre of the frame. These actions - the drifting of the ship, the abandonment of the car and the general inspection of the vehicle - already suggests the impending fate of our lead protagonist; a character soon to introduced and immediately cut-off; hopeless in his situation, with no real chance of escape; effectively hung out to dry.

Polanski then cuts abruptly to the second image, as the body is discovered; washed-up as a sad and lonely relic on some anonymous grey shore.

The Ghost Writer directed by Roman Polanski, 2010:

If this opening sequence, with its presentation of ordinary if not mundane proceedings leading us towards a shocking discovery, finds the director playing to the influence of Hitchcock (as he does several times throughout the film), it is the prophetic aspects of these images that really defines this sequence as something astonishing and something unique to Polanski's work. The shot of the lone car - like the two images that immediately follow - creates a disturbing premonition of things to come. These images, which seem to present the story of what happened to the first 'ghost' - the writer we never meet, but who nonetheless haunts the very fabric of the film, leading his eventual replacement on the same journey, to the same end - also suggest the possibility of what might happen, thereabouts, or in some plausible variation of events.

These images are brought to mind later in the film when the unnamed writer (played by Ewan McGregor) - having taken over the job of amending the memoirs of a former British Prime Minister - believes he may have stumbled across the conspiracy that led, directly or indirectly, to his predecessor's death. Making his way back from the mainland following an excursion to track down a potential lead, the writer spots an ominous black car trailing in his rear-view mirror. He abandons his own vehicle on the ferry and makes a run for it, jumping from the vessel and managing to elude his pursuers, once again leaving the car (the same car) deserted on the ship.

The Ghost Writer directed by Roman Polanski, 2010:

All of a sudden we think back to that opening sequence; the car abandoned on the ferry, the body being washed up on the shore. For a split second we create a link between the two scenes and assume, for only a moment (before the film continues with its relatively disappointing final act), that we may be seeing the events leading up to that initial discovery. A brief belief that the entire film has been an intricate series of flashbacks; that the beginning is really the end (or is it... the beginning of the end?) and that all the potential avenues of interpretation can only lead us back to that cold and dismal beach.

It's a remarkable moment that illustrates Polanski's real talent for engaging his audience, not through clever tricks or ironic twists of fate, but through the subtle and extraordinary power of his images to imply or insinuate a story in retrospect. In the psychological juxtaposition that occurs between these sequences we're effectively seeing two different stories folded into one; the story of the 'writer', the main thread of the film, and the story of the 'ghost', the spectre that hangs above the narrative from the very first scene, holding the thing together. The title of the film refers to both.

Water for Maya

2011-08-19T12:16:00.002+01:00

How do you describe the indescribable? Narrow your eyes for long enough and the images start to look like the flutter of a billion butterfly wings. Other times, it is a gallery of faces - some haunted, some disturbed - looking out for just a split-second, then gone again; lost in this kaleidoscopic burst of colours, daubed, physically, onto the celluloid. These 'phantom faces' make us question our own role as a prospective audience. Are we the "viewer", passively observing the work presented to us and attempting to glean something meaningful, either a thought or a feeling from the experience; or are we the "viewed", the real objects of significance.

I wonder how many different audiences or viewers a film might see during the course of its lifetime. How different their relationship is to us than ours is to them. An audience may see only a handful of films a year, but the film itself will see literally thousands of these objects of curious interest presented to it during an average day. A very different gallery of faces than the ones imagined here, between the spaces of the frame. Instead, a gallery of faces more like the ones found in Abbas Kiarostami's extraordinary Shirin (2008), in which the spectator becomes the spectacle.

If film was more than just a dead-object brought to life by the gaze of the observer, who enlivens it through personal reflection and subjective opinion, would it be possible for the film, or these faces, to judge us, as a collective work, as we judge it?

Water For Maya by Stan Brakhage, 2000:

Shirin directed by Abbas Kiarostami, 2008:

As the blur of colours and textures explode and disperse, a second layer of images reveals itself, gradually, over the course of the film. A ghost story - non-narrative, but a story all the same - moving beneath the surface. This spectral play of shadows, where the glimpsed faces become almost explicit, is where the real power of the film rests. Not simply as a tribute to the American filmmaker Maya Derren, as hinted at by the film's title, but as a truly sensory cinematic experience.

In this remarkable montage, every frame has the power of a Pollock or a Kandinsky. On screen for less than the normal time that it might take for our eyes to register its form, but still vivid, vital; a series of images open to interpretation. The accumulative effect of these images when viewed against one another in a quick succession, creates something that is difficult to define, and even more difficult to express in words. It is something that can only be felt through the process of viewing.

Water For Maya by Stan Brakhage, 2000:

Commingled Containers

2011-08-15T17:04:00.003+01:00

At first sight, it's like a hail of rain, falling from the heavens. Our eyes have to adjust to it. It takes a moment or two before we realise we're looking down at an embankment of waves. The soft spots of light dappled on the surface of the water blur with the movement of the camera, creating the impression of a flowing haze of drizzle as it downpours against a backdrop of Picasso-blue clouds. There's something almost kaleidoscopic about the way this image plays on the screen. The motion of the light as it bends and distorts with the movement of the apparatus suggests the static of an outdated television set; a transmission from somewhere beyond the reality of the here and now, or perhaps even a split-second blur of blue frost that recalls, in the nicest possible way, an 'old-Hollywood' depiction of an acid flashback.

Nonetheless, the effect is profound. The impressions of the light and the water as they wash-over and distort the lens creates a sense of mystery; an underwater adventure, sans Cousteau, looking for Atlantis, but finding only the natural wonder of the planet that surrounds us. There is a new world beneath these waves; little cloud-shapes catching the form of something backlit; giving the feeling of figures moving within a mist or emerging from the shrouded darkness of the soft seabed. Or illuminations, catching the speckles of water behind the lens, refracted in close-up, like the wings of insects swarming around the face of a dying light.

Eventually we realise that the explorations of these depths carry a greater significance. As with Brakhage's earlier film, 'I... Dreaming' (1988), there is a deeper meaning to this montage of images, the impressionist blurs and the impenetrable forms that the viewer transforms, through imagination and association, into something almost rational. There's a story here, a feeling; an attempt to find something to make sense of the order of the universe in a very vague but also very resonant way, but also an attempt to understand the certainty of death, the fragility of the human body; a presentation of nature, like death itself, at its most dramatic and mysterious.

There is something introspective about these images too; a man, looking to the water to find inspiration, but seeing only a reflection of his own mortality staring back. The shots of the water, violent or still, or the effect of the camera when submerged beneath the creek, create not only a sense of life in movement, but a suggestion of the general flow of existence, from birth to death.

The general experiments seem to be damaging both the camera and the film, but in a way that creates something beautiful. The light that spills into the frame during the closing shot, before it plunges, forever into darkness, is evocative of what survivors describe as a vision of the afterlife. Not in any sentimental or overly romantic way, but as a very real experience; a reaction, within the mind and the eyes, to the body draining of life. At the very end, the film dissolves into nothing, as the waves break and part; drifting out towards the oceans, or towards the coast, or as part of the general ebb and flow of a rushing river, out to meet its king, the sea.

Commingled Containers by Stan Brakhage, 1997:

I.... Dreaming

2011-08-06T11:47:00.002+01:00

Sweet spirit, see the dark void; the psychology of a space, this house in your absence, with its clutter and its mess; or the lonesome silhouette and the cramped interiors that feel enormous without your body there to claim them. Here, in the blurred images of an abandoned old man, and I... dreaming of you.

Immediately these images speak to a feeling of great loneliness suggested by the framing of shots. The emphasis on certain spaces within the frame that recall the everyday intimacy of domestic-living - the bedroom or the kitchen - creates a sense of devastating anxiety or discomfort when placed in contrast against the quieter moments of solitary reflection, insinuating the loss.

Even without the benefit of context or biography, the feeling of emptiness is here, in these rooms, with their small pools of light that drip from loft windows, drawing our attention to the devastating darkness of the rest of the frame. The house, as a home, with its usual connotations and associations, seems bereft, as if the actual building itself has fallen into a ceaseless state of mourning.

I... Dreaming by Stan Brakhage, 1988:

Here, the agitation of the form, with its jump cuts, its restless time-lapse of moments where the grandchildren play in the sitting room, suggests the inability of this man to feel at ease in these surroundings. The home, once familiar, once a place of comfort and relaxation, is now a place that traps the body in a limbo, between solitude and desperation.

The man, reduced to nothing more than shadows and shapes, a reflection in a window pane, or a blurred and obscured mass in the extreme close-up of the camera's eye, is himself an empty frame, haunted by the ghost of his subject.

A Drowning Man

2011-08-01T00:40:00.000+01:00

A rush of images at the moment of death - comforting, confusing - creating a story where the arc of redemption offers the possibility to 'make right' some terrible wrong.

Cleveland Heap (Paul Giamatti), middle-aged maintenance man and general on-site manager of The Cove apartment building, leaves his bungalow in the middle of the night to investigate a disturbance. His flashlight cuts a path through the darkness, leading him down to the edges of the large, womb-shaped swimming pool at the centre of the courtyard. He expects to find some everyday scene of disobedience; perhaps teenagers taking a clandestine dip after dark, or a stray animal that has fallen into the water and can't get out.

After wading through the pool and finding nothing, at least out of the ordinary, he climbs out and begins his trek back to the bungalow, to continue this none-existence of work and sleep; the televised news coverage of the war in Iraq offering the only reminder of the world outside The Cove.

Suddenly, his feet slip out from under him. His body, awkward and heavy, hits the deck then rolls, lifelessly, into the water with a punch. The hard splash sends millions of tiny little air-bubbles circling around him, like a chorus of tears, or the blown seeds from a Taraxacum head. The last gasps of breath, for help or forgiveness, exhale, before the blackness of the water consumes him.

Lady in the Water directed by M. Night Shyamalan, 2006:

Everything that follows can be seen as fiction within a fiction. This man, who has nothing but his memories and his feelings of guilt, grief and despair, imagines, at the precise moment of death, a fantasy of how things could have been.

A story of redemption, where everyone, no matter how spent or helpless, holds a spark of something within them, capable of bringing the dead back to life. A story where the success of this ideal rests on the completion of a good deed; a good deed - no matter how unreal or informed by fantasy and fiction it might be - that allows this character to come to terms with the greatest tragedy; the murder of his family.

As his body drains of air and he sinks beneath the surface of the pool, this fantasy existence - where mythical creatures with outlandish names and water nymph's in need of protection - suggests the possibility for something good to come from a world no longer capable of acts of charitable kindness. In imagining this story in which the persistence, perseverance and pure good faith of his character is used to save the life an innocent being - a symbol for the loved ones he lost, when, on a night like this, he left his home to attend to a professional matter, and returned to a lifetime of devastation - Cleveland is now relieved of his burden of existence.

Drawing his final breath, this character, reflected on the water, but also from the same perspective, beneath the water, finds forgiveness in the closing shot of the film.

Lady in the Water directed by M. Night Shyamalan, 2006:

In previous films by Shyamalan, water plays an important part in deciding the fate of his characters; either leaving them weak or unable to achieve their full potential, like in Unbreakable (2000), or presenting something that can be used to overcome a particular obstacle or foe, like in Signs (2002). In Lady in the Water, the significance of the water is generally more straightforward, having something to do with the obvious spiritual notions of purification. The 'story' of the film literally emerges from the water as something good and pure; something we can believe in.

In this single interpretation of the film (one of several readings of a work that demands an audience with the patience to play nice with its heart on sleeve idealism and occasional shifts into sentimentality to appreciate the greater risks being taken, both with narrative and form) the water has the ability to wash away our mistakes, to cleanse and to clean; like tears of happiness or regret.

Reflection

2011-07-12T10:55:00.002+01:00

In The Brave One (2007), Neil Jordan uses reflections to suggest a character trapped by circumstances.

From the very first image of Erica Bain (Jodie Foster) as a translucent spectral projection against the glass walls of the recording booth where she delivers her morning show, to the later instances of painful self-reflection - as the same character is forced to question whether the severity of her actions is justified by the sense of overwhelming loss felt in the wake of her fiancé's murder - the visual design of the film repeatedly reinforces the idea of a person struggling to break free.

The Brave One directed by Neil Jordan, 2007:

The sense of isolation and claustrophobia that develops during the weeks and months that follow the initial attack is intensified through the framing of shots; the camera exaggerating Erica's emotional detachment by presenting her as a ghost, literally just drifting, unloved and unseen, through the relics of a previous existence. These images, like the character, obscured and fragmented, flatten the sense of perspective. There is no clear sense of morality for Erica, as Jordan's overpowering depth of field reduces the character to an out of focus blemish against the harsh hyper-reality of the city that overwhelms her; just a growing sense of impotence yielding to desperation.

The presentation of Erica as a woman numbed by the world that she inhabits brings to mind the character of Simone (Cathy Tyson) from Jordan's earlier film Mona Lisa (1986). Both women are placed like insects beneath the glass, studied by sympathetic male characters that, in general, are oblivious to their true nature as hostages to emotional bitterness.

