The Eclipse

Still Life

In March, I was designated a key worker. This means that while much of the country is on lockdown, I'm one of the many people still making the commute in to work. I argued that the work I was doing was inessential. That any part of my job that was essential could be done from home, and anything that couldn't be done from home should be postponed due to the current government guidelines around social distancing. I work at a hospital. I'm not medical staff, nor do I fulfill any of the great litany of other important roles, such as porter, cleaner, security, catering, pharmacy or IT, to name a few. My role is creative and largely administrative. I'm not going to flatter myself; it's not essential.

Like a lot of people, the experience of the past two months has had a profound effect on my mental health and wellbeing. Every conversation is now charged with discussions around Covid-19. Headlines scream from every news site or social media platform about the great changes that the world has undergone over the course of the year so far. It's easy to become overwhelmed by the fear of infection, death and the potential loss of friends and loved ones, however, it's not just the realities of life under lockdown that cause such stress, but the way the course of life has been distorted and overturned.

As I ventured out for my first day of work after the lockdown restrictions were introduced, the thing that caused me the greatest anxiety was the sense of loneliness; the alienation of being one of only two or three people riding the train to work, when once it would've been packed with fellow commuters. The empty buses and barren streets that I follow on my way to the hospital, or the general lack of people on site, the locked doors, the added security, each put me in mind of every post-apocalyptic horror film I could ever imagine, from The Last Man on Earth (1964) and Dawn of the Dead (1978) to Morning Patrol (1987) and 28 Days Later (2002). The feeling of solitude and disconnection was incredible.

The Last Man on Earth [Sidney Salkow, 1964]:

Morning Patrol [Nikos Nikolaidis, 1987]:

28 Days Later [Danny Boyle, 2002]:

It wasn't just genre films that this experience put me in mind of. When I think now about the first week going to work after the state of quarantine was declared, I was most reminded of the final sequence of director Michelangelo Antonioni's great masterwork, L'eclisse (1962).

One could argue that Antonioni was putting social distancing and self-isolation on screen decades before the concept achieved historical recognition. His best films, from Il Grido (1957) to The Passenger (1976), are each about characters in conflict with the world and unable to settle. A backdrop of alienation or an impending crisis is often used as a projection of the rift within the lives of these characters as they struggle to conform, find peace, or accept their own sense of self. This was certainly true of L'eclisse, which chronicles the affair between a young bourgeois woman from an affluent part of Rome and a successful stockbroker, but uses the relationship to hint at weightier, more existential themes.

The rifts in the relationship between these characters and the crisis they face is mirrored by the world of the film, with its stock market crash and allusions to a potential nuclear war propelling the film towards a final sequence that remains one of the most extraordinary in the history of cinema. Departing from conventional uses of language, both spoken and "cinematic", Antonioni instead suggests something almost pre-apocalyptic. The film slows to a stop, the atmosphere becomes labored and pregnant with the anticipation of something cataclysmic, and there is a sense of the society collapsing in on itself, becoming inert and inarticulate, regressing or ascending to a more primitive, elemental state.

L'eclisse (The Eclipse) [Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962]:

When I first saw Antonioni's film over a decade ago, I remember quite vividly the effect this sequence of images had on me, and how transformative the film was on both an emotional and psychological level. Going outside into the back garden of my parents' house and feeling the quiet stillness of the suburban scene, I felt, in a most significant way, that the world was both larger and smaller than I could ever imagine. Changed by the experience of viewing, I felt overwhelmingly that my place within the world was little more than an insignificant speck, no greater or more important than the rustling leaves or the tweeting birds that were my only reminder that this seeming simulacrum of existence was still life.

I now have this same feeling when I travel to work. The same sense of the world being at once expansive, overwhelming in how vast and unknowable it actually is, and at the same time being claustrophobic or fenced in. The same feeling of insignificance, of alienation, of displacement, of the recognizable "everyday" reality as we once knew it breaking down into something strange and unusual, or of the portent of some even greater cataclysmic event just readying itself to plunge the world into further silence.

