A Viewing List for Twenty-Thirteen
Third part of my on-going "Year in Film" retrospective. It's taken much longer to complete than
anticipated, largely because most of the films collected here had already been written
about in various "Key Film" comments posted at different intervals between
July and October of the previous year. As
such, the real difficulty was in editing these earlier comments into something
more approachable and coherent without
losing the original context of what I was trying to say. There was also the general cynicism attached
to re-posting comments that already existed and how this, in itself, seemed a pointless waste of time for anyone
willing to spend even a few short moments browsing through the pages of the
blog. However, in the end I couldn't think
of any other way to acknowledge these particular films as part of the same chronological
structure without regurgitating these past observations and remarks. This is perhaps the greatest drawback of the capsule
review. Had I written these comments as "proper
reviews", full-length and individual, I could have just linked back to the
original post. Instead, I've ended up
with something like this...
In truth, I'm not really very happy with the writing here. It could be better. I've gone over it and over it for the last two
weeks (trying to make it "work"), but I almost feel as if I'm now just wasting
time that could be better spent on finishing the fourth and final part of the
series, which is currently more important to me. It's important because it covers a number of
films from the last few months of 2013 that I was unable to write about at the
time. It's important because I want to
bring to a sufficient close this viewing log/key films project - which
regrettably lost some momentum towards the end of the year (a result of
technical difficulties and my work) - and I can't adequately sign-off on this
until I've included some reference to these absent films. If nothing else, it'll be an opportunity to
finally add some new content to the blog (not just cannibalising the things
I've written about before). With a bit
of luck, it might also segue into getting Lights in the Dusk back on target with
the completion of several different bits and pieces still unfinished (mostly
visual: studying the frame, etc) and maybe even a return to the "Key
Films" project, if I can find the time.
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Perfect World [Tom Elling, 1990]:
Initial viewing, 6th of June, 2013.
The film as mysterious object.
A waking dream unfolding like the fevered reverie of some ailing somnambulist
as it moves between the layers of consciousness and unconsciousness; between age
and memory, suspended, eternal, like a snapshot of an isolated incident; an
event distorted by the blistered pangs of reality or by the wailings of lost time. The entire film - in its progression through
moments that appear like a projection of images displayed on a black &
white television monitor, reflected back again (against the rippled waters of a
mucky lake) - seems unknowable and elusive.
A stream of consciousness, all flowing, like images, through sleep. Like the lapping waters of the actual stream
seen early in the film, which carries upon its writhing back a suitcase from
the past into the present, connecting this recollection of a childhood idyll to
the reality of two sisters lost within a post-apocalyptic landscape of jagged
industrial structures; a rolling tableau of cavernous spaces made dank with
decay.
The written observations here may read like exaggerated nonsense
- a run of purple prose that says literally nothing of real relevance about the
experience of the work or what the story is actually "about" - but Elling's
experiment is the kind of strange and transfixing film that seems to lend
itself to this type of critical assessment.
It passes over the heads of a collective audience (or it did for this
particular viewer) like a wave of feeling; the images, in collaboration with
the text, evoking something ominous, oppressive, sensitive but still loaded
with the anticipation of a cataclysmic concern.
It states very little, in concrete terms, allowing the audience to
instead project meaning upon its vague and symbolic imagery as we read between
the lines of a lyrical evocation spoken by the characters throughout. It is a film defined by an almost drifting
ambience; a feeling of weightlessness, the images telling a story but in a very
cold, fragmented way; where what we see on screen - when interpreted against
the words on the soundtrack - suggests intention, but remains almost impossible
to define.
I can only speculate on what it all means, but it's a
fascinating experience. A poetic elegy
in which the two central characters lament the fall of civilisation as the
world once again prepares itself for a global catastrophe; the experience of
these characters as children during the second world war becoming the tortured spectre
still haunting their adult lives.
References, veiled or direct, are made to the Gulf War, the onset of
AIDS, feminism, mental illness and the scars of the Holocaust, but it's that
haunting, dreamlike sense of characters wandering through the charred bones of
a lost civilisation that seems to instil the film with a genuine weight. The directorial debut of Tom Elling, the
talented cinematographer responsible for the early films of Lars von Trier -
specifically Image of Relief (1982) and The Element of Crime (1984) - Perfect
World shares with von Trier's work a dense and elaborate audio-visual approach
defined by the influences of Andrei Tarkovsky, Orson Welles and Carl Theodor Dreyer. Like their films, it presents an atmospheric and
hypnotic reflection of a world in decline.