Jordan makes the connection explicit as Erica, like Simone in the earlier film, is caught in the reflection of a car's rear-view mirror. Unlike other shots in which Erica is acknowledging her own psychological metamorphosis from liberal-minded media personality to skulking night-time avenger, this moment - as with the moment in Mona Lisa - provides the audience with enough room to consider the effect that this world with its cruelty, apathy and sense of moral decay has had on these characters; allowing us to question, personally and individually, whether the end really justifies the means.

The way the image is presented, with the character literally and physically confined to a frame within a frame - with the world, this backdrop of squalor and human suffering surrounding her, out of focus, but still dominating the screen - deliberately establishes this character as a prisoner; not just to the world and this situation that she's created, but to a particular state of mind.

Mona Lisa directed by Neil Jordan, 1986:

The Brave One directed by Neil Jordan, 2007:

Throughout the film, every action poses a question for the character, which Jordan emphasises with these moments of literal reflection. Trapped, psychologically as well as physically in a cycle of violence - slowly fading into the background of the city she once celebrated in mawkish prose that now seems even more deceitful when repeated against this milieu of violence and retribution - Erica is forced to look long and hard to find the person she was when faced with the person she is.

During the course of the film's journey, every violent act removes this character even further from the world of the living; killing the spirit of life and leaving only the faint outline a body without a soul. As she studies her own face reflected against the artefacts of this world to make sense of who she is there is only the traces of violence, the loveless eyes and the ghost of who she was, caught, forever, in this labyrinth of despair, desperate to find a way out.

The Brave One directed by Neil Jordan, 2007:

Planets

2011-07-09T01:09:00.002+01:00

Three spheres, planet, star and satellite, drift in orbit. Each sphere is an avatar for these characters that collide during the course of the film; pre-establishing the eventual relationships between men, linked, physically as well as spatially, by the consequences of a single event.

The Man from London by Ágnes Hranitzky & Béla Tarr, 2007:

Respectively, the three men are the chief protagonist, antagonist and force of moral conscience in the plot of a standard film-noir. Though the machinations of noir are continually dismantled or disrupted by Tarr's languid, observational techniques - which, during the course of the film, reduce moments of potential Hitchcockian suspense and the possibility for Hollywood intrigue to a series of looks, rituals and objects of personal significance - the film nonetheless engages, actively and enthusiastically, with the recognisable tropes of the genre.

Specifically, the motivating factor of greed, and the general fatalistic belief that every action, no matter how seemingly insignificant, carries a greater responsibility.

The scene in which these characters eventually share the screen is significant for the particular way Tarr and Hranitzky emphasise these spherical objects (three in each instance, corresponding with the number of characters on screen) and how this can be seen as relative to the opening sequence of the director's previous film, Werckmeister Harmonies (2000). There, the young misfit János Valuska (Lars Rudolph) enacts a piece of live theatre, in which village drunkards are used as representations of the sun, the moon and the earth in a dramatisation of a solar eclipse.

Werckmeister Harmonies by László Krasznahorkai, Ágnes Hranitzky & Béla Tarr, 2000:

In the earlier film, the demonstration establishes the idea of unexplained natural phenomena. The image of choreographed bodies within a space (defining space) is a prelude to the general descent into chaos and mass-hysteria that follows the arrival of the circus trailer, and the mysterious character called 'The Prince.' Here, the sense of disorder is less cosmic. Instead, the narrative emphasis on the personal downfall of characters stumbling into a situation not entirely beyond their control is more indebted to the necessary conventions of film noir.

It also carries greater philosophical notions pertaining to actions and their consequences. This can be seen in relation to Newton's basic Laws of Motion; "An object that is in motion will not change its velocity unless an unbalanced force acts upon it." Or, more appropriately, "To every action, there is always an equal and opposite reaction."

The event - the murder of the mysterious man and the retrieval of the money - represents the unbalanced force, the thing that sends these characters into their gravitational spiral; a fatal collision course that is continually alluded to by the film's production design and the precise way the camera encircles, blocks, traps and reveals these characters, like objects, drifting without recourse, into the chasm of a black hole.

Three spheres, three men...

The Man from London by Ágnes Hranitzky & Béla Tarr, 2007:

The hanging lights, like the objects careening into one another on the snooker table at the beginning of the scene, correspond with the three characters and their place, both within the frame and within the general orbit of existence. Maloin (Miroslav Krobot), the hapless railway pointsman who witnesses the murder and absconds with the cash; Brown (János Derzsi), the possible murderer now left with the impossible task of retrieving the money at all costs; and Morrison (István Lénárt), who claims to be a police inspector from London, pulling the strings for a shadowy conspiracy of forces that exist beyond the periphery of the narrative.

The camera reveals these characters one by one during the course of a conversation; a single fluid movement that establishes Morrison as the centre of this circulatory system of images, pulling the characters of Maloin and Brown ever deeper into the depths of his investigation.

Tarr's blocking of this almost nine-minute sequence is as remarkable as one might expect given the presentation of his previous work. Throughout the conversation, Maloin remains in the background of things. As the camera traverses the trajectory around Brown and Morrison engaging in this moment of narrative exposition, Maloin is clearly visible; an observer on the edges of the frame, sentinel in the sense of being the one person who actually knows where the money is, as well as becoming a substitute for the viewing audience. After all, it is Maloin who witnesses the original murder, thus establishing himself (along with the audience) as the only person really capable of carrying the full weight of responsibility when this sad burlesque reaches its inevitable close.

Tarr and Hranitzky acknowledge this burden in the final shot of Maloin, in close-up, his face pregnant with the anticipation of things to come, a single sphere of light above his head.

The Man from London by Ágnes Hranitzky & Béla Tarr, 2007:

The presentation of this sequence is reminiscent of a similar planetary revelation that occurs towards the end of Fassbinder's fittingly titled In a Year of 13 Moons (1978). In that particular film, Sister Gudrun (Lilo Pempeit) observes the aftermath of a character's death; drifting, unseen, like the camera in Tarr's film, through the wreckage of their extinction. There as well as here the characters drift in orbit; solitary planets incapable of reaching out to anyone for anything; just lost souls that yield to desperation.

Ocean Song

2011-07-06T00:21:00.007+01:00

I am sat by the water; scribbling these words in a notebook to be transcribed at a later date. The light is growing dim; a soft blue light, like the kind found in old European-horror movies - something like The Devil's Nightmare (1971) or Requiem for a Vampire (1973) - where the filmmakers would try to give the impression of night in a scene originally (and quite obviously) shot during the day. This technique is called Day-for-night, and as a look, it's often incredibly beautiful...

There is music playing. Not just one song, but several, all overlapping in an aural collage of voices and notes. The sound, attractive as it is discordant, pours from the open doors of various bars and restaurants; catching the breeze and travelling down, along the bay to where I sit, slumped and content in a kind of coastal loneliness; a seaside melancholy usually reserved for the greatest films of Neil Jordan.

Outstanding films like Mona Lisa (1986), The Miracle (1991), The Butcher Boy (1997) and The End of the Affair (1999); each one contains a key scene in which a central character attempts to escape from some great abuse by retreating to the coast. Perhaps it's the sense of being on the edge of the world that appeals to these characters; the past is behind them, only the water and the endless possibilities that exist beyond the horizon lay in front.

Perhaps it's a purifying thing too; the water not only offers the possibility for reflection, it washes everything clean.

The Jordan film that stands out the most in my mind is the beautiful Ondine (2009). Every scent, sight and sensation felt on the edge of this water brings the memory of the film closer to my heart. Specific images repeat and spill over my own thoughts and personal recollections until the film becomes more than just a passive experience, but something that needs to be lived. It's a remarkable film; one that I've seen four times this year, and I keep promising myself that I'll write about it, and maybe one day I will... but for now the impression of it, here, with the sea before me, and that same blue light, is entirely overwhelming.

Transparent almost, this blue, like the most beautiful eyes you've ever seen; a soft watercolour light, like a wash of seawater has splashed back, across the promenade, with its seafront bars, hotels and nightclubs, and stained the whole thing in a beautiful shade of sadness.

Image of Douglas by Night, photographed by Lights in the Dusk:

The thing that keeps Ondine in my heart more than any other Neil Jordan film (and really, I love them all, to varying degrees; he's an outstanding filmmaker) is the use of the song All Alright by Sigur Rós. Finding an almost perfect unity between sound and image, All Alright is a strange, ethereal ballad; a love song from an alien planet, where the emotion expressed is universal, because the presentation is so vague. Occasionally we might catch something that seems to make sense; a particular word or phrase that creates an immediate image in the mind of the listener... but then it's lost again.

Each new change or movement within the structure suggests a new emotional landscape. It's impressionism of sound to compliment Jordan's impressionism of storytelling; where each development of the plot - each new twist and turn, sometimes light, sometimes dark - suggests the impression of a story being invented for the benefit of a sick child.

Ondine directed by Neil Jordan, 2009:

Really, it's the song that keeps reminding me of this place. Perhaps the real reason why I love Ondine more than say The Butcher Boy or Breakfast on Pluto (2005) or The Good Thief (2002) (all incredible films) is because of this song. And maybe I only love this song because it reminds me of her...

When I peer into the dark mirror of the sea, it's not my own face staring back, but hers. Somewhere, the same bright stars, reflected here, on the still of the water, watch over her as they watch over me. I'm reminded of Woolf's epitaph; or more appropriately, the quotation of it by Godard in his short film, Dans le noir du temps (2002): And in me too the wave rises. It swells, it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire; something rising beneath me; like the proud horse who's rider first whispers and then pulls him back. Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished, and unyielding...

If the sea is a mirror, then perhaps Jordan's characters are so attracted to it because it offers them a chance to really look at themselves, away from the suffocation of home, or the depravity of a criminal underworld, or the responsibilities of having to hide painful emotions in order to protect the husband of the woman you love, so as to finally see, beneath the bravado and the veneer, the yearning of the heart within. Against this infinite void, where the blue of the sky meets the blue of the ocean, these characters can see, for possibly the very first time, who they really are.

Artefacts

2011-07-05T00:35:00.002+01:00

I wanted to share a few thoughts and images from a film I'd been working on, tentatively titled 'A World Between Worlds', but also at various points called 'Artefacts' or 'Transmissions from The End of the World' It's a project I initially began in my final year of university, though very quickly had to abandon, as it proved too ambitious and possibly even too dangerous to complete in the appropriate time given. Eventually I made a different film instead...

Nonetheless, I continued working on 'A World Between Worlds' after completing my university degree; shooting hours of landscape footage around England, Ireland and the Isle of Man, all the while attempting to make sense of the story I was developing across several different notebooks. In one, "a story of existence…" was written in black biro. In another, "O, revoir..." (a terrible pun) was written in felt-tip pen.

I started thinking about Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) and the image of Thomas Jerome Newton; wandering the earth like a ghost of a stick-figure still haunted by a childhood trauma. I started thinking about specific images; an image of the earth that looked like a distant planet; faces, almost human, reflected in pools of murky water; an image of some archaic artefact to the days of global communication, pre-Internet.

A World Between Worlds, 2006-2010:

The radio tower suggested, by association of name only, the idea of radioactivity, and the sense that the film should take place at least 78 years after the end of civilisation.

As the film begins, an alien anthropologist named Rector wanders the charred remains of an unidentified European country. The images are black and white; like charcoal drawings, or promises written in water. The anthropologist thumbs through scattered remnants of lives, finding old toys, food cartons and fragments of old newspapers. Creating a home for himself in an abandoned communications centre, Rector begins to piece together these fragments, creating a timeline that points, ever forward, to the moment of our demise.

In the first glimpse of this event, a four-minute panning shot shows the morning fog roll back, off the waves, like the fog of memory retreating. Transmissions from the final days of earth, glimpsed, like dreams, Prince of Darkness (1987) style, as Rector wanders derelict buildings and decayed promenades. As the mist recedes further, revealing more and more of the surrounding mountains, a flash of light flares on the horizon.

A World Between Worlds, 2006-2010:

This is the beginning of the event; the first stage. It's not the job of the anthropologist to find out what happened to civilisation, but simply to find out enough information regarding the species; how we lived, our strengths and weaknesses. But in poring over the relics of our existence, Rector becomes mournful. He wonders how a species capable of creating such extraordinary works of art, music, design and engineering (images of which flicker to life on the banks of television monitors configured to record and playback these transmissions from the earth's final days) could also be capable of such violence and brutality.

This part of the film is essentially very close to The Man Who Fell to Earth; Rector trying to make sense of the 21st century culture while growing ever more disconnected from his own. I tried to convey loneliness through images of old buildings - thinking about that song by Tom Waits, House Where Nobody Lives, as a metaphor - while also wanting to capturing the same feeling of melancholy present in my favourite films; Michelangelo Antonioni's The Passenger (1975) and Wim Wenders' Kings of the Road (1976). Films where a general disparity between characters is conveyed through a restless observation of the landscape (which, in both films, is as alien as anything in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968).

A World Between Worlds, 2006-2010:

For the scenes of the unexplained event and the moments leading up to it, I knew I wanted a specific look. Colour images as an obvious contrast, but not like reality. I started thinking about my own impressions of the past. As Francis Coppola noted during the making of his recent masterwork Tetro (2009), our ideas of the past are often coloured by the nostalgia of home movies. That sickly, over-saturated, not-quite accurate to life look of Polaroid cameras or Super 8 film.

