A Warning...

Notes on a film and its prologue:
A Warning to the Curious (1972)

The title and prologue both play, self-reflexively, to the natural inquisitiveness of the viewing audience; that unstated appetite for the forbidden; the impulse to experience the unknown; to look behind the curtain and see how things work; to go where we're not supposed to; to venture out and explore.  In the context of the genre - in this instance, the supernatural - the title becomes more than just a label of identification; it's like a challenge to the individual; acknowledging our curiosity and using it to entice us, to lure us in.  The outcome might be nasty, even unpleasant, but already the title is challenging that spirit of adventure and inquisitiveness; that compulsion to open the previously locked door into the great unknown, as a provocation, or as a test of will.

From the very beginning, director Lawrence Gordon Clark establishes the location as a central character and uses the filmmaking to create an atmosphere of uncertainty and isolation that will intensify as the drama unfolds.

Effectively, the film itself begins with two continuous panning shots.  The first starts on a bleached-out, almost desaturated image of the pallid sand dunes stretching out to meet the shining sea.  Already, the implication of the shot is obvious: we're at the end of the world.  The camera pans to the right, following the coastline until it reaches a far-away copse of trees that wind-back, creating a borderline between earth and sand.  The next shot places us inside the woodland.  We're still outside, in the midst of nature, but the cut feels like a transition between an exterior-space to an interior one.  This time the camera pans to the left, across the wall of trees that appear like a perimeter encircling or imprisoning us; again, creating the impression that there's no place left to run.

The shot comes to rest on an image of a silhouetted figure in the distance.  Glimpsed between the greying trees that stand guard atop skewed hills that give the image the feeling of something from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) - all distorted expressionism; a natural location that seems as stylised and otherworldly as a studio set - we watch the distant figure digging in the dirt.  Subsequent insert shots clarify the action, as the shovel penetrates the mound of earth and the man, now in close-up, exhales exhaustedly, until abruptly... he stops.  We're not sure why (to be exact), but it's almost as if the man has suddenly sensed something unsettling; a hidden presence, perhaps lurking within the periphery...

A Warning to the Curious [Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972]:

Throughout this sequence, Clark uses images of the surrounding woodland as a form of visual punctuation; accentuating the scene but also adding to the growing tension; that implicit impression that something terrible is about to occur.  Automatically the stylisation creates an eerie feeling; a sense of someone (or something) being present, observing from behind the trees.  There's no one there, physically (for the time being, at least), but even so, the character has the sensation that he's being watched and the audience, knowing instinctively the insinuations of the genre, share these paranoid thoughts.

The isolation of the location and these images of the forest - all ashen trees stripped of greenery; taking on the appearance of horned creatures silhouetted by an almost colourless sky - feed into the underling fear that causes the character to react.  Already I was beginning to question the possibility of an actual danger awaiting this character - trapped within a strange and slightly distorted environment with no easy escape - or if his actions (unstated, but no less suspicious) were in some way fuelling his discomfort (his guilt?), if not genuine fear.

As an approach to technique, the use of these cut-away shots reminded me very much of another film released during the same year; The Wold Shadow (1972) by Stan Brakhage.  Unlikely to have been an influence on Clark, the Brakhage film nonetheless begins with a similar image of trees framed within a woodland environment.  Like the shots here, it's a benign image - just trees, not necessarily something unnerving or unnatural in any immediate way - but one that the audience might interpret as sinister or even threatening if forced to look at for longer than seems necessary...

The Wold Shadow [Stan Brakhage, 1972]:

As the viewer observes The Wold Shadow, the image is transformed.  The transformation is created first through an unconventional manipulation of the aperture and later by shooting the image through an obscured pane of glass (onto which the filmmaker has gradually daubed paint to create an unnatural distortion of the original frame).  While the effect of this transformation on the viewer is intended as purely sensory (a visual metamorphosis), the actual result is far more psychological.

By studying the image, our mind is free to wander.  Even before Brakhage begins his manipulation of the form there is a need to contemplate and make sense of these images.  This "need" forces the viewer to project their own thoughts and fears onto its blank canvas; inventing a narrative where no real narrative exists and, in a sense, bringing the images to life.  In doing so, we start to see things that aren't actually there; we're spooked by what we perceive as shapes between the trees; the illusion of movement created by shadow and light.

It's the impression of nature itself as somehow "possessive", or able to possess, that is the most starting idea communicated by these shared images.  The conception of nature as something, if not genuinely "evil", then as a kind of conduit for something more primitive; an elemental spirit, representing its own energy, or primordial force.  The longer we're forced to stare at these images, the more significant they seem.  To make sense of them, we invent our own nightmares through superstition and attach them to these otherwise normal scenes, so that the images become a kind of black mirror; a deep (Freudian) abyss...

The Wold Shadow [Stan Brakhage, 1972]:

The sequence by Clark works on a similar if more conventional level.  Unlike the Brakhage film, the images remain part of a clear and identifiable narrative.  They work to tell the story, as illustrations, but the presentation of the images and the atmosphere that they evoke are no less charged with that same elemental spirit; where the forest space once again becomes a genuine force, and where the act of seeing (with one's own eyes) transforms a natural and benign image into an unnatural one, loaded as it is with a genuine "supernatural" threat.

A Warning to the Curious [Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972]:

Convincing himself (like the audience) that it's only his mind playing tricks on him - the superstitions of local lore or the natural isolation of the location getting his imagination spinning off in strange and ridiculous directions - the character gets back to his digging.  Returning to the wide-shot, Clark reminds us that the man is still alone...