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Hi, Mom! [Brian De Palma, 1970]:
Initial viewing, 18th of June, 2013.
The 'self-reflexivity' of the title, Hi, Mom! - a verbal
expression used by someone when appearing on-camera to acknowledge the presence
of the unseen observer; the audience, typically hidden behind the screen - is
central to the film's aesthetic and theoretical approach. It establishes the concept of the "viewer"
and "viewed" as it has developed throughout subsequent De Palma films
- such as Body Double (1984), Snake Eyes (1998) and The Black Dahlia (2006) -
but with the emphasis on radical politics and social satire giving the tonality
of the film a much darker, more abrasive edge.
By acknowledging the existence of the viewer (the title, "Hi, Mom!",
again seems an obvious gesture), De Palma is essentially looking to shame the
audiences into realisation; accusing us - collectively speaking - of using our
position as viewers to hide from the harsh realities of life; to see the film
as a work of fiction, without questioning the more important themes
and ideas that give these images their subtext and intent.
As viewers, the vast majority of us sit safely in the cinema,
observing a recording of life projected back to us on the silver screen. Rather than interact with it, we detach
ourselves from the experience; reminding ourselves that the events are a façade
or fabrication; tragedy and turmoil as just another form of passive
entertainment. In this respect, the
title holds up a mirror to the audience, forcing us to recognise our own
submissiveness; turning the film (and its particular line of attack) against the
viewer, in protest. As a result, the presentation
of the central character, Jon Rubin - the amateur moviemaker, anarchist, voyeur
and now Vietnam veteran last seen in De Palma's earlier feature, Greetings
(1968) - becomes the obvious surrogate for the spectator. This man who watches the world through a
bedroom-window - the interior scenes of domestic living in the adjacent
building becoming like the channels on a television-set; each one presenting a
different narrative, a different theme - and records it with the aid of an 8mm
film camera. Through the act of
recording, De Palma is also introducing an element of self criticism, as Rubin
becomes more than just a manifestation of the viewer but of the filmmaker
himself. His own voyeurism and obsession
with turning moments into spectacles of pure cinematic expression through the process
of recording seems to underline the conception that real life is somehow only
significant when it's viewed through a screen.
As the film progresses, the obvious ode to Hitchcock and his
masterpiece Rear Window (1954) is interwoven with the influence of Jean-Luc
Godard; specifically his more political films of the early-to-mid 1960s. From Godard, De Palma takes the idea of the
image as a representation. Not a
reflection of reality, but what Godard called "the reality of the
reflection." This self-aware,
meta-textural concurrence, between the more internal psychology of Hitchcock
(the voyeurism, the obsession, etc) and the external didacticism of a film like
Le Petit Soldat (1963) or La Chinoise (1967), creates an outer "cinematic"
conflict that becomes expressive of the inner psychological conflict of the
central character. Here, the severity of
the final act and the emotional complexity of De Palma's approach (that
continual divergence between flippancy and sincerity), forces the audience to
question whether the character of Rubin is truly "mad" (or as mad as
he appears) or if his actions and intentions are merely symptomatic of the
madness of the modern world.
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Duvidha (The Dilemma) [Mani Kaul, 1973]:
Initial viewing, 21st of July, 2013.
The story of Duvidha is at first simple. A just-married couple travel by caravan
through the northern deserts on their way to start a new life. The editing throughout is jarring and
disruptive. A series of fragments, close-ups
intercut with freeze-frames, and the use of alternating film-stock to present a
discontinuous point of view. On the
soundtrack, male and female voices speak hidden thoughts, feelings and fears in
a way that draws our attention to the idea of the story as 'fable', but also to
the idea of looking back on something that has already taken place. While Kaul's direction suggests psychology, the voice-over talks of the supernatural; it introduces us to the
pivotal "ghost in the Banyan tree", dazzled by the unveiled face of the
film's delicate heroine. Later, this
ghost will take on the physical appearance of the absent husband; fooling his
wealthy parents and even seducing the lonesome wife.
As a parable, this suggests similarities to the Greek myth of
Alcmene's seduction by Zeus in the guise of her lover, Amphitryon; an illicit
tryst that would inevitably lead to the conception of Heracles. The development of the story here is similar
but not identical... While Zeus
concealed his identity from Alcmene, at least initially, the ghost of Kaul's
film is sincere in his intentions. The
wife is well aware that this "form" is not her husband, but in the
absence of the man, this spirit becomes her only true relief. That the woman eventually falls in love with
the ghost says a lot about the idea of identity - what it means to be human, to
be an individual - and of our own capacity to give and to receive love. Kaul uses this idea to create a further
commentary on the role of women in this society and the loneliness of women in
general.