This is the look I eventually settled on; however, a few years later and with the benefit of hindsight, it now seems almost entirely too aggressive. It should have been more natural; raw DV stock with no manipulation. The home movies of the future will not be shot on Super 8, but captured on Hi-Def video phones. This is the stuff of the 1970s...

A World Between Worlds, 2006-2010:

It's only during the last six or seven months that I decided to finally terminate this project for good... already my second great failure as a filmmaker! Ultimately, the film was too derivative of greater films, like La jetée (1962) by Chris Marker, Anti-Clock (1979) by Jane Arden & Jack Bond, The Falls (1980) by Peter Greenaway, Germany Year 90 Nine Zero (1991) by Jean-Luc Godard and The Happening (2008) by M. Night Shyamalan. It didn't have a voice of its own, and as a result, the creative ambitions felt pretentious.

Added to this realisation, there's the unavoidable downside of spending too much time on a project. During the last five years, my sensibilities have changed drastically, and unfortunately this is no longer the kind of film I want to make.

I still have the original ending; never filmed, but there amongst a box of old notebooks on a recent visit to my grandmother's house in Port St. Mary. I still have the storyboards too. The ending of the film was always intended to be something grand; something beyond words. While the first part of the film was about loneliness, and the second part was about destruction, the final part would've been about love as a physical act of forgiveness.

In discovering this old footage (and accompanying notes, storyboards and, most surprisingly, even some original soundtrack recordings), I found a more interesting idea for my next project; something that will no doubt be indebted to the great lineage of films that play with self-conscious references to Antonioni's masterpiece Blowup (1966), but with a greater emphasis on the nature of photography in the 21st century.

Spare Bedroom

2011-03-19T17:44:00.000Z

Spare Bedroom (1970), a Rorschach test of a film from the Dutch experimental artist Frans Zwartjes, is a short work beyond easy categorisation or critique. Seemingly an exploration into the roles and relationships between men and women - their fantasies and desires expressed or suggested through a series of wordless sequences scored by a grotesque cacophony of horns and chord organs - it is a project that blurs the ever disintegrating lines between repulsive and darkly comic; between brutal art-house burlesque and probing social experiment.

Part of the artist's sardonically titled film series 'Home Sweet Home', Spare Bedroom is a highly charged work that seems to take place between the walls of Bergman's psychodramas or Resnais's reconstructions of time and events. Here, a couple - initially introduced through a series of strained, static images - share pained looks and attempts at seduction, before a second woman is introduced (or maybe the same woman, some years older) as a slave to domestic servitude.

In essence, this is Zwartjes' portrait of nightmarish domesticity a good half decade before the black comic surrealism of Lynch's Eraserhead (1976), with both films effectively sharing a similar influence of 1950s melodrama pushed to the extremes. As with Lynch's film, Spare Bedroom exaggerates the awkward moments between this 'couple' (if we can call them that) into something approaching a crude satire; a film where the overstatement of actions and the deliberate distortions of the performers' faces amplify the monstrous rituals of a relationship where the sex is simply demeaning.

This is a caricature of lovemaking that seems, at best, entirely vampiric. These actors, looking more like shop front mannequins - their faces full of lines and imperfections but at the same time almost devoid of expression, character and personality - paw and claw at their partner's skin, not in any romantic or sensual way, but as if sucking the life from one another.

Spare Bedroom directed by Frans Zwartjes, 1970:

The camera becomes an active participant in these games, role-plays and improvisations; embracing, leering and circling characters; penetrating their gaze or facial expressions in a way that could almost be described as pornographic.

Stylistically, the film perfectly suggests the idea of characters locked in an emotional struggle; where this man and these women (the fantasy and the reality) come to embody the mostly outdated concepts of husband and wife, master and mistress. As with the entirety of Zwartjes' early film work, Spare Bedroom is a project that pushes and provokes the audience into engaging with the most extreme or painful moments of human drama; mining and maintaining a similar thread of uncomfortable voyeurism that appears in several of the artist's greatest works.

Lotus Flower

2011-03-10T10:17:00.006Z

The new...ish (hit YouTube two days before my last birthday) Radiohead video, Lotus Flower - the first single from their already available to download album The King of Limbs - continues the band's interest in promoting themselves with simple, low-fi, low-budget promos that seem positively homemade in comparison to the celebrated, high-concept videos for Street Spirit, Karma Police, Pyramid Song, etc. Having first discovered the notion of music as something more than just a soundtrack to childhood family outings during that particular period of the band's creative evolution there's still a lingering sense of warm nostalgia for the days, pre-access to the Internet, when coming home from school and flicking through the music channels to see the new Radiohead video (or Björk, or Blur, or Eels) brought on a rush of excitement unlike anything else.

It was the whole cultural communicative thing too, which probably still exists, but like everything else these days is accelerated; no longer something to actually wait for, discover or stumble across when you least expect it, but there, at your fingertips, and on-demand. The playground buzz of the next few days when you'd ask your friends "did you see it?" no doubt has less of the same sting of anticipation that it used to have in the pre-millennium days when the thought of using a computer to simultaneously link your friends with the relevant clips and information was the stuff of older kids, or science fiction.

Lotus Flower begins, in back-lit black and white, in a severe looking service tunnel reminiscent of the one featured in Philippe Garrel's silent post-May '68 psychodrama, Le révélateur (1968). It could be described, with total straight-faced honesty, as a "performance video", though not in the industry jargon sense of a band or musician sitting in a room hitting their instruments in-sync with a studio backing track. This is the performance video as a work of legitimate performance art; where the movement of the body, in time and in step with the beats, melodies, counter melodies and chord changes of the song itself creates an expression that articulates, not necessarily what the song is about, but the mood, the atmosphere and the way the song makes us feel.

The feel of any Radiohead song is unmistakable: nocturnal, restless, desolate and claustrophobic; with the sense of technology as both a liberator and facilitator in our own glorious downfall. A cultural year-zero in the beautifully Ballardian notion of consumer meltdown; kingdom come and the myths of the near future. Though the dance is typically a kind of celebration, it is here a solitary expression, performed for the benefit of an audience no doubt alone or connected to the world only by that thin invisible thread that links us, from one machine to the next. As the video develops, moving with each new change in rhythm and tone, the hypnotic convulsions on screen become as mournful and sombre as Yorke's wailing falsetto. At the same time they possess a freedom and a lack of self-consciousness usually reserved for the inner-city drunk or the roadside lunatic. Someone like Denis Lavant's character in the Yorke affiliated Rabbit in Your Headlights video, who finds strength in absolute abandon.

Lotus Flower may not have the immediate awe-factor or something like Just or Street Spirit or Knives Out, with their unanswerable questions, technical virtuosity and endless imagination, but there's something quietly overwhelming about this video that at first seems to be almost thrown-together as an afterthought, but reveals, with subsequent viewings, to be something quite remarkable, fascinating and total alien to anything else currently being produced.

Lotus Flower directed by Garth Jennings, 2011:

Body Snatchers

2011-02-22T10:59:00.000Z

Body Snatchers (1993) is not the first feature-length adaptation of Jack Finney's pulp sci-fi novel The Body Snatchers (serialised in 1954, published in 1955), but it is the first to examine its themes of conformity, paranoia and assimilation within a mostly domestic setting. Previous adaptations by Don Siegel and Philip Kaufman used the general sub-text of the book to give a satirical weight to its B-movie premise; suggesting the air of 1950s McCarthyism in Siegel's film, or the growing right-wing conservative bias of the 1970s in Kaufman's great remake.

In Ferrara's film, the idea of an alien race cloning the species with the intention of world domination carries no greater political commentary, but is instead used as a backdrop to a particularly convincing evocation of teenage alienation. The notion makes perfect sense given the familiar adolescent belief that the world, and in particular the grown-up world of parents, teachers and authority-figures in general, is somehow conspiring against us. "It's like my parents are from another planet..." the kids say, exaggerating the recognisable generation gap while simultaneously reinforcing the one-sided belief that the old-folks just don't get it.

The lead protagonist of this Body Snatchers 3.0 is appropriately enough a teenage girl. Her natural sense of disconnection and displacement is further exaggerated by the film's setting; a military base where her father has been sent to monitor possible levels of contamination following recent government experiments. Right away, the location not only emphasises the feeling of confinement felt by this character - as she is trapped, physically within the walled community of the base and watched at all times by the armed military personnel that "defend" it - but the necessary requirements of the genre to create uncertainty and unease.

Body Snatchers directed by Abel Ferrara, 1993:

Further separation can be found in the presentation of the family. The opening voice over, delivered by the protagonist from the perspective of having survived these events - thus deliberately reducing the natural suspense that one might expect when engaging with a film of this nature - establishes the sense of domestic dysfunction. As the character herself deadpans during the long road trip that begins the film, "It's not easy being stuck in a car with a six-year old and the woman who replaced your mom..."

Here the dialogue establishes the great theme of Finney's novel - the assimilation of the species - but does so in a rather knowing, almost tongue-in-cheek approach. It's also perfectly in keeping with the irreverent, somewhat belligerent qualities of the central character; wanting to break free from the influence of her father and step-mother to find her own personality and direction through life. This struggle for independence - to be seen as a genuine adult with relevant opinions and emotions that should've been taken into consideration before the decision was made to move - plays into the larger metaphor of Finney's source material; the nature of conformity.

In Ferrara's film, conformity is not only suggested by the central B-movie variation on 'pod-people' replacing the human race, but by the emphasis on his adolescent protagonist. As a teenager, the great struggle in life is about finding your own identity; kicking against the trends and the fashions and the peer pressure to reclaim a sense of self.

Even the location breeds conformity. In popular media, the 1960s counter-culture would jokingly refer to the military as a "conformity factory"; a place where people are conditioned into thinking a certain way. These soldiers aren't individuals; they're an instrument with one mind. If this alien organism was going to successfully gestate in a single environment, then the military base offers the perfect cover; a place where emotions are kept hidden; where the rank and the uniform become the only identification.

Body Snatchers directed by Abel Ferrara, 1993:

For most of the film, Ferrara uses the horror elements, not as props to increase or embellish the necessary requirements of the genre (for the most part these things are created naturally, through shots and movement) but to give a sense of real, tangible tragedy to the teen soap opera of Marti's life. Think about the situation not as something literally taking place, but as a metaphorical amplification of a particular feeling or a state of mind. This is a character feeling cut-off from her own generation; lost and alone with a family she can no longer relate to...

Rather than developing an immediate atmosphere of terror or even the broader science-fiction elements of the plot, the earlier scenes of the film emphasise the loneliness of this character; moments where she ponders the emptiness of her new life in this cold and loveless environment. Where the windows of her bedroom (unfurnished and therefore without personality) separate her from the other children heard playing in the gardens below; suggesting the image of a prisoner behind bars.

Body Snatchers directed by Abel Ferrara, 1993:

Whenever possible, Ferrara presents the threat as a natural occurrence. These aren't monsters terrorising the characters; they're something familiar, ordinary even, and difficult to define. The terror comes from the realisation that these things, which look human, can almost pass for human, are here, watching and waiting. Shadows, shapes, silhouettes; appearances that emphasise the idea of formless bodies without character, identity or personality are used by the director to suggest the possible threat.

Likewise, simple shots of characters observing the events taking place are given a greater feeling of agitation and disquiet by the general implication that something terrible is going on beneath the surface of this community.

Body Snatchers directed by Abel Ferrara, 1993:

It's a daring move by Ferrara and his collaborators to approach the film, for the most part at least, from the perspective of a coming of age story. Unfortunately, when the film does delve deeper into the more overt conventions of the horror movie it tends to fall apart. The final act in particular seems rushed and unfocused. In fact, it almost feels as if Ferrara is fulfilling a contract with his producers; explosions and disintegrating corpses replacing the intense minimalism, pace and formal control exhibited during the first two acts.

However, despite these last-minute flaws, the film is still a fascinating work. Given the largest budget of his career, Ferrara has complete control over the look and design of the film and presents the viewer with one of the most visually creative projects of his career. As an example, the widescreen cinematography is remarkable throughout; with every inch of the screen used artistically, making great use of the edges of the frame to introduce potential danger or clues to the actual reality of the situation. Also, the way the camera moves, often in long languorous tracking shots or via subtle use of the Louma crane, gives the impression of the various unseen forces that motivate these events.

These creative experiments are nothing short of thrilling, but the most audacious move is still the decision to create a multi-million dollar a domestic drama that only occasionally reminds its audience that we're watching a crossover between the markedly more mainstream conventions of horror and sci-fi cinema.

Renault Clio Commercial

2011-02-07T23:29:00.014Z

Can television commercials be elevated to the creative level of modern art? The new promo for the Renault Clio, currently screening on British television, attempts to establish itself as something a little different from the average car commercial through an adventurous appropriation of both conventional and unconventional references. The result: a 40 second clip that impresses as a work of pure audio-visual experimentation but, like the majority of the kind of modern-art being referenced herein, leaves the audience wondering... what does it all mean?