At this time, I think about the most vulnerable members of society and I hope they're okay. The elderly, people with disabilities, people without work or homes, all struggling with the same fears, anxieties and uncertainties. I think about the key workers putting themselves at risk. I think about how difficult it must be for children to adapt, and the impact that this period will have on their psychological development. Whatever happens, it's important to remember that we're all in this together. Stay safe.

Superheroes

Or: why no one is waiting for The Avengers to save the day

If one positive is to come out of the current Covid-19 crisis, at least from an entertainment perspective, then let it be a total and utter disillusionment with the prevailing "superhero" cinema that has dominated the cultural discourse for the past twenty years.

At a time when real heroes are stepping forward to keep our societies from grinding to a halt or descending into outright anarchy, how are we meant to thrill at the adventures of a bunch of rubber-clad cartoon characters who routinely save the planet by destroying large chunks of it?

Characters like Batman and Iron Man – intellectually gifted billionaires with questionable politics who respectively fight crime and extraterrestrial threat, but have no inner-lives, at least nothing that is in any way human or believable – or characters like Superman and Wonder Woman – who aren't even human, and as such teach us nothing about the sacrifices and hardships that real heroes face every day.

These caricatures, lionized in contemporary art and entertainment, would be completely ineffectual against the current issues facing humanity.

Marvel's The Avengers (Avengers Assemble) [Joss Whedon, 2012]:

In movies, when "The Avengers" or "The Justice League" save the world from some mad warmonger, or quell an extraterrestrial invasion by firing a blue beam of light into the sky, they routinely leave cities destroyed, businesses lost, and lives disrupted and upturned. Because these films, and by extension the comic books that inspire them, are devoid of reality and depth, we never see the cost of this destruction.

We don't see the businesses that failed because employees were unable to go to work. We don't see the resultant economic recession that hangs over our lives for the next two decades like a black cloud. We don't see the medical staff and emergency services stretched to capacity and having to deal with the fallout from these "superheroes" and their collateral damage. We don't see the death, the grief, the public mourning. We don't see the aftereffects of post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. We don't see the low paid but undoubtedly "key workers" that must risk their health and wellbeing to go to work each day, while the end of the world spectacle rages all around them.

What we get instead is hero worship directed towards the rich and privileged. Fictional characters who can only save the world against contrived and unnatural disasters that will literally never happen.

The real heroes aren't Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk, they're not Wonder Woman or Captain Marvel, and they're certainly not the Hollywood phonies that get paid $20 million a movie to stand in front of a greenscreen and play pretend. These people aren't saving the planet. They're self-isolating in their mansions, consoled by their wealth and celebrity, happy to sit this one out while the people that will never make half a million dollars in their entire lifetime risk life and limb to support us.

Behind the Scenes - Avengers: Infinity War [Joe & Anthony Russo, 2018]:

Photo credit: @Russo_Brothers

The next time you see a movie about some alien Übermensch, billionaire vigilante or genetically modified super soldier, ask yourself why we're not seeing our key workers depicted in the same manner. Why do we hold these ridiculous characters to a higher cultural esteem than any of the following?

All hospital staff, from doctors and nurses, surgeons and ward clerks, to cleaners, porters, security teams, IT operators, catering staff and more. Every one of them is vital to keeping our hospitals and emergency services running. Bus drivers, train drivers, delivery drivers, ambulance crews, police officers, firefighters, shelf stackers, checkout workers, cleaning operatives, funeral arrangers, coroners, childcare workers, farm workers, fruit and veg pickers, pharmacists... these are some of the lowest paid and denigrated jobs in society, and yet they're the absolute lifeblood of our society.

Absolute nobodies, like Josh Brolin, Robert Downey Jr. and Gal Gadot, or any other Hollywood celebrity playacting for a living, can accumulate a collective net worth of anywhere up to $100 million, while those who work for our emergency services get paid around 14-15k a year, and our cleaners and supermarket workers draw a minimum wage, if that! It's disgusting.