The director breathes deeper life into the story by mixing
together allegory with neo-realism; finding an approach that combines the
naturalism of early Rossellini with a more "Bressonian" emphasis on
alienation (creating an authenticity through the removal of surplus adornments)
and as such transforming it into something that is both politically and
ethically more complex. Rather than treat the female protagonist as a
commodity, as the culture dictates, the spirit instead respects the woman and instils
in her this feeling of genuine love.
However, in a society as rigid and as structured as this, such blasphemy
(this obvious stand-in for adultery, as metaphor), can only lead to great despair. The time of suspended tranquillity, happiness
and contentment in the presence of the ghost is over, though their encounter,
as documented by Kaul's film, remains forever in the memory, or on the lips of an
inscrutable smile.
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Teodors [Laila Pakalniņa, 2006]:
Initial viewing, 25th of July, 2013.
Using direct sound and a static camera, Pakalniņa reinvents the
conventions of neo-realism, the documentary and the character study; capturing
without criticism a series of interactions and encounters that become, in
totality, like moments of still life.
The cutting of scenes distils time; reducing it to a series of moments
that exist without clarification, but are suggestive of something historic and
personally affecting. This approach
forces the audience into a state of contemplation, so that we think more deeply
about this man and about his life between the moments on screen. Those private moments that would give us an
even greater context to the solitude and the distance of Teodors against those
scenes of village life, but also of that contentment; the sense of satisfaction
and place.
Although leisurely in its observation, there is an intensity to
this focus, where the intercutting between long-shots illustrate the life
surrounding the character, while close-ups tell a story of time and
existence. This man, as both a presence
and personality, has become through age and wisdom a living reminder of the
struggles of a generation; its triumphs and its follies. The examination of the man - both as a figure
in the landscape or as a face in close-up, marked by old-age - brings the
history of this place into the present; reminding us of his struggle, but also
of the struggle of every age'd body, as a testament to their life's greatest
work. This particular interpretation is
communicated by the way the filmmaker watches, objectively. Never forcing our emotions or our commitment
to the material through the manipulation of the filmmaking form, but just letting
things drift...
It's only in the final shot that Pakalniņa breaks from this
routine, ending our encounter with this man (of humble origins) with a slow,
lingering crane shot; perhaps one of the most striking ascensions in all of
cinema. The movement of the camera -
from a discarded bottle cap half embedded in the soil, to the empty bench where
Teodors once sat and watched the world with hooded eyes, to the woodcutter
chopping down branches from a tree (to make a coffin perhaps), and beyond,
into the clouds and over the village - neither confirms nor clarifies the fate
of this character, but suggests something more profound. A sense of loss; an absence even, as delicate
and moving as the film itself.
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Emitaï (God of Thunder) [Ousmane Sembene, 1971]:
Initial viewing, 26th of July, 2013.
In the first scene of a pre-credit sequence that runs for almost
twenty-minutes in duration, a group of 'Jola' villagers from the Casamance
region of Senegal are rounded up and detained by a black militia working under
orders of the French. This is the first
of many instances where the oppression of these characters is depicted by
Sembène both as a reconstruction of actual events and as a figurative
commentary on the nature of Colonialism; where the flow of life is physically
disrupted, or overturned. As the action
unfolds, two children, hiding behind trees or in the thick rushes of the long
grass, become the eyes of the audience, on the outside, looking it; creating a natural
surrogate for our own perspective as strangers, witnessing this atrocity as if
a seeing it with the untainted innocence of a child.
In depicting the scene, Sembène uses documentary techniques to give
us a sense of urgency. Shooting unobtrusively
from the sidelines; his use of the long lens flattens the depth of field,
imprisoning these characters even further, cinematographically, against the
backdrop of the land. For the most part,
Sembène maintains this level of distance, observing rather than intruding -
capturing the action with a degree of naturalism that blurs the line between
reality and dramatisation - but in later scenes chooses instead to evoke the
beliefs and superstitions of the 'Jola', who call upon their own Gods in an
attempt to escape this burden of oppression and regime. In these sequences, blurred images and "psychedelic"
colour filters are used to suggest the presence of something strange and
otherworldly.