Mixing contrasting elements of pop-culture and high-art, the ad' plays like a bizarre combination of installation-piece and the trailer to Jean-Luc Godard's recent Film Socialisme (2010). Cross-cutting between stock-footage of movie stars like Audrey Hepburn and Marlon Brando with sequences of the burlesque "performer" Dita Von Teese and the French football player Thierry Henry - while the soundtrack blurs samples of Clare Maguire, David Bowie and Rihanna to create something that adds an enigmatic commentary to the images - the intention of the clip seems to be the presentation of the spectacle of glamour; where art, celebrity and the car itself become objects to be fetishized and admired.

On top of this, oblique inter-titles that work against the images are superimposed on-screen to create an association of ideas. The intent? To hypothesize about the possible meanings behind Renault's famous advertising slogan: "what is va va voom?" At this point, I'm not sure if this commercial really warrants any kind of greater, in-depth analysis (sometimes a commercial is just a commercial), but I did enjoy it; not just as a work of actual video production, but as a rather interesting and impressive piece of contemporary objet d'art.

What is Va Va Voom? directed by Ishbel Whitaker & Marc Hawker for "Darkfibre", 2011:

Triangle

2011-01-31T22:36:00.005Z

Some notes [spoilers included]:

I. Introduction:

The opening titles introduce the theme of recurrence, and in doing so, create a visual representation of the premonition. Already the film is establishing an emphasis on repeated themes, shifting realities, and the echoes of past and future events. As the words form and fade from screen, each reiteration of the title brings with it a greater clarity. The words, as they drift further away from us, becoming smaller in scale, like the Aeolus as viewed from the capsized yacht, come sharply into focus.

Triangle directed by Christopher Smith, 2009:

This presentation of text, illustrating the idea of perception through the various layers - as the repetition of the same word brings us closer to the true meaning - is probably one of the most intelligent uses of creative screen-titling seen in recent cinema. It isn't just another instance of style over substance, or an attempt to give an independent UK/Australian co-production a mainstream Hollywood veneer; instead, these titles inform the audience, right from the very beginning, of a particular structure and approach; creating in the mind of the viewer a certain expectation, of narrative, perspective, or the manipulation of events.

The three repetitions of the title, like the three sides of an Isosceles triangle (which itself looks almost like the sail of a ship), are different elements of a single theme. As our mysterious heroine enters this world, which throughout seems to be suspended in time (as if trapped between a moment of life and death), she tries desperately to change the outcome of events, either through the manipulation of other characters, or by leaving clues for any potential future manifestations. However, as with the presentation of the title, each recurrence is not something new, but simply the same thing repeated; an echo of an event, replicated, unceasingly, like the notes of a record caught on an endless loop.

Each return, each re-emergence, is only a new form of repetition. Like the film's central character, the more of these repetitions we grapple with, the closer we get to an actual revelation.

II. Premonitions:

The first image: a toy boat, capsized in a child's paddling pool; already writer/director Christopher Smith is offering the audience a deliberate premonition of events. This toy boat, drifting on the still waters, may seem fairly innocuous, especially as Smith attempts to present the calm, everyday exterior of his suburban location; however, as the film develops, and the narrative twists and turns through fractures and skips that change our interpretation of events with every new progression, this seemingly common, everyday image, will be repeated on a far grander scale. First, as a literal presentation: as the yacht this character sets out on is hit by a particularly violent thunder storm and is capsized. This event is further referenced later in the film, after the mood switches from staggered confusion to an expression of very real life and death violence, where an on-stage mural depicts the sinking of a huge ship, once again caught within the storm.

Triangle directed by Christopher Smith, 2009:

Of these two echoes, it is the first event - the capsizing of the yacht - that seems to throw the film's narrative into chaos. It is here, in this sequence, where the film plays into probably the greatest association of the title, the infamous Bermuda Triangle.

However, the reference to that particular 'triangle' is deliberately misleading, since the film eventually draws us away from this initial suggestion, establishing a secondary line of thought that is much more interesting and creative. When the character spots a drifting ocean liner, sailing unmanned and unattended through the mists, they (and we) assume that this vessel is an actual ghost ship. Questions are raised; where did the ship come from; where is the crew; where are the passengers? But these questions become less important as the film develops and the characters begin to cogitate about what the ship actually is and more importantly what its name represents.

Victor: The Aeolus?
Downey: Aeolus was the Greek God of the winds and the father of Sisyphus; a man condemned by the Gods to the task of pushing a rock up a mountain, only to see it roll back down again.
Victor: That's a pretty shitty punishment. What did he do?
Sally: He cheated death, or... no. He made a promise to death that he didn't keep.

The discussion here offers a new perspective on the events previously witnessed; the storm, the destruction of the boat, the ocean-liner that appears, miraculously, as if from nowhere; more of an imposing prison ship with its rusted barred exterior than a luxury hotel of the sea. However, it also offers a new significance to the seagull; the bird, first seen drifting across the suburbs of this supposed-to-be west-coast America (but actually Queensland, Australia), and later seen following the boat as it departs from the harbour.

Throughout the film, the significance of the seagull will be one of the main questions that we return to. What does it mean? Initially we might suspect this bird to be a representation of death; the great shadow that hangs over Jess and her friends, seen, backlit against the sun, shortly before the storm and the impending destruction of the boat. However, as the story builds and progresses, we discover a new significance. The bird is not simply a premonition of death; it is a harbinger to the accident - not seen until later in the film - which kills Jess' son and sets the wheels of the plot in motion. Like Jess, this seagull has cheated death and like her is now attempting to find a way out of this maze of false endings and counterfeit realities.

If we attempt to straighten the film's chronology, finding the most convenient in-point as a foundation to this story, then the seagull is with Jess from the very beginning. A different kind of visual premonition in this instance, as later in the film - when the events roll back to what was effectively the first scene - we see on the wall of Jess' house a painting. A painting of two seagulls, backlit by a circular, stylised orb (within an orb) that represents the sun. Is this a retroactive precursor, of one seagull becoming two seagulls: already creating a kind of recurrence; a duplication or repetition, like the various, otherworldly manifestations of Jess?

Triangle directed by Christopher Smith, 2009:

III. Reflections and Repetitions:

As the events are repeated, each repetition brings with it a new manifestation of the survivors. This element of the plot gives Smith the opportunity to play with the compositional aspects of his film; filling the Aeolus with great floor to ceiling mirrors that literally multiply and fragment characters within the frame. This is given an even greater element of depth by the use of the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, where the general look might recall, on a superficial level, an almost retro 1960s style split-screen effect, or even an actual strip of film. However, the framing, and in particular the use of the full 'scope image, seems intended to overwhelm the audience with the literal, on-screen sense of various recreations of time.

Here, the mirrors aren't simply a visual representation of the repetition or recurrence of events; they illustrate the possibility of parallel realities existing side by side. It is that same sense of worlds within worlds, best illustrated by the dramatic set-up of Lewis Carroll's Alice-adventure Through the Looking-Glass (1871), which hint towards ruptures in the character's psychology. The symbol of the mirror itself, as a portal or a gateway into another realm, is a familiar plot point from earlier horror films, such as Poltergeist III (1988) or John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness (1987), as well as the more familiar personification of Narcissus, and the idea that the mirror exists to entice and eventually trap those who spend too much time studying their own reflected gaze.

Here, the mirror traps these various manifestations of the character and her doomed companions, but the reflection, as in the reflection of events, isn't always a direct recreation. Like all mirror images, there is a sense of physical abstraction; everything transformed left-to-right and right-to-left, creating a copy but also something of a potential doppelganger. This particular idea brings to mind the presentation of the famous painting by the surrealist artist René Magritte, titled in English Not to be Reproduced (La reproduction interdite, 1937), where the idea of the reflected self as a new manifestation (existing in a world within worlds) is made all the more clear.

Triangle directed by Christopher Smith, 2009:

Illustration from Through the Looking-Glass by Sir John Tenniel, 1871:

Not to be Reproduced by René Magritte, 1937:

It isn't simply the repetition of events that creates in the mind of the viewer the connection to the myth of Sisyphus or the role that the Aeolus plays in forcing this character to accept the futility of her own mortality, but the repetition of certain significant objects. If the mirror symbolises the repetition of the self, then these objects present the slowly developing clues that lead, inevitably, to that final revelation. Smith frames these objects with the same repetitiveness; establishing for the benefit of the viewer the noteworthy similarities between, for example, the heart-shaped pendants against the pile of dead seagulls towards the end of the film.

Triangle directed by Christopher Smith, 2009:

However, these shots, which communicate the central theme of the narrative, also establish a sense of uncertainty pertaining to the main character's emotional state of mind. The psychological aspect, which could be seen as a possible interpretation of events, at least before the film's final twist, is an element that Smith uses to keep the audience on their toes; deliberately misleading us, in the Hitchcockian sense, with these clues and associations that show Jess as a character physically removed and to some extent emotionally withdrawn. Maybe it's in the film's broader references to Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of The Shining (1980) or the deceptive homage to Friday the 13th (1981) that convince the viewer that there is something much more conventional or straightforward to these scenes of horror and suspense; a haunted house/ghost ship story combined with a generic stalk n' slash picture with obvious nods to Knife in the Water (Nóż w wodzie, 1962) or Dead Calm (1989)?

The Shining directed by Stanley Kubrick, 1980:

Triangle directed by Christopher Smith, 2009:

For most of the film, the audience is left wondering whether it is the actual sense of confinement that comes from the ship (here a surrogate for the haunted Overlook is Kubrick's film) or the seemingly dissociative behaviour of Jess that is causing the almost irrational fracturing of events. However, the eventual revelation of the car crash, or the true nature of Jess (as both a mother and a character) in the moments leading up to her death (or what we assume to be a death), reduce these elements to nothing more than knowing nods to the genre; stylistic MacGuffin's that tap into the greater game being played between Smith and his potential audience.

IV. Fractures:

As with the on-screen reflections and repetitions, Smith uses the mise-en-scene to introduce the idea of fractures, or spaces between characters and events. The windows and mirrors that previously showed the recurrence of characters also illustrate the breaks in personality; creating further representations of replication, albeit, as a single, splintered form. The presentation reminds me of a line of dialogue from Dario Argento's horror masterpiece Suspira (1977), which again, hints at the relationship between the self (in the psychological sense) and the power of the mirror as a prison that traps us, exposing our flaws and weaknesses: "bad luck isn't brought by broken mirrors, but broken minds"

Triangle directed by Christopher Smith, 2009:

Part of Jess' journey in the film is discovering her own strengths and weaknesses through a particular form of self-analysis that comes from the unique ability to observe her own actions from a distance. In witnessing the events play out, again and again, and each time attempting to fix the things that hinder her in the attempts to retroactively save her own son, Jess is able to realise her greatest failing as a human being. We can only assume from this that the death of her son is the fracture that causes the narrative to break off in a different direction; the peak, the point of this triangular bend in time that causes the story to re-start, repeating events, while never quite reaching a conclusion.

It is in this particular idea of the fracture that I feel the significance of the title is most evident. A triangle, which, geometrically, has three sides meeting in the middle, creating a point, is very much like a broken version of a conventional narrative storyline. If we think of a predictable narrative as a straight-line, moving in one direction from beginning to end, then the narrative of Triangle is transformed by events that break the narrative flow at a specific point, causing the story to then repeat itself. Not necessarily from the beginning (as a circular narrative might) but from a significant point in time. This notion of the narrative as something that develops, drops, rolls back and develops again plays into the earlier reference to Sisyphus, pushing his boulder to the top of the mountain (itself an almost triangular shape) only to watch it roll back back, down to the beginning, repeating the same action endlessly.

An illustration of the 'conventional narrative storyline' against the narrative of Triangle, created by the blog author:

If the narrative was circular, then all things would converge at the beginning before repeating from start to finish. Instead, the potential bend in the storyline suggests at least three possible beginnings, or at least three possible ends. The story stops and starts repeatedly from several different points in the timeline; sometimes beginning on the boat, other times beginning on the ship, and eventually taking us right the way back to the very first scene of the film, where those once arbitrary artefacts (the toy boat, the spilled ink, the seagull painting) now have a far greater significance on events. However, even here, we're still not sure if this is really the beginning or if there are indeed further ruptures and breaks in this narrative that go deeper, backwards or forwards, through time.

Maybe this all points back to an alternate story; the story of Jess' son: an autistic child with obsessive compulsive disorder, who spends all day, day after day, painting a picture of a ship's rescue; painting and re-painting images on images, each overlapping, until multiple variations exist, layer upon layer of the same thing. It is only then that a new story is revealed.

Jean Rollin

2010-12-22T22:07:00.019Z

Filmmaker
(1938 – 2010)

Jean Rollin (right of frame), behind the scenes on Le frisson des vampires, 1971:

The French film director Jean Rollin, who passed-away on December 15th at the age of 72, was more than just a director of "erotic vampire-fiction"; to many, he was one of most remarkable image-makers in the history of film. Though the titles of his work - with their allusions to violence, fear, death and sexuality - might suggest images of a kind of sleazy, excessive 'grindhouse' cinema, as typified by a film like The Last House on the Left (1972), the general tone of Rollin's work was often far more contemplative, elegiac and surreal. His work - explorations of the fantastique, if anything - present the viewer with a unique, hermetic, fully realised universe, full of codes and symbols that appear and reappear, as if every film offers the spectator a new piece of a vast and never-ending puzzle.