Yes, these films provide escapism, which is a necessary opiate from the oft-crushing realities that we face, however, this particular sub-genre of films has been allowed to proliferate to the detriment of stories about real heroes and the real challenges that we, as a global society, have encountered.

Morocco

Thoughts on the film by Josef von Sternberg

I wasn't as taken with Morocco (1930) as I was by the later collaboration between actor Marlene Dietrich and director Josef von Sternberg, the masterful Shanghai Express (1932).

While essentially similar in their themes, tones and intentions, Shanghai Express seemed to have a lot more going on beneath the surface; not merely connecting its melodrama to ideas of war, displacement, clashes of culture, and the self-reflexive relationship between the train journey that defines the narrative and the conventions of the narrative cinema itself, but having those elements become a part of the psychology of its characters. The themes, the backdrop of civil war, the divided country, the clashes between people, weren't simply plot devices, they were an external expression or projection of the internal, elemental dramas that the characters faced.

By contrast, Morocco seems far more straightforward. While one could argue that the titular setting, the backdrop of the Rif War and the surrounding issues of colonialism and white/western exploitation, fulfil a similar function as the Shanghai setting of that later work, I felt there was a much greater disconnect here between these elements and the more conventional melodrama that rests at the heart of the film.

Morocco [Josef von Sternberg, 1930]:

While Shanghai Express felt mysterious – its band of characters, some sinister, others played for comic relief, keeping the development of the plot compelling through their dialogues and interactions – Morocco feels locked into the relationship between its three central characters; the narrowed scope creating a more stifling and hermetic atmosphere that for me was never entirely engaging.

Adapted from the play "Amy Jolly" by the writer Benno Vigny, Morocco feels comparatively more theatrical than Shanghai Express. In keeping with its origins and ambitions, the film plays with themes of performance, voyeurism, objectification and the role of the characters as individuals hiding behind masks, uniforms and personae, while keeping the drama contained to specific, single locations that facilitate easy introductions, providing a place for several characters to meet at once.

The nightclub at the start of the film is a good example of this. As well as explicitly connecting the film and Dietrich's role to the actor's first collaboration with von Sternberg, The Blue Angel (1930), the initial setting becomes a self-contained world; a microcosm, much like the fantasy Morocco that the filmmakers evoke, that becomes the center stage for this drama to be enacted.

The Blue Angel [Josef von Sternberg, 1930]:

Morocco [Josef von Sternberg, 1930]:

The theatricality of the film, its "staginess" or artificiality, isn't necessarily a criticism. Many great films have drawn on theatrical limitation to powerful effect, from Peter Brook's adaptation of The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (1967) to films like Rope (1948) by Alfred Hitchcock, Twelve Angry Men (1957) by Sidney Lumet and Dogville (2003) by Lars von Trier, among others. However, Morocco is so stiffly mannered and bluntly expositional in its emotional entanglements, that the staginess becomes a barrier to engaging with the emotions of the film.

The effect is almost Brechtian; jarring the audience out of the film's romantic or dramatic reverie, creating a distancing effect that is most likely unintentional. Rather than depict a functioning human being, the characters become embodiments of specific roles, professions, or personifications of class. In short, they have a symbolic function, representing ideas rather than presenting fully rounded characters. Their dialogue tells us what these individuals are thinking at all times, announcing emotions in blunt, declarative statements, not like human beings, but like actors in a play.

In this aspect of the film's construction I was reminded of one of my favourite filmmakers, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Fassbinder would effectively remake von Sternberg's earlier, aforementioned The Blue Angel, with one of his final works, Lola (1981), but it was in seeing Morocco that I realized where much of Fassbinder's later aesthetic was born.