Such sequences stand out against the strict reality of the rest
of the film, yet seem intended to give the narrative a cultural authenticity;
presenting a level of commitment and solidarity, or even illustrating that
Sembène believes in these people; takes sides with them; that his work is true
to both the culture and their beliefs.
Throughout the film, as these characters reflect on the political
situation and use it to question the existence of God and the nature of belief
at a time when their own way of life has been disrupted beyond recognition, the
director is able to put into perspective the true price of this exploitation;
the condemnation of cultural imperialism at its most powerful and profound.
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The Corridor [Sharunas Bartas, 1995]:
Initial viewing, 29th of July, 2013.
The corridor of the title is located in a rundown tenement
building somewhere in Northern Europe.
It exists in a state of dilapidation; the ruin seemingly an outward
embodiment of both the physical and psychological decline of its central
characters. Likewise, the solitude of
these spaces, the cramped interiors, the moments of silence, the looks without
smiles, suggests a loneliness; a reminder that these characters have, in a
sense, been forgotten by the rest of the world; left to live out their days of
survival amongst the rust, the rubble and decay. Characters haunt the rooms of this building,
barely living, never speaking. Sad-eyed
characters, hopeful but wounded, rendered in a black & white that seems to
make real the subjective appearance of a world without colour; without wish.
Throughout the director's career, there has been a continual
emphasis on makeshift communities; people on the outskirts of a society brought
together through extreme circumstances.
In his greatest film, Freedom (2000), a trio of refugees looking to seek
asylum are instead washed up on a desolate beach that becomes a mirror to their
own desperation. There, it was the
physical expanse of the land and the limitless stretch of the horizon that
seemed to suggest the bitter ironies of the title; that dream of independence
and escape against a landscape of emptiness and despair. In The Corridor, it is the building itself
that takes the place of this beach, imprisoning its characters; holding them
hostage to poverty, unemployment, anger and ill-health; making the observation
of its central characters (and even the geographical context of the rooms
leading into rooms as personification of a particular, individual 'state')
entirely political.
Again, as with the sombre and occasionally hallucinatory
Freedom, as well as the filmmaker's subsequent work, the earthy and raw Seven
Invisible Men (2005), Bartas refuses to condemn his characters. Though their actions are sometimes shocking -
their demeanour one of bitterness and coarse abandon - there is also a sympathy
to the way he observes these men and women; framing them like icons of the
great painters, full of heft and dignity.
Never resorting to trivial sentimentality, the direction of the film
finds an honesty through observation, through the seemingly natural, almost
unrehearsed quality of the performances on screen. For those already familiar with the recent work
of Pedro Costa - Bones (1997), In Vanda's Room (2000) and Colossal Youth (2006),
etc - the seeds of that particular approach will be obvious in the design and
direction of Bartas's devastating film.
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Explorers
[Joe Dante, 1985]:
Initial viewing, 31st of July, 2013.
That the
film was never officially completed - the version currently available is
effectively a rough-cut prepared by Dante with a few post-production
alterations made by the studio to bring it to a sufficient close - gives the
movie a rather strange, almost surreal quality, as if the intention had been to
break as many rules as possible; subverting the genre, the film and even the
expectations of the viewer at every conceivable turn. This, as an idea, is itself consistent with
several of Dante's other, more cohesive films, such as The Howling (1981), Innerspace
(1987), Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990) and Matinee (1993), where the director
transcends the boundaries of genre (or genre iconography); breaking the
fourth-wall and inviting the process of filmmaking (or film-watching) into the
narrative as an effort to reveal the manipulations of the cinema - as a medium
- and the power of the recorded image to influence our perception of dreams.
Though less
obvious in this current release version, the concept of dreams and dreaming was
intended to be a central element to the narrative progression of Explorers,
which, tellingly enough, begins with a scene of its own main protagonist, young
teenager Ben Crandall, asleep in bed. This,
as an introduction, is often an unconscious clue that the story we're about to
see takes place in a world of dreams. In
true 'Dantean' fashion, the slumbering child basks in the glow of a bedroom
television-set-broadcast of a scene from The War of the Worlds (1953). The flickering stock-footage interruption acknowledges
the genre being utilised (science-fiction) in a self-aware gesture to the rules
of the game, but also introduces the more significant idea of recorded images (or
recorded memory) as a projection of our own insentient thoughts. This, as a creative hypothesis, will become
more significant during the film's final act, where the encounter between these
adolescent explorers and the alien life-forms that have called to them from the
depths of space becomes a commentary on the desensitisation of society as a
shorthand for human apathy and the loss of innocence.