This notion of a grand, unravelling mystery, linked by characters, themes and locations, was of course one of the most interesting facets of Rollin's work; a sense of each film becoming a continuation of a reoccurring dream that the audience can only attempt to grasp or comprehend, but that lingers long in the mind of a collective audience through the sheer, imaginative, transportive power of the pictures on-screen.

Rollin's films are defined by frame after frame of these extraordinary compositions; where each shot, each framed moment or movement manages to conjure the spirit of something powerful enough to reach beyond the mere conventions of narrative or plot; where the images suggest a story, and the reappearance of certain objects or actors or narrative facilitators create a traceable line that runs back-and-forth throughout the director's career.

In Rollin's work, the countryside, the city, the beach, châteaux, cemeteries and the psychiatric hospital hold clues to this endless conundrum; the greater story that exists and develops from one picture to the next. His characters, often gorgeous young women who stumble, Alice-like, into these picturesque, sometimes gothic, sometimes exotic landscapes full of magic and mystery, encounter strange rituals, acts, ceremonies and occurrences that, on some very basic level, work as metaphorical presentations of the art of 'the fantastique'

Here we can see the similarities to other filmmakers of Rollin's generation, who dabbled with the near-supernatural forces of this ancient form of storytelling, albeit, without ever fully surrendering to it. Like the work of Jacques Rivette for example, there is the shared sense of the city as an infernal labyrinth; an endless maze of inter-connected backstreets and alleyways that lead his characters between mysteries and events. His 'vampires', named as much in reference to Feuillade as to Bram Stoker, are enigmatic, decadent and often withdrawn. Like the films of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Rollin's work is full of erotic displays, fantasies, dreams and desires, but is also intelligent, creative, poetic and unique.

The image of the beach, consistent throughout Rollin's career, has been the location for some of his most extraordinary moments. From the youthful explorations of Les amours jaunes (1958) to the evocative visions of his masterpiece The Iron Rose (La Rose de Fer, 1972), this beach, recognisable to anyone who has seen more than one of the director's incredible films, presents an ideal; a vision of somewhere beyond the here and now, or representative even of some emotional or psychological state.

If the form of his work seems, from the surface at least, to be nothing more than pure exploitation, the power of his images, the command of his stories and the experiences of these particular characters nonetheless define Jean Rollin, not just as a legitimate auteur, but as one of the most fascinating French filmmakers of his generation. Even his pornographic movies, produced under a variety of obvious pseudonyms and often made for purely financial reasons, are filled with his usual arcane symbols, masks, role-playing games, and an eye for the unconventional.

The recurring scenarios, of escapees, corruptible innocents and seductive forces weave in and out of these stories, creating a system of figurative strings that lead the audience from his earliest short-features, right the way through to his most recent picture. In this sense, Rollin's cinema is every bit as individual, personal and identifiable as that of Godard's or Garrel's. In these films, Jean Rollin transformed the lurid or the sordid into something beyond words; an elegy for something; innocence perhaps, or a certain kind of dream-state that can only be presented through the smoke and mirrors magic-act of the cinema itself.

All images taken from Jeremy Richey's superior Rollin resource Fascination: The Jean Rollin Experience:

The Horse Soldiers

2010-12-13T10:03:00.007Z

The Horse Soldiers directed by John Ford, 1959:

Any analysis of the work should probably begin with an image that succinctly establishes what the film is primarily about. On this occasion, it is an image of eight men in cavalry uniform devising plans around a table. The two leads are set-apart from their associates by subtle differences in costume: John Wayne's Colonel John Marlowe with his red neckerchief; William Holden's Major Henry Kendall in his clean, white coat. Already, Ford and his costume designer Frank Beetson are establishing these characters through their identifiable professions; Marlowe, a man of combat, Kendall, a man of medicine. The two characters are positioned on opposite sides of the table; one seated, one standing; one with hat, one without. Although these men are essentially on the same side, fighting for the same cause, their position from one another within the frame suggests their obvious differences in both ideology and approach.

From this single screen-capture and the information that it conveys we are being informed, subtly, that this is a film about conflict.

Although essentially a War Film in the Hollywood tradition, the conflict in The Horse Soldiers (1959) is not exclusive to the Civil War backdrop that is seen throughout. Rather, it is in the relationship between these two characters - where one personifies the old and the other personifies the new - and in their dalliances with the beautiful landowner Miss Hannah Hunter of Greenbriar (Constance Towers). Like the majority of Ford's films, specifically his westerns, it is in this conflict between the old and the new that the narrative is fully developed; defining not only the dramatic motivations of the script by John Lee Mahin and Martin Rackin - or even the historical re-enactments of Harold Sinclair's original novel - but in a way, every thought and decision that these characters make and the effect that these decisions have on this world, as it is presented.

The Horse Soldiers is, to a large extent, about a changing world as illustrated by its emphasis on the cross-country journey and how the landscape becomes a signifier to the unspoken emotional connotations apparent in the plot. These themes are central to several of Ford's earlier films, such as the towering masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath (1940), in which the family of characters travel from town to town, city to city; effectively looking for work, but only finding the wounded heart and soul of a country beaten by depression. In that film, the projections of ghost-towns or the wounded, sunken faces of what essentially could be described as the living dead, flicker, apparition-like, on the windscreen of the Joad family wagon, convey the literal desperation and depression of these people looking for a world that no longer exists.

The Grapes of Wrath directed by John Ford, 1940:

Likewise, the nostalgic reminisces of How Green Was my Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952) show worlds that exist in the memory of their respective narrators brought into violent conflict with the actual, tangible reality of these places and the inevitability of time. There, as well as here, the intentional, bold-strokes of iconography, from the waving of the Confederate flag to the casting of Wayne himself, seem deliberate attempts to express, in the most direct and appropriate way, the vaguest remnants of historical context and the actual machinations of this world, put on screen, vividly by Ford, in a full-colour, 1.66:1 presentation, to make the best of those seemingly never-ending shots of extras - each dressed in authentic cavalry uniform - cutting a path between the two distinct halves of the horizon, or, more literally in fact, cutting the country in two.

The Horse Soldiers directed by John Ford, 1959:

In The Horse Soldiers, the river, which is shown in the background of several travelling sequences, becomes shorthand for this great divide; from the north and south to divisions of class, race, gender, and (lastly), the two central characters. America, like many places in the world, is a divided country; divided politically as well as culturally, between both the immigrant and indigenous populations. Ford's film communicates this rift visually, through the actual presentation of the landscape, with its dirt-roads and rivers, and through the purely metaphorical; from a pencil-lined direction on a badly folded map, to the long, stretching shadow of a window frame over the hanging, atlas-like wall plan during a discussion between both parties.

The Horse Soldiers directed by John Ford, 1959:

With this in mind, the last act of the film - where the destruction of the bridge illustrates the continual inability for the two sides to meet in the middle - offers one of the most interesting visual metaphors in the entire film. The conflict, both personal and political, traps these characters in their own blinkered perspective, regardless of whether or not their actual opinions on the matter have changed, for better or worse. It is the kind of ending where the closing image, of the woman looking out into the uncertain future, the country disappearing into the horizon, the inevitability of a raging battle that Ford denies us the spectacle of, suggests an almost stoic heroism reminiscent of the iconic final image of Ford's own film The Searchers (1956). However, it also suggests some element of tragedy; the endlessness of war as a machine that moves across the landscape, devouring everything. It is also, in a sense, a deliberate none-ending; these characters may have reached a kind of conclusion, but the journey, and the war itself, still continues.

Through this, we can recognise the thread of identity and the sense of personal responsibility woven througout. The idea of taking characters conditioned into thinking in a specific way - into expecting the world to conform to a certain standard built largely on class, ranking and reputation - and then seeing those beliefs shattered before their very eyes when confronted by the very real consequences of the war itself. That final image, which speaks, on one level, to a certain kind of romantic optimism, as Hannah Hunter is framed - as only John Ford could frame a shot - waving the soldiers off into battle, also carries a certain sense of disillusionment. These young men, heroic into battle, will no doubt return, if lucky, as battered and bruised as the dead-on-their-feet volunteers of the even more restlessly critical Drums Along the Mohawk (1939).

There, in the assumed emotional perspective of characters trapped in the events that exist between the titles of two other Ford movies, The Long Voyage Home (1940) and They Were Expendable (1945), John Martin Feeney makes his second film that dares to ask... What Price Glory?

What Price Glory directed by John Ford, 1952:

The Horse Soldiers directed by John Ford, 1959:

The subtlety of the film's politics or its subtext jarring against the very obvious iconography of its images and sound is characteristic of Ford's work in this particular genre. The look and feel of the film might seem, at times, to be celebratory, with its bold colours and beautiful compositions combined with the rousing performance and the typical, overwhelming presence of Wayne as an avatar for the real, undying spirit of a subsequently lost America. But there's an obvious level of satire in how Ford uses these elements, which one might almost go as far as to call 'ironic'. The contrasts and conflict between the two central characters, on the page, suggests the kind of macho one-upmanship or characteristic male bonding that many expect of a film from this particular era. Yet, in the presentation, and in the incorporation of these characters into a narrative about conflict, the disparities between the two create an additional commentary on the subject itself.

The doctor's profession is one that saves lives; the soldier's is one that ends them. Through this, Ford suggests elements of guilt, honour, responsibility and a questioning of the kind of misguided patriotism that leads a country to tear itself apart. This conflict, on a personal level, could also tie in with the general themes of self-analysis and reflection; those two memorable shots where characters catch their individual reflections in mirrors, says a great deal about how they, as individuals, view themselves within this world of civil war; implicating them to some extent through ignorance or sheer wrongheadedness, or forcing them to look deeper into the mindset of war and how this conflict has changed them, physically as well as psychologically.

In the first of these moments of reflection, Marlowe, distorted by the convexed shape of the glass, studies his features in the hallway mirror of Hannah Hunter's opulent southern mansion. The distortion reduces Marlowe considerably, pushing him back, further into the distance, while exaggerating the size of the door and the picture behind him. The mirror image literally reduces his stature, revealing a small man at odds with the immovable presence that we expect from Wayne and have previously seen in action. The second shot comes much later in the film, following the death of Hunter's chaperone Lukey (Althea Gibson). Here, Hunter is confronted by the face of a girl she no longer recognises. Literally transformed, she is now no longer the spoilt little rich girl waiting out the conflict back home, but someone else; someone debased by war and reminded of the ugliness of the thing by the cracked and filthy mirror she now finds herself in.

Such shots carry the same kind of sadness expressed in the unforgettable moment of self-reflection/recognition in Ford's aforementioned The Grapes of Wrath; in particular, the scene in which Ma Joad (Jane Darwell) studies her face reflected in a dusty windowpane and enjoys a brief moment of warm contentment brought on by a nostalgia almost immediately snuffed out by the crippling destitution and uncertainty of her all-too-painful existence.

The Grapes of Wrath directed by John Ford, 1940:

The Horse Soldiers directed by John Ford, 1959:

Ford's characters in The Horse Soldiers may not be dreaming of better times, or indeed, taking comfort in nostalgic reminisce, but they're being forced to ask important questions. Moral questions that may have previously never been explored, at least, by these particular characters, but now, when challenged by the perspectives of others and forced to see things from a different point of view, the actuality of their situation is changed considerably. This revelation, as the two male protagonists eventually begin to see the situation through the eyes of the other, is best illustrated by the scene in which Wayne's previously gung-ho, no-nonsense Marlowe tends the bedside of a fatally wounded young soldiers and sees, perhaps for the first time, where this level of patriotism has led him. The subsequent scene, in which the character explodes, emotionally, having been goaded somewhat by Hunter, is one of Wayne's greatest screen performances; as the confliction and the confusion of what he's feeling in relation to how he feels he should feel, is brilliantly communicated.

The Horse Soldiers directed by John Ford, 1959:

The tragedy here, hinted at throughout by Ford's clever framing of events, is that the war will continue, long after the closing credits, long after the Civil War and on, into the following centuries. The great divide - be it north or south, east and west - will continue to widen. The visible scars marked in the landscape - from marching soldiers, on horseback or otherwise - connect each generation, from World War II, to Vietnam, to the Falklands, to Iraq and Afghanistan. The propensity for the species to decimate itself is a torch, handed down from generation to generation; from the marching men on horseback that open the film, silhouetted, as if to imply anonymity (the uniform replacing the notion of the individual with the "unit"), to the overpowering sight of the young children, armed and in uniform, marching ever onward, into battle.

The Horse Soldiers directed by John Ford, 1959:

Here, the literal thin blue line that once again divides the landscape, splitting the cinematic image into two recognisable 'sides' (contra and pro) suggests the possibility of all future conflicts. These children become the next link in the chain, and their children, and their children's children, will likewise pick up this torch when called upon by their country to do the right-good thing.