Finding elements of von Sternberg's work in everything from Despair (1978) to Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980) and through to his final film Querelle (1982), the influence was undoubtable. The same complex system of blocking, the moving camera, the mirror symbolism and its resultant themes of projection and self-reflection, are consistent between the two filmmakers' works. Similarly, the instances of characters confined and imprisoned by set-design, illustrating the way these same characters have been ensnared by a world and its responsibilities, creating a further shorthand for themes of possession, desire and objectification.

Lola [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981]:

Querelle [Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982]:

Fassbinder's work, particularly from the middle-to-later period of his short career, stands as superior to a film like Morocco, able to go deeper into the same themes of sadness, disenchantment and the cruelties of exploitation and pity that human beings are capable of, without being constrained by the necessary and unambiguous morality that films of Morocco's period were expected to promote. Regardless, we should respect the influence and the legacy that von Sternberg's work clearly had on Fassbinder's greater films.

Despite my muted response to Morocco, at least in comparison to other related works, there is still much to admire about the film. Two aspects of its characterization and direction stand out as incredibly progressive. These elements transcend the weaker aspects of the film and elevate it as both an important and historically significant work within the context of still topical discussions on sexuality and genderfluidity in the contemporary cinema.

In an early introduction to Dietrich's character, the disillusioned nightclub singer Mademoiselle Amy Jolly, the actor appears dressed in a man's tuxedo. Challenging notions of femininity verses masculinity, Dietrich commands the stage as she performs a musical number, directly provoking the mostly male audience that gather in the nightclub, and in turn, gathered within the cinema. As the sequence progresses, she even kisses another woman; a bold gesture in the context of 1930s Hollywood cinema, and one that would have been rendered unthinkable after the implementation of the Hays Code a few years later.

Morocco [Josef von Sternberg, 1930]:

As a sequence, it remains a key moment in the history of film; one that might have been the focus of this entire essay had it not been endlessly written about and discussed by writers and critics far more insightful and significant than me.

The use of the costume and what it represents, along with the lesbian kiss, say so much about ideas of gender, sexuality, identity as a performative role, and the imbalance of power that exists between men and women. In donning the clothes conventionally thought of as male, Dietrich's character takes on traits that are now identified as being related to notions of hyper-masculinity, or male privilege, exerting a sexual dominance and control over another woman in an unwanted and aggressive way. At the same time, she presents an image that is at once defiantly feminist while remaining still outside of the conventions of gender, presenting the initial image of a woman that is both confident and in control.

While the stylized Moroccan setting, created on a Hollywood soundstage, is inauthentic and perhaps insensitive in its reduction of a living culture and its people to a level of props and glamorized exotica, these other aspects of the film still feel progressive and ahead of their time.

Daughters of the Dust

Thoughts on the film by Julie Dash

In the trailer for the film's 25^th anniversary re-release, a quote attributed to the international movie magazine and website 'Little White Lies' calls Daughters of the Dust: "Extraordinary… America's answer to Terence Davies or Derek Jarman." While the comparison seems fair, the beach scenes specifically recalling Jarman's The Garden (1990) from the same period, a much closer point of comparison for me would be the fellow American filmmaker Terrence Malick.

Like Malick at his very best, Julie Dash's film is lyrical and poetic. Dispensing with plot in the conventional sense, the film is structured more like a song or verse. The story, rich and important, illustrates an actual period of African American history and culture that may be obscure to many audiences, but the presentation of the story is often non-linear, suggested both by images and the associations created by the juxtaposition of images. As such, the story is both enriched and clouded by a myriad of other narratives that surround it, refracting it, like the glass fragments of the kaleidoscope seen earlier in the film.

Here, the past, present and future collide, as stories, both personal and political, natural and supernatural, unfurl and entwine in a vivid, hallucinatory approach that anticipates subsequent films, such as The Thin Red Line (1998) and The Tree of Life (2011).