Here the
film crosses the threshold into a more abstract, anarchic reality; a reality
informed by the influence of '50s B-cinema, Loony Tunes slapstick and meta-themed
'Godardian' deconstruction. The design
of the aliens and their labyrinthine spaceship-lair (part 'cubist' wonderland,
part M.C. Escher) is visually astounding, but it's the film's satirical
critique, suggested by this third act encounter, that elevates Dante's work to
a level that is truly remarkable. The
image of these aliens, drunk off a montage of footage of every significant event
of the 20th century - both cultural and pop-cultural - as it is projected onto a
series of giant cinema-like screens, suggests that all human endeavour has
become a cosmic cinematic farce. In Explorers
- or the fragments of it - it is our own humanity that has become
"alien"; an alienation from
our own culture, our own history; a contentment to watch our own evolution
unfold as an endless rerun; a transmission for some satellite heart.
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Our Daily Bread [Mani Kaul, 1970]:
Initial viewing, 8th of August, 2013.
This is the second Mani Kaul film to make the list, and while
the first, Duvidha (1973), was mysterious, strange and enigmatic, the film in
question fits right into the context of those great and iconic films produced
throughout the 1960s by filmmakers in France, Italy, Japan, Poland and the
U.S. Although the films of Satyajit Ray
are still a part of the standard westernised "canon", they seem to be
discussed a lot less than the films of Ozu, Bergman, Tarkovsky, Fellini and
Kurosawa, to say nothing of the 60s-era films of Godard and Truffaut. If anything, I think it's fair to say that
Indian cinema, much like African cinema, has been marginalised as far as
discussion and celebration is concerned; that a film like Our Daily Bread is
not spoken of alongside La Strada (1954), The Seventh Seal (1957), The 400 Blows (1959),
Breathless (1960), L'Avventura (1960) and Yojimbo (1961) seems almost absurd.
As with Duvidha (The Dilemma), Our Daily Bread is a film that seems
critical of the way women are treated by the dominant male culture. The loneliness of these women, left to tend
to the running of the house and its endless list of chores while the husband
goes off to work and to socialise, is central to both films. This social commentary is beautifully
realised; however, it is on a level of pure filmmaking that Our Daily Bread
truly transcends. The 'Bressonian'
approach of the actors, both mannered and withdrawn, is subtly affecting, while
the quality of its cinematography recalls Dreyer and his masterpiece Ordet
(1955). The purity of the image - where
the brightness of a summer's day obliterates all detail, suffused as it is by a
holy glow - is staggering. The scenes
throughout, tranquil and pastoral in presentation, establish the loneliness of
this world, the isolation of it. The
unearthly, almost ghostly aspect, which comes to define the life of its
character, is captured within every static frame.
The opening sequence finds a tonality and approach that is
consistent throughout. The dutiful wife,
Balo, the protagonist of the film, waits patiently at a bus stop for the
arrival of her husband. The man - a
municipal bus driver - spends his weeks in the city, returning home only on the
weekends before he's off again; moving from town to town, between worlds. Each day, his bus passes the main road close
to Balo's village. The woman - his
faithful wife - makes the gruelling trek to greet him. Waiting, with a lunch pail in hand in the
hope that his bus might stop to pick up a passenger, is more than an
obligation. It's a daily ritual. A way for this woman to maintain some
semblance of a relationship, or to lessen the loneliness that this life of
servitude and routine has forced upon her.
The eventual outcome of the film is vague and enigmatic - a dark mystery
that requires interpretation, in retrospect - but is very much in-keeping with
the film's wounded and vulnerable tone.
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American Gigolo [Paul Schrader, 1980]:
Initial viewing, 11th of August, 2013.
Trying to describe the film at the time, I threw together a
sentence that seemed to capture the creative spirit. I wrote: "Bressonian transcendence meets
New Hollywood excess, made possible by Bertoluccian 'baroque' stylisations." I still think, as statements go, it gets to
the core of Schrader's film, even more so than the Key Films comment I wrote
about it a few months later. In the interim,
I'd returned to the film again, made copious notes and still maintain a hope of
one day posting a much larger, more in-depth analysis of the film, or at the very
least a proper consideration of its extraordinary final scene. This moment, which gestures explicitly to the
ending of Bresson's eternal Pickpocket (1959) - but in a way that never feels like
an imitation - presents a final acknowledgement of human frailty when faced
with an expression of actual "goodness"; one that seems especially
overwhelming in the context of the film's earlier, more decadent or highly
stylised mise-en-scène.