What is perhaps most remarkable about Ford's film is its ability to present the gross futility of war while simultaneously suggesting, on one level at least, the necessity of it. However, by denying the audience the lengthy battle sequence that was initially scripted to end the film and choosing instead to close on a somewhat more enigmatic image that seems to suggest so much more than the potential bloodshed and cannon fire ever could, the notion of a commentary on war, or indeed, on conflict in general, is so much more profound. And this is what separates The Horse Soldiers from films like Platoon (1986) or Saving Private Ryan (1998), where the "horrors of war" can only be communicated by presenting the violence as something visceral or intense. However, in presenting this intensity through the medium of cinema, the conflict itself can only become exhilarating for the viewing audience, thus, destroying its intent.

By emphasising this moment of human endurance - with the conflict stretching out, beyond the horizon - these closing scenes from The Horse Soldiers suggests the effect that war has on the individual, as well as the country itself.

Platoon directed by Oliver Stone, 1986:

The Horse Soldiers, directed by John Ford, 1959:

World of Glory

2010-09-10T10:47:00.010+01:00

In discussing the brief snippet from the ever contentious Uwe Boll's no-doubt harrowing new film Auschwitz (2011) - particularly the way in which the sequence communicates the most regrettable atrocity associated with the holocaust - chiefly, human indifference - through the image of a Nazi guard listlessly marking time while the cries of the women and children call out from the torture of the gas chamber - I was reminded of this short 15 minute feature from the always brilliant Swedish filmmaker Roy Andersson.

World of Glory (Härlig är jorden, 1991) - which seems to take place in the present day, but nonetheless begins with a sequence deliberately intended to evoke the horrors of the Second World War - may be the greatest and most penetrating comment ever made on the issues of genocide, shame and collective guilt. Expressing its ideas through incredibly simple though never simplistic static tableaux - where the intention of scenes is to present the void-like moral decay form within the very soul of its ghostly central character (played by Klas-Gösta Olsson) - World of Glory grabs the viewer's attention from the very first frame; establishing a particular tone of disquieting, deadpan surrealism, before eventually leading us, scene by scene and minute by minute, through the painful empty life of this enigmatic central figure, in a way that seems to underline or exaggerate the absolute vacant misery of his pitiless existence.

In the unforgettable opening sequence, a group of officious, grey-suited spectators stand beside the rear of a monstrous diesel-fuelled truck, watching a huddled mass of naked women and children being loaded into the hold. The piercing cries of the smallest child, central to the frame, are shattering, as the small fat man to the left of frame kicks out at the boarding-ramp to hasten their ill-fated departure. As the heavy-metal doors are slammed shut, locked and bolted, muting but failing to drown out the horrible screams from within, one of the spectators, a thin man with a sinister moustache, turns to face the camera.

At this moment, as the large, industrial hose is led from the exhaust to the small vent at the back of the truck, the audience is being explicitly acknowledged - worse, implicated - in these events, but can only experience the unfolding massacre, hopeless and removed.

World of Glory directed by Roy Andersson, 1991:

From here, the film cuts to a scene in a hospital ward. The thin man, the same character who acknowledged our presence during the opening moments, introduces us to his near-comatose mother lying lifelessly in bed. "This is my mother..." he says, matter-of-factly; "I am very attached to her" From here, the film quickly establishes a rhythm, cutting from one vignette to the next as the man shares with us his mundane observations on everything from his job to his car to his bed and his family. Through these static sequences, Andersson is showing a character in an obvious state of denial; pretending to himself that these miniature moments that make up the fragments of his everyday routine are in some way 'meaningful.' That this life, which consists of work, or church, or family, is somehow a life well lived. We can assume from this (thought it isn't particularly clear) that Andersson is contrasting the drab tedium of this existence with the horror of the opening sequence. The character is, in a sense, in limbo; visibly damaged by the cold brutality of the film's first scene and yet desperate to convince himself that everything is still okay.

At the end of the film, the implication, that everything is not okay, is made clear, with Andersson's framing of this character, upright in his bedroom, his hands over his ears, while his wife lies asleep in bed. The guilt of what he has witnessed is simply too great to ignore, and the constant bleed of useless information or personal trivia can no longer distract him from the horrible cries that haunt his every waking moment. The film quite brilliantly asks the audience to question who is worse; those who pull the switches, or those who stand idly by and allow such things to happen.

World of Glory directed by Roy Andersson, 1991:

Words Cannot Express

2010-09-07T21:19:00.020+01:00

Initial reactions to the teaser-trailer for Uwe Boll's soon-to-be-released docu-drama film 'Auschwitz'

The single shot of the Nazi guard, slouched, bored and nonchalant against the gas chamber door, while the stripped-bare women and children beat on the walls within, might be the most profound and provocative image I've seen this year. In communicating the absolute horror of the death camps at their most basic and human - reinforcing Jean-Luc Godard's notion that the only way to successfully portray the Holocaust on film is to make a movie about the guard who spends all day complaining that the out-going carts are too heavy to push - this single image, depicting the most monstrous indifference, is far more successful than anything in Steven Spielberg's arguably manipulative (or at least disingenuous) Schindler's List (1993).

The subsequent shots of post-mortem tooth-pulling and child-cremation are unnecessary, but, like the more sensational elements of Stoic (2009) and Darfur (2009), illustrate the absolute commitment that Boll brings to these "personal-projects", and his always fascinating attempts to make movies that combine the Art-House with the Grind-House. In all truth, he might even be the most interesting filmmaker currently working in North America.

Auschwitz directed by Uwe Boll, 2011:

Image Gallery: In a Lonely Place

2010-07-14T22:59:00.020+01:00

Back in March of this year, the always-worth-a-look Checking on My Sausages put out an invitation for bloggers to submit a single frame in the hope of creating "a gallery of images [chosen by you] to stand for so much of what makes Cinema such a rich and exciting medium." Yesterday, The Dancing Image created a meme "for those who love pictures" intended to develop the original idea, urging fellow bloggers to "pick a theme" and select a collection of images that complement it. Only the Cinema was the first blog to respond, with writer Ed Howard choosing "Five Sensual Shots" assembled loosely around the theme of sensuality and sexuality: images that entice, provoke, and suggest. At the end of his post he offered an open invitation for anyone reading to get involved, and so, with that, here are my selections.

The general theme here complements a list I recently made on TheAuteurs MUBI, bringing together my favourite films that best capture the feelings of loneliness, longing and desperation. In my own words: A list of films that beautifully capture that feeling of an endless drift, towards nothing or oblivion; where journeys are made, both into the world and into oneself in an attempt to escape life and its various responsibilities. Where the loneliness of characters, or their own often restless attempts to make a connection with the people and places that thrive and flourish all around them, leads them into a greater adventure, or alternatively, into harm. These films evoke an overwhelming sense of solitude and isolation, either through the emptiness of a place, the spaces between people or the general desperation of late night ennui. However, they also reveal the more personal truths that are found in quiet contemplation, in the landscape, in memory, or in the thousands of little stories that exist in the spaces between everyday conversations.

At this point, I'm going to deliberately break the final rule of the meme by not selecting any other blogs to tag - simply because most blogs I read will most likely get tagged anyway - but nonetheless, I do hope that the images here suggest some of those particular feelings or immediate emotional responses, even without the benefit of context or clarification.

La notte directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961:

The Passenger directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, 1975:

Kings of the Road directed by Wim Wenders, 1976:

Taxi Driver directed by Martin Scorsese, 1976:

In a Year with 13 Moons directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1978:

Radio On directed by Christopher Petit, 1979:

The State of Things directed by Wim Wenders, 1982:

Prénom Carmen directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 1983:

Nostalghia directed by Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983:

Boy Meets Girl directed by Leos Carax, 1984:

Paris, Texas directed by Wim Wenders, 1984:

Shadows in Paradise directed by Aki Kaurismäki, 1986:

September directed by Woody Allen, 1987:

The Match Factory Girl directed by Aki Kaurismäki, 1990:

Still Life directed by Jia Zhangke, 2006:

Colossal Youth directed by Pedro Costa, 2006:

Sometimes, Brakhage

2010-07-12T20:43:00.000+01:00

I will admit, as someone who genuinely needs a at least some degree of emotional stimulation in order to engage with a film on an intellectual level, the films of the American avant-garde pioneer Stan Brakhage have, in general, held minimal appeal. This is obviously more a criticism of me as a viewer than it is of Brakhage as a filmmaker, but the reward of something like Window Water Baby Moving (1959) or The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (1971) seems limited at best. Although I have an enormous amount of respect for Brakhage and filmmakers of his ilk, these works have often seemed easier to admire than they are to enjoy.

However, very recently - as in the last couple of weeks in fact - I decided, out of curiosity, and the recommendation of a friend, to synchronise some of Brakhage's most acclaimed films with songs or music that I felt appropriate. Although the idea of taking something and, in a sense, changing it against the wishes of the filmmaker is a highly contentious one, the result of this personal experimentation was nonetheless surprisingly significant. Rather than changing the work, or turning it into something new or accidental, the addition of a soundtrack by me seemed to reveal or draw out the hidden layers of emotional explanation that were probably already there to begin with; I just couldn't appreciate them.

All of a sudden these films - which had previously seemed closed-in or beyond personal approach - were swiftly blown wide-open. However, this experiment, no matter how noble or seemingly successful it might have been in making Brakhage more accessible, poses a rather more curious question. If the films didn't appeal to me to begin with, am I really engaging with the film now, as altered by my own idiosyncratic viewing methods, or am I engaging with what I want the film to be; a sort of sound and vision variation of the Kuleshov effect? I'll let you be the judge.

[Start the song, then start the film]

The choice of music doesn't change the images, but it does change the way these images are received. It creates a sort-of context for them. Suddenly, the random montage of shots, splices, dead-frames and scratches becomes not only a sensory experience, but an actual narrative that can be followed and felt. Not a narrative in the conventional sense of a beginning, middle and end, but a narrative that is developed through the emotional associations and connections that we draw from the combination of sound and image. Perhaps this could be seen as a cheat - a way of faking an emotional response to something through an artificial stimulus - but in the end, is it really any different to the idea of commissioning a contemporary live musical accompaniment to a work of early silent cinema?

In watching these pictures with the musical selections of my choice the film became about something. The combination of these images with the actual sound of the music (rather than the more simple expression of the words) suggested to me, in a rather profound and moving manner, what the moment before death might be like. A sudden rush of images, collapsing every experience of a person's life, no matter how long or short it may have been at the point of expiration, and playing them back again as the last gasp of breath is expelled from the body. Conversely, the images from Prelude: Dog Star Man (1962), with their overwhelming presentations of nature, life and sexuality, seemed to suggest some alternative "alien" version of Lars von Trier's film Antichrist (2009), and thus was scored accordingly.

[Start the song, then start the film]

So what do you think; cinematic sacrilege, or a legitimate attempt to make the work "work" for me? Or am I simply talking nonsense, as usual.

September

2010-06-10T10:51:00.021+01:00

Woody Allen's emotionally devastating modern day chamber drama September (1987) is another product of the writer/director's often overlooked or disregarded 'dramatic period' of the late 1980s. A brief moment in the filmmaker's career when he was somewhat self-consciously attempting to break away from the confines of the more familiar comedy/drama approach of films like Annie Hall (1977) and Manhattan (1979), to instead focus on complex issues devoid of the usual ironic self-deprecation or cutting wit. Though the more subtle characteristics of Allen's previous work are nonetheless evident in many aspects of these films, not least the preoccupation with neurotic New York intellectuals prone to periods of angst and agitation, the general influences of this period seemed to lean more heavily towards a writer like Anton Chekhov - specifically the plays The Seagull (1896) and Uncle Vanya (1899) - and the films of Ingmar Bergman.

Although it is the Bergman influence that most critics tend to focus on when discussing or dismissing these films - September in particular - it is nevertheless important to acknowledge the theatrical aspirations of the production, which not only define the style of the film, but also to a large extent, the general tone. Allen's initial creative inspiration for September was, in his own words, to create 'a play on film'; a picture that could be shot in a single location, in almost real-time, with a small collection of characters able to interact with one another, freely and simultaneously within the frame, as if occupying a stage.

September directed by Woody Allen, 1987:

The basic story of September concerns six main protagonists gathered together during the late summer at an idyllic farmhouse in Vermont. The house belongs to Lane (Mia Farrow), a shy young woman recuperating from a nervous breakdown, a failed relationship and years of guilt and speculation involving the murder of her abusive step-father. Amongst the group is Peter (Sam Waterston), a struggling writer who is lodging with Lane and who Lane has a crush on. Peter however is in love with Lane's best friend Stephanie (Diane Wiest), who is also staying at the house in an attempt to escape the tedium of her husband while their children are away at camp. Stephanie initially seems close to Howard (Denholm Eliot), a family friend with unrequited feelings for Lane; while the eventual appearance of Lane's vibrant and gregarious mother Diane (Elaine Stritch) and her new lover Lloyd (Jack Warden), creates further chaos in this already overcrowded environment.