Daughters of the Dust [Julie Dash, 1991]:

Set in 1902, Daughters of the Dust tells the story of three generations of Gullah women, either existing on or returning to Saint Helena Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, as they prepare to migrate North on the mainland. The themes of home and homecoming are palpable here as the filmmaker uses the scenario to comment on the displacement of African Americans, both in their initial displacement when kidnapped from the countries of their birth and sold into captivity and servitude, and in the subsequent displacement felt as they attempt to reconcile their own rich cultures and traditions with a world that is foreign and ever-changing.

Refusing to pander to conventional modes of narrative storytelling, Dash uses the parameters of her story to instead create a montage of bold, iconographic images, which stress movement, community and the relationship between the characters and their environment. The natural world becomes as much a character as the individuals on-screen, while the imagery speaks to a figurative expression of certain key themes. Themes such as the contrasting and conflicting perspectives of freedom and imprisonment defined by the movement of bodies against the sea, the clash between tradition and modernity reflected in the juxtaposition of early twentieth-century fashions against a landscape unchanged by time, the symbol of the family, defined as it is by an actual tree – its roots and branches emblematic of something like "home" – and the notion of the past and present as specters forever hunting these characters as figures within the frame.

Brought to life so skillfully by writer and director Dash and her cinematographer Arthur Jafa, the images of the film are designed to express these themes, not merely pictorially, as illustrations of the text, but as multi-layered visual narratives that communicate a great deal about the relationships between characters, their world, and their relationship to actual historical events. To suggest that Daughters of the Dust is one of the most beautiful and intelligently directed works of American cinema from the past fifty years, in this context, would not be an understatement.

Daughters of the Dust [Julie Dash, 1991]:

Taking influence from the writings of authors like Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, Daughters of the Dust is a poetic, dreamlike film that seems to exist without cinematic precedence. Naturally, there are brief similarities to other filmmakers, however, these similarities exist within the wider influences of literature and history.

If we were to narrow our eyes and squint at the film, then we could perhaps find similarities to Theo Angelopoulos, particularly in some of the longer held moments on the beach, or in the presentation of a band of roaming characters seemingly occupying different periods of history, like in The Travelling Players (1975) or The Hunters (1977). We could perhaps even see elements of Andrei Tarkovsky in the more personal or elliptical works, such as Mirror (1975) and Nostalghia (1983), or Days of Heaven (1978), by the aforementioned Terrence Malick, which have a similar sense of poetics and a focus on the elemental forces, the earth, wind, fire and water, that define the natural world.

The Travelling Players [Theo Angelopoulos, 1975]:

Days of Heaven [Terrence Malick, 1978]:

Daughters of the Dust [Julie Dash, 1991]:

Regardless of any similarities to other works, Dash's film has its own mythology, and perspective on a period of history that feels authentic and deeply felt. Its story, imagery and the motivations behind events, are not the result of some post-modern appropriation, but are born out of a genuine engagement with a culture and its history. In short, the images speak! In montage, they become like a chant delivered in unison; the voices calling from history, from gravestones, from the landscape itself. The voice of the trees, the insects, the ocean; each a witness to human history, and the histories of these characters that define their place in the narrative.

Their presence, like ghosts or memories conjured up from the distant past, made real by our own engagement with remembrance, gives the film an eerie, often dreamlike quality, suggestive of the influence of the "southern gothic." The collision between history and magical realism, and the oft jarring juxtapositions between old fashioned language, costumes, customs and ideas, with more modern filmmaking attitudes and techniques, become expressive of the film's central ideology of "the past as prologue." Its depiction of this period, its characters and events, is only the beginning of a story that is still being lived.

Finding a tone that is sensitive but authoritarian, channeling the different voices of individual characters in order to present different moods, feelings, colours and intentions, Daughters of the Dust is a singular and remarkable work by a filmmaker never able to develop the kind of "auturist" body of work that other American filmmakers have been privileged to. Elliptical and fragmentary, it is a film that develops out of a series of still life observations that are as beautiful in their quality of light and composition as any of the great masters of pictorial art.