I was quite unprepared for just how remarkable Schrader's film actually
is. I knew of it through references and
spoofs in other things, most prominently in the crass Rob Schneider comedy,
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999), but my expectation of an 'at best' entertaining
character study was far exceeded by this mesmerising psychological approach. It is a film that seems to exist in the same
tortured and nocturnal Los Angeles seen in Nick Ray's masterpiece In
a Lonely Place (1950) - another film where the discovery of a dead body leaves
a question mark hanging above the head of its central character - and with a
visual approach that seeks to express the emotional and psychological
perspective of its central character, brilliantly portrayed by Richard Gere. It's perhaps worth mentioning that I'm writing
this note after having just watched Terrence Malick's much-celebrated Days of
Heaven (1978) and I'm starting to see Gere as an immensely underrated performer.
In 'Gigolo', Schrader uses Gere the way
Bresson used his models in films like Une femme douce (1969), Lancelot du Lac
(1975) and The Devil, Probably (1977).
He strips away the layers of expression; the emotions of the character
expressed not by the actor but by the production design and the cinematography. He becomes an object, both literally in the
sense of his profession, but also figuratively, as a prop to be used.
However, as the film progresses and his grip on reality begins
to slip, we see through the cracks of his carefully tailored facade; his
surface of suave sophistication and effortless cool. The cracks reveal a frustration that points towards something darker; the ghost of the same
primal, animalistic character as seen previously in Malick's astounding film. There is a danger to this persona; a very
real and very palpable sense of someone capable of genuine brutality when pushed
to the extreme. As the character begins
his descent into psychological turmoil - that long dark journey into light - the
full fury of the 'Gigolo' is unleashed. Here
the audience is forced to reconsider their opinion of the character; left to question:
is he really innocent? Schrader never
provides the answer, instead ending his film with that moment of pure transcendence
that frames the character as a kind neo-religious icon; a martyr more befitting
the role of Pasolini's St. Matthew than just another high-class con.
____________________________________________________
Sebastiane [Paul Humfress & Derek Jarman, 1976]:
Initial viewing, 13th of August, 2013.
I'd always assumed (wrongly) that Jarman didn't achieve
significance as a filmmaker until Caravaggio (1986). I'd based this particular fallacy on seeing clips
from Sebastiane in a documentary on Jarman's life and on an early viewing of
the director's controversial "punk-rock musical", Jubilee (1977). Jubilee turned me away from Jarman for
several years. Its toadying to the punk
movement (even as a critique) seemed two-dimensional and inauthentic, while the
level of basic filmmaking was dull and unadventurous. It wasn't until a few years ago that I
rediscovered Caravaggio (and several subsequent Jarman masterworks on DVD) and
I decided to return to those earlier films.
I saw the imaginative and at times almost 'Ruizian' adaptation of Shakespeare's final play The
Tempest (1979) and the poetic and sensory lamentation of The Angelic
Conversation (1985) and was floored by both.
As such, rediscovering Sebastiane in this context was a revelation.
While its filmmaking might seem more primitive in comparison to
the complex compositions and sense of artistic grandeur found in a film like
Caravaggio - to say nothing of Jarman's other great works, such as War Requiem
(1989), The Garden (1990) and Edward II (1991) - it's also perfectly evocative
of the influence of early Pasolini and of his film The Gospel According to St.
Matthew (1964) in particular. Like
Pasolini's film, Sebastiane mines a similar juxtaposition between religious
transcendence and earnest homoeroticism, as well as a genuine feeling of
emotional authenticity. To create
balance, the direction of the film is mostly naturalistic. Shots are composed with a great simplicity,
showing the action as a straightforward expression - sometimes static,
sometimes handheld - but mostly conveying the physicality of the actors (as
characters) and how their bodies - sculpted and posed like the great statues of
Michelangelo or Rodin - suggest the desire of the male gaze.
As the camera records these masculine figures - mostly nude as
they lounge beneath the glare of a hot summer sun - Jarman finds poetry in
their struggle against the landscape as a kind of outward expression of the
beauty of unrequited love. As such, he
creates an impression of the body as a "prison", a cage, a battalion
for a wounded heart. As with many other works
by Jarman, the history depicted in the film is being used to create a
commentary on the contemporary. In
taking the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian as a starting point, the director is
able to examine the dynamic of one particular facet of homosexual desire;
creating a historical framework through the transposition of these scenes (and
what we now know of human behaviour, desire and persecution) to provide a kind
of context, or political justification, through the perspective of the present
day.
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