With these elements in place, the set-up for the film, with its trio of conflicting love triangles and its narrative full of mystery, could have been used for the basis of a rather genial screwball comedy, rife with the kind of romantic entanglements usually reserved for the greatest of French farce. However, instead of any light-hearted declarations of amour fou or playful scenes of comical misunderstanding, Allen takes the all too familiar concept of one person in love with another person in love with someone else and uses it to ruminate around deeper themes involving the need for love, understanding and acceptance in the face of loneliness and isolation.

September directed by Woody Allen, 1987:

This sense of often paradoxical closeness and confinement, as characters isolated from one another are simultaneously bound together in a single location, is exaggerated by the deliberate staging of the film, where Allen emphasises the underlining theatricality of the piece by refusing to leave the confines of the house for the full 80 minute duration. This places the audience on the inside of the drama, experiencing each moment of interaction as it happens, and allowing us to fully observe the solitude of these characters and their desperate attempts to forge a vague connection with the various other lost souls that linger in the half-light. The nocturnal otherworldliness that is created through this however can only sustain the serenity for so long until the intensity of the environment and the natural friction of these relationships within relationships cause the emotional meltdown of an already frayed central character in the film's shattering final act.

Allen maintains a connection with these characters by deliberately filming scenes in long, unbroken takes. This draws the audience into the discussion and into the various inter-connected relationships, while also maintaining that creative emphasis on unobtrusive, observational theatricality. Although the general presentation is too stylised to be mistaken for an actual "filmed play", the use of light and the framing of these characters, often with a sparing use of close-up, does give the impression of something existing outside of the natural parameters of everyday life. The look and feel of the film is therefore closer to the Brecht-inspired performance/flashback sequences in the subsequent Another Woman (1988); where the faces of characters, half hidden, half revealed, emerging from the darkness of the frame, become as enigmatic or engaging as the figures in a Caravaggio painting.

Another Woman directed by Woody Allen, 1988:

The Lute Player [Hermitage version] by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1600:

September directed by Woody Allen, 1987:

Allen's creative use of the camera to block or reveal his characters, maintaining that interest in having one actor on screen quarrelling or pleading with another actor just off camera, is a great way to lead the audience in any potential interpretations of these arguments, relationships and events. Although the concept is still theatrical enough in nature, Allen's approach to this is brilliantly cinematic, directing and misdirecting the audience in seeing the relationships unfold from the different emotional perspectives, so that we can appreciate the subtle changes in personality when, for example, Peter talks to Lane, or alternatively, when Peter talks to Stephanie.

Such considerations can also be seen in the conscious way in which Allen structures his scenes, so that moments of dialog are punctuated by moments of crippling silence, or where individual encounters, confrontations or moments of solitary reflection are allowed to play out in semi-darkened rooms lit by candlelight or very low sepia bulbs. The feeling that this creates is one of mystery and desperation, offering many secluded areas for the group to retreat, split up, take solace in their secrets, while also going some lengths towards visualising the deep-seated animosity that rests at the heart of these characters or the situations they've found themselves in.

September directed by Woody Allen, 1987:

In many respects, it could be interesting to look at September as the middle-part of a dramatic trilogy of films by Allen, which began with the bleak Interiors in 1978 and concluded ten years later with the bleak but wholly more interesting Another Woman. On the whole, September is a much more direct experience than Interiors, though perhaps lacks the possibilities of deeper interpretation present in something like Another Woman. The story is slow - deliberately paced in order to convey the feeling of something taking place in near real-time - but is generally worth sticking with; particularly for the clever unravelling of events and that jaw-dropping moment towards the end of the film, in which the root of Lane's problems and the inherent animosity towards her mother is finally revealed.

The performances throughout are exceptional, with Farrow and the always dependable Wiest giving possibly the best performances of their respective careers, ably supported by Waterston, whose look of utter contempt and disgust as the final revelation is made known is easily one of the defining images of Allen's cinema.

September directed by Woody Allen, 1987:

The filmmaker's complete understanding of character, atmosphere, design and direction in pulling off such a dour and depressing piece of work is evident right from the very first scene; even if most critics seem more preoccupied with citing the influence of Autumn Sonata (1978) than in actually picking out the nuances of these performances, engaging with the story, empathising with the characters, etc. Such extreme, almost dismissive reactions are always to be expected when approaching an unconventional work from a filmmaker so defined by their own iconic screen-persona, or ingrained within the cultural zeitgeist as a result of their earlier success. However, repeat viewings of September, specifically within the context of Allen's career throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, reveal a film that is rich in detail, beautifully filmed and edited, and genuinely cinematic, even in spite of its theatrical design.

It is a film defined as much by the empty spaces of rooms, doorways, or the literal blackness of the outside world, as it is by the emotional drama reflected on the face of each respective character; a film of great pain and sadness, guilt and regret, though one that leaves its audience with the suggestion that a change for the better is always within reach. As with the vast majority of Allen's work, September is an exceptional piece of filmmaking far more moving, satisfying and essential than the majority of critics might care to suggest.

Another Woman

2010-06-07T08:07:00.013+01:00

Many critics have tried to disparage this particular film - the mysteriously titled Another Woman (1988) - for supposedly offering something of a counterfeit copy of the work Ingmar Bergman. Such reactions no doubt stem from the similarities to certain themes in a film like Wild Strawberries (1957); where the image and presentation of a person viewing the subconscious dramatisations of specific "past" events and interacting with them, leads to a sort of emotional epiphany. Although these elements are obviously clear - noticeable even in the creation of this character and the film's emphasis on faces posed in the half-light - one could just as easily pick out the influence of say, the films of Andrei Tarkovsky; where the ideas of memory and reflection and the recollection of significant events from the past, help to clarify a story that is taking place in the present.

In the vast majority of Allen's work, this juxtaposition - between the past and the present, or the way in which memories can somehow change a course of action (and vice versa) - is almost always explored through the creation of fiction; where characters writing a book or creating a film use these past-life experiences to explore the relationships between the characters on the page. In doing so, these characters are ultimately better able to define the problems and pitfalls that are evident in their own real-life associations, largely through the contrasts and distinctions that are formed when these two individual strands inevitably intersect.

We can see such elements in everything from Stardust Memories (1980) to Deconstructing Harry (1997), where the characters are using these fictions to explore the various problems in their own lives and relationships, often without even recognising that such problems existed to begin with.

Another Woman directed by Woody Allen, 1988:

Although it is possible to regard Another Woman as one of the weakest of Allen's films from this pivotal peak-period of the 1980s, it does at least offer an experience that works; a film where the sense of emotion and the general ideas explored become more successful as the film progresses towards its somewhat more hopeful and indeed almost reflective final act. However, the lead up to this particular revelation, still pregnant with an uncertainly and a quiet anticipation, is a long and winding one; focusing on the issues of guilt, failure and a crisis of identity, as the characters maintain a polite veneer of dignity and outward civility, while nonetheless crumbling from within.

Like the protagonists in the similarly structured Interiors (1978) and September (1987), the choice of the lead-character and her personal portrayal is vital to the film but difficult for the audience to really come to grips with. Her initial characteristics, combined with the self-assured narration, make it harder for us to interact with her on a purely personal level; while her interactions with the other characters and her own attempts to learn more about them ultimately cast a further negative light on her own failings and insecurities. Through this particular device, Allen is able to more closely examine the themes behind the film, eventually creating something of an epiphany that will affect every single character within the story, but only as an extension of Marion herself.

Another Woman directed by Woody Allen, 1988:

Marion suffers from that typical trait of complaining about problems that she has created through arrogance and a lack of understanding. The fact that she herself cannot appreciate this for the bulk of the film's duration makes her even harder to sympathise with, as she continues to look down on people and place them under the microscope, as if insects, there to be examined. However, for once, these qualities - no matter how seemingly repellent in the very early parts of the film - do eventually lead the plot to somewhere more enriching.

Regardless of the flaws of the character, the film, in its structure and tone, has a fascinating quality, which in some respects, leaves it open to a variety of deeper and more personal interpretations. For example, the implication of the title - which is an important factor in truly understanding the various personal connections woven throughout the film - is never fully explained, though is hinted at, in such a way so as to suggest elements of further, meta-interpretation. We can most clearly see it as an extension of Marion's unspoken guilt in regards to her various romantic relationships; her infidelities, the eventual infidelities of her husband, and the distant suggestion/accusation that the break-up from her controlling first husband was the reason for his death. She is also a character forever in the shadow of her mother; an enigmatic figure in love with nature and the arts, but stifled by her coldly intellectual husband, and the responsibilities of a family life.

Another Woman directed by Woody Allen, 1988:

The intention of the title is also obvious in Marion's interest and eventual relationship with the tragic and mysterious Hope; a young pregnant woman plagued by various psychological problems and her own suicidal thoughts. Marion initially discovers Hope when she rents an apartment that shares an adjoining wall with a psychiatrist's office, where a flaw in the ventilation systems makes it possible to eavesdrop on the various conversations.

Another Woman directed by Woody Allen, 1988:

In "discovering Hope", Marion is able to contextualise her own life and failures in comparison to this tragic young woman alive with desires for art and creative fulfilment, but shackled by the oppression of everyday living. It is almost as if Hope is an extension of Marion's psyche; a vision of what could have been had she allowed her life to take a different direction, or a cipher that allows her to fully realise how meaningless and empty her current situation truly is. In creating the character of Hope, Allen is intelligent enough to leave the broader attributes a mystery. As a result, the very nature of Hope - from her brief appearances in the film to the way Allen frames her within these scenes - suggest an almost imaginary figure; a development of Marion's own personality and a way for her to analyse herself, psychologically, in a way that reduces the chance for her own ego to rationalise her mistakes and complications.

By creating "another woman", Marion is able to view herself objectively, finally finding hope, in the literal sense, and therefore able enough to change her circumstances and the direction of her life for the better. The ultimate revelation of this makes the film far more interesting and rewarding than it might have initially seemed, with Allen observing a number of weighty psychological themes and uncomfortable personal questions in a way that still makes for an intelligent and captivating drama, regardless of its potential flaws.

Cassandra's Dream

2010-05-28T09:02:00.014+01:00

Some notes [spoilers included]:

Cassandra's Dream (2007) is a continuation of a premise that began with Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and continued with Match Point (2005). In all three films, the protagonists are driven to murder for the purpose of self-preservation, and in all three films it is evil that triumphs over good. Cassandra's Dream - with its parallel themes of moral corruption and exploitation - is arguably the bleakest of the three, if not the bleakest film of Allen's career thus far. Whereas before, an audience could have expected the charm of his characters or the natural wit of his dialog to dilute or detract from the heavy sense of dread that plagues these stories of crime without punishment, the general tone of Cassandra's Dream is that of almost unremitting despair.

From the very first scene and the introduction of these characters - working-class brothers Ian (Ewan McGregor) and Terry (Colin Farrell) - there is a certain expectation of tragedy; a set-up to that final, chilling shot of the boat itself - the 'Cassandra's Dream' of the title - and its personification of the greed and recklessness that will eventually lead these characters to their inevitable doom.

The boat in the film becomes a fairly obvious metaphor for a certain kind of high-risk get-rich-quick attitude that motivates these characters in their scheme; setting in motion the actual elements of the plot, as well as creating the moral/philosophical conundrum at the centre of the drama. It is the presence of the boat that both begins and ends the movie; bookending it with two very different figurative interpretations: initially representing the hopes and aspirations of these characters - driven by the memory of a similar boat once owned by their uncle, a self-made millionaire, and that promise of greater fortune - before eventually coming to represent the folly of this kind of blind ambition and the struggle between right and wrong. Through the final shot of the film, the boat takes on an almost supernatural presence, reconfiguring itself as something more akin to the car in John Carpenter's film Christine (1983); i.e. an actual cursed object of pure malevolence! Such thinking is in keeping with the line of thought expressed by the father (John Benfield) of these two characters when he says: "the only ship certain to come in is one with black sails."

The sense of tragedy here is stated through Allen's frequent allusions to Shakespeare and the Greeks; where the dark-hearted morality of the characters is further suggested to by the play (a story within the story), and the deliberate references to the legend of Faust. Through this, the relationship between the two brothers and their deceitful, manipulative uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson) could be seen as a sort-of modern-day retelling of that particular story's moral core. More import however is the influence of classical film-noir; an unconventional reference point for Allen and one that he approaches on his own terms, with none of the ironic post-modern self-references favoured by the majority of mainstream American filmmakers. The noir-elements are there throughout, but are subdued by Allen's characteristic late-period naturalism; loose framing, characters interacting both in and out of shot, near-natural light, etc.

One can only wonder how different the critical reaction to this film might have been had Allen decided to shoot it as an exercise in genre deconstruction; something closer to the Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino project Grindhouse (2007), or the Coen brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), where the director could deliberately play up to the codes and conventions of low-budget Hollywood crime pictures of the 1950s, incorporating a laconic voice-over track, black and white cinematography and a Miles Davis jazz-score. Which poses a question: would some of the more hostile critics have been able to better appreciate the intelligence of what Allen was attempting to achieve if such superficial stylistic flourishes had been used to diffuse some of the more straight-faced sincerity of the drama as it is?