A Warning to the Curious [Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972]:

However, after another one of those "Wold Shadow-like" insert-shots that make us question the safety of this place and its isolation we cut back to the man, now confronted by the sight of a tall, dishevelled figure, dressed almost entirely in black...

A Warning to the Curious [Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972]:

The figure startles both the character and the audience by appearing, as if from nowhere.  Here I asked myself: where did he come from?  Is he a supernatural presence or a local person angry at the man's intrusion?  It's never openly explained but we can draw our own conclusions from the subsequent scenes.  Even so, the unmitigated fear is clearly defined on the countenance of the digging character; a surprised shock or indignation that soon turns to insolence, as the man's upper-class arrogance kicks in.

There is a hint of class-based commentary here consistent with Clark's later film, the previously discussed Stigma (1977), where the digger (a man of some inferred privilege and reputation) believes that he has the right to bend nature to his will and to disturb these sites of sacred interest, while the local man - earnest, possibly simple-minded and with an air of agitated lower-class physicality - is unsurprisingly appalled by the lack of respect for the land and its traditions.

A scuffle breaks out but the man is able to subdue the menacing figure, knocking him to the ground.  At this point, the more rational mind of the audience will be telling the character to flee; to use this advantage to get away.  However, as horror movie law dictates, the man's arrogance and greed has already sealed his fate.  As he returns to his digging, safe in the supercilious belief that he's bested this shabby and cadaverous intruder, the black-clad figure spies a large axe-like implement left idle among the kindling.

A Warning to the Curious [Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972]:

The blade seems to have appeared as mysteriously as the figure himself, but already Clark is using these metaphysical manifestations to establish, in the collective mind of the viewer, the threat of an actual, physical violence.

While hampered by awkward editorial transitions (no doubt a result of the film's limited budget), the following sequence is no less impressive in its staging; the structure of the shots and the growing momentum of dread and desperation showing an obvious debt of influence to the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and in particular the infamous Bates' Motel shower sequence from the filmmaker's late masterpiece, Psycho (1960).

Psycho [Alfred Hitchcock, 1960]:

Here, as in Hitchcock's film, it is the way the rhythmical cutting between shots suggests the brutality of the violence (as opposed to the violence itself) that makes the greatest impression.  Rather than depicting the attack in explicit detail, the scene instead implies violence through montage and movement and through the facial expressions of the characters on-screen.

As the camera slowly zooms from a mid-shot to a close-up and beyond into an extreme-close-up of the back of the character's neck, we're already certain of what's about to take place.  We're being led to connect the shots in our own imagination; the man, the close-up on the back of his head, the figure with the blade, the blade itself, etc, all combined in the mind's eye of the viewer to suggest something unspeakable, but in a manner that is brilliantly done...

A Warning to the Curious [Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972]:

As an introductory sequence, the above scene is an attention-grabber.  It establishes, sufficiently and with much atmosphere, the key themes of the film - from greed and curiosity, to the isolation of the countryside and the almost primal preservation of tradition as a genuine supernatural force - as well as introducing the greater practicalities of the subsequent narrative.  Here a man driven by what we assume is greed finds himself isolated in a landscape that takes on a near-paranormal tenor when threatened by external forces.  This, as a distillation of the film in miniature, is like a prelude to everything that we're about to see; a forewarning, of history about to be repeated.

More importantly however, the scene also communicates a level of "meta" commentary that is in keeping with the here-jettisoned narrative structure of the original story by M.R. James.  There, the warning of the title was recounted by the central character, in-hindsight.  He was talking about something that had already occurred, so the character's recollection became a warning to his companions (the listeners to his tale).  As an alternative, Clark structures the film so that this opening sequence, in its entirety, can itself be considered a "warning to the curious."  The curious, in this instance, being the viewing audience (those of us watching the film), but also the soon to be introduced central character, Mr. Paxton, as played by Peter Vaughan.

Black Ice

The title seems appropriate. The experience of the film suggesting the slow slippery slide of an unseen hazard as it catches the light of a clear December morning, just seconds before our feet slip out from under us, or the car drifts into the break. This light, burning bright beneath the surface of the screen, throws shapes into our periphery. Shapes that might exist as mere markings on the celluloid - like a living collage of daubed paint, dead leaves or spilled ink - but which, on closer reflection, can be interpreted by the viewer on an emotional or psychological level. Not so much as a Rorschach Test as an attempt to find meaning in the abstract. Like the refracted glare of the sunlight flaring off the camera lens on a holiday snapshot, or the dappled spots of rain on a windowpane that turns the world outside into a shimmering mosaic, this, as an effect, is something powerful enough to transform the mundane into the extraordinary.

Like in Mothlight (1963), or The Garden of Earthly Delights (1981), the presentation of the film, when looked at, straight-on, as a moving canvas, creates an interpretation that is further established in the mind by the connotations of the title. Here, it's that slow forward-journey through the void that makes Black Ice (1994), as a motion-picture, more immersive, more captivating, than any 3D blockbuster. The illusion of depth, of movement, created, not by multi-million dollar "FX", but by an optical illusion. Something that is formed within the mind; the act of viewing transforming it into whatever we want it to be, but at the same time, exactly what the filmmaker intended.

Black Ice by Stan Brakhage, 1994:

When I was a child, I'd play this game where I'd press the palms of my hands hard into my eye sockets and hold them there for several minutes. After a short while, the impression of the force would form against the retina and create the illusion of movement. A trip into the unknown, like Avatar