Speculative 'film-noir' comparison shots created by the blog author for the purposes of illustration:

The direct-references may have worked brilliantly in an earlier film like Stardust Memories (1980) or Shadows and Fog (1991), where the creative nods to Fellini or German Expressionism were used to help identify the world of the film - establishing an immediate cinematic shorthand for the audience before getting into the complexities of the plot - but that's not what Cassandra's Dream is about. At this point in his career, Allen is too much of a master to engage in this kind of superfluous homage. Instead, like the great French filmmaker Jacques Rivette, he is a director who takes the elements apparent in the script and uses them to complement the more personal or philosophical ideas that are central to the development of his characters; making the same kind of film again and again - from Melinda and Melinda (2004) to Scoop (2006) to Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) - regardless of its genre of theme.

In the visual sense, the framing of characters throughout seems to be significant in emphasising the relationship between these two brothers and the particular choices they make. In the very first scene, Allen has positioned at least one of his characters on the wrong-side of "something." For example, in this particular frame, Ian, already behind bars, is gesturing towards the boat, convincing Terry that buying the vessel is the right thing to do, just as he will eventually convince him, against all better judgement, to commit a murder.

Later in the film, Allen has both of his protagonists framed behind a set of bars, as if to further convey the notion of characters on the wrong-side of the law.

The film is less heavy-handed with its references to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866) than Match Point, or even Crimes and Misdemeanors, but that isn't to say that such elements aren't there to be appreciated. The appearance of the police at the very end of the film - adding a sort of Greek chorus motif to bring the story to a close, reiterating the central plot-points and the actual theme (for lack of a better word) - is a consciously literary device, and brings to mind the similar use of the police at the end of Match Point. The murder, when it does occur, is perhaps even colder and more brutal than the double murder in the film aforementioned, if only for its particular context. We know these characters and expect them to make the right choice. We get a glimpse of their victim, who seems, on first impression, to be a genuinely nice guy; someone who is successful at what he does, but who hasn't forgotten where he comes from; still taking the time to visit with his ailing mother before jetting off for his next destination. We can infer from conversational snippets that he's attempting to "do the right thing", making him the complete opposite of the two central characters, or their uncle, whose corrupting spirit forever hangs over them.

In the development of the narrative, the old-fashioned deal with the devil motif is well used, with the suavely manipulative but no less abusive presentation of Uncle Howard offering one of the great contemporary film-noir villains; a man who is looked on by his family as a hero, but has nonetheless reaped the rewards of his existence through violence and intimidation. The connection between Uncle Howard and Ian in particular is sketched out in several scenes, as Ian proves himself to be a character much closer to Martin Landau in Crimes and Misdemeanors, or Jonathan Rhys Meyers in Match Point: someone capable of committing a murder, but also capable of walking away from it. Without the character of Terry, the film would have been just another retread of these earlier films. It is only through Terry that Allen is able to provide the moral contrast that those others films lacked; bringing the emphasis back to the family, the suggestion that "family is family, blood is blood", and how such ideas can be distorted when it's murder for personal preservation.

The differences between these characters are suggested through two individual moments of reflection, which also establish the attitudes of these two related, though very different characters. In the first we have Ian, draped in a towel - having just made love to the waitress that works at his dad's restaurant - surrounded by his possessions. The character is defined by these objects, which illustrate the superficial obsession with status; the PowerBook, the CDs, the flat screen television that captures his reflection. In contrast, the image of Terry, already broken and pensive, overwhelmed by the floral-print wall paper and homely furnishings, is trapped by this ordinary domestic milieu, when all he really wants is to provide a better life for him and his girlfriend. The disparity between these two related characters is what drives the story forwards, pushing these two characters beyond their own personal limitations until the bleak catastrophe of the final.

Although the film works incredibly well as a conventional thriller, or perhaps even as a continuation of the theme explored in the two films previously mentioned, the best way to approach Cassandra's Dream, in my opinion, is as a film about ideas. A film where the relationships between characters or the references to certain literary standards, is continually suggesting new ways of looking at these scenes, or other potential stories that are suggested beyond the more conventional crime/drama narrative. Once such story could focus on the relationship between Ian and Terry's respective girlfriends Angela (Hayley Atwell) and Kate (Sally Hawkins), and how their lives may continue, together or apart, after the inevitably shocking discovery of the film's final act.

The two scenes we see from the play offer clues to this story, if only through staging. In the first scene, we have two male characters, one scheming, the other oblivious, and a woman reclining on the bed. The woman in the play is a representation for the "something else" that these characters, specifically Ian, are striving for. In the second scene, the bed is empty; two women sit at the table, alone, just as Angela and Kate are left at the end of the film.

Wanderlust

2010-05-26T00:23:00.011+01:00

A song about embracing the new - about the restless pursuit of the next great adventure - presented with a visual accompaniment that achieves the expression of the unbelievable, the astounding, or the thrill of the unknown. Wanderlust, in its purest form, is an adventure in eight-minutes; a breathless, exhausting trek down river, where the forward motion of this character is matched by the driving rhythms of the music itself. Kraftwerk-like rhythms that recall something like Trans-Europe-Express (1977); where the sense of movement, atmosphere and place is the thing that draws us in, maintains our interest throughout the duration of this narrative (aural, visual or imaginary), and leaves us hopelessly searching for that next rush of discovery when the song comes to an inevitable close.

The particular yearning for a new place or the need to travel, explore and do other things is largely a metaphor for Björk's career as a whole. In this sense, the video could be seen as a dramatised fantasy version of her own life and vocation; beginning with this small, exotic figure discovering something extraordinary that comes from her own connection with nature; a connection that will grow and transform into an uncontrollable entity, forcing her to leave the security of home and taking her on this remarkable journey - where she is carried along through uncertain waters by the support of others, where she fights a battle with herself, where she is plagued by various obstacles that attempt to harm and hinder - before eventually making the ultimate plunge into the unfamiliar; into the great unknown.

This beautifully made clip is everything a film like Avatar (2009) promised to deliver, but couldn't; a fully immersive 3D experience, which - through the sheer power of its imagery and imagination - transports us to another world.

Wanderlust directed by Isaiah Saxon & Sean Hellfritsch, 2008:

Waltz with Bashir

2010-05-19T08:56:00.014+01:00

Obviously, one could dismiss the general appearance of the film as a clear gimmick; something to attract an audience. The film would have been no less powerful or engrossing had it been presented as a series of traditional 'talking-head' sequences recorded onto film or DV. However, in presenting the film as a work of animation, the director, Ari Folman, is able to better express the purely sensory notion of memory abstracted by time. These moments of recollection, or reflection, which occur around the narrative, like the ripples in the ocean during the character's initial dream, are embellished by the general sense of horror that alters the perspective of those experiencing periods of great conflict, and distorted by the back-and-forth unravelling of the 'Chinese whispers' style narrative; where the search for the truth of "what really happened?", becomes an investigation into the past.

It is, first and foremost, a personal film about this character, this 'avatar' for the director, and the various stories within stories that grow and transform the understanding of events as he interviews those that knew him twenty years ago; who experienced the conflict, and can therefore better explain the holes in his memory, or why he's blocked out those intangible recollections to begin with. Therefore, the film, at its most immediate level, is a detective story by way of the documentary. However, through the power and pull of these image that are both primitive and beyond anything else we've ever witnessed (at least in terms of conventional cinema), the experience is transformed into something beyond mystery; beyond documentary. The film becomes an experience, like the dream itself, where the actual process of viewing the film - these images - is as life changing for the audience as it is for the central character.

Waltz with Bashir directed by Ari Folman, 2008:

It is a film that goes beyond the trite categorisations of the "war film", and yet, at the same time, it is one of the great "war films" ever produced. Great in the same way that Jean-Luc Godard's Notre musique (Our Music, 2004) is great; in the sense that it dispenses with the usual nonsense of a film like Saving Private Ryan (1998) or Rambo (2008), etc, where the filmmakers portray the horror of war by presenting the battle as something visceral, explosive or exhilarating. These are films where the audience already knows who the villain is, and where the good die heroes. Instead, Waltz with Bashir creates its narrative from the recollections of real people with real experiences. Drama and anti-war commentary created, not through spectacle, but through the memory of events.

Rambo directed by Sylvester Stallone, 2008:

Notre musique directed by Jean-Luc Godard, 2004:

These experiences define the film and make our own experiences with it entirely unforgettable. I'm thinking specifically of three scenes.

1) The young solder having to swim to safety after his tank is ambushed and his friends are killed. He sees the lights in the distance and swims towards them, not sure what to expect, too tired to care. When he reaches the beach, he finds the same squad that abandoned him during the initial attack. Whereas before he felt animosity towards these comrades for leaving him out in the open, he now feels an incredible sense of regret for leaving his own fallen brothers and attempting to find safety. Propelled by that memory of his mother (a memory within a memory) that will break the heart of any viewer who is a first-born son, or, as in my case, an only child.

2) The ambush in the plantation, where the soldier with the RPG that is cut down in an explosion of sniper fire, turns out to be a young boy, not even a teenager.

3) The experience of the war correspondent who initially saw the war as filtered through his camera's lens; transforming the horror and the bloodshed into moments of great poetry and heroism. However, when he arrives at a scene where a group of horses have been maimed and murdered, the filter can no longer work, and he's suddenly overwhelmed by the unbelievable monstrosity of this conflict; the destruction of such incredible beauty.

Waltz with Bashir directed by Ari Folman, 2008:

It is obvious throughout that this is a film of staggering contradictions; where moments of poetry are transformed or distorted by images of unforgiving brutality; or where images of unforgiving brutality are transformed or distorted by moments of incredible poetry. The dream itself is unforgettable; Folman and two other soldiers float in the ocean, watching the city of Beirut, lit by an ethereal yellow glow. There's a touch of Lars von Trier's The Element of Crime (1984) about these images; not simply in the emphasis on the water or the superficial murkiness of the colour scheme (that shared vision of the post-world-war devastation), but in the abstraction of reality; a slowing down of time, distorting it, so that we're seeing these events as if looking down at our own lifeless body. Sparks of light reflect in the ripples as the three men emerge from the water, naked, entranced by the strange show of light. It is only at the end of the film that we discover the true horror behind this beauty; the light of a thousand flares shot into the night sky to better aid the soldiers in their massacre of these civilians.

The Element of Crime directed by Lars von Trier, 1984:

Waltz with Bashir directed by Ari Folman, 2008:

I'm not going to pretend that I understood the entire political background of this film. Many of these events took place before I was born, in a country I've never visited. However, the real genius of Folman's film is in its perfect evocation of a time and place - specifically Israel, in the early 1980s - presented, not as it actual was, but as the director remembers it, or experienced it. The music and fashions are recognisable of the period, but juxtaposed against the tangible sense of how the experience of war has transformed the world around it, meaning that even the most ordinary or commonplace of activities have associations to the bloodshed and confusion.

There are images of war found in everything; in video arcades, in pop songs: Enola Gay, by OMD; This is Not a Love Song, by PiL. The hazy movements of an attractive girl at the discothèque have the same surreal expression of force and exuberance as the bodies of the soldiers as they're riddled with bullets. These associations, of memory/experience, like something approaching post-traumatic stress disorder for this character attempting to readjust or come to terms with what he witnessed two decades before, are unknowable to those of us that have never experienced a war first-hand, but they hit us on an emotional level that is absolutely immediate.

Some may attempt to define the film beyond such vague appraisals, demanding a definitive explanation as to what it says, whose side is it on, how much of this commentary we can accept as fact... but all of this is beside the point. Waltz With Bashir is a film that exists on several levels: as a film about memory; as an investigation into the past; as a political satire; as a character study; as a work of historical fiction; as a sensory experience; as a nightmare on film; as a affirmation of peace; as a reminder of the unsung loss. Above all else, however, Waltz With Bashir is challenging, personal, thought-provoking cinema that transcends boundaries, defies classification. It is both an experience, and a necessary, purging rite.

The Quiet Man

2010-05-08T23:04:00.010+01:00

John Ford's Academy Award winning film The Quiet Man (1952) is, in many ways, a story about place and the rediscovery of it. In the film, the expatriate Irish-American Sean Thornton (John Wayne) returns to the village of 'Innisfree' to reclaim his family home. However, his journey has less to do with the actual reclaiming of the property and more to do with the rediscovery of the past through a literal journey in a time. This place, where the character was born and where he eventually hopes to die, is significant, but is somewhere that has only previously existed in the memory and imagination. A second-hand Ireland passed down through the tall tales and fond reminisces of parents and grandparents, where the greens are a little too green, the people a little too broad and the atmosphere closer to caricature. It is Ford's Ireland as much as it is the Ireland of Thornton; this larger than life place presented to us in an idealised fashion that has no bearing on the actual Ireland as it existed in 1952, where the director goes to great lengths to exaggerate every detail, as memories are exaggerated in the mind.

Our first glimpse of this traditional Ireland - a horse and cart, signalling the switch from the modern to the old-fashioned - is shared with the central character, as both he and we catch a glimpse of it through the railway station window. In the literal sense, the framing of this shot as a window into another world becomes an invitation, both to the character and to the audience. This horse and cart are therefore not only a reminder of the archaic, or the out-dated, but a means of transportation, from our world into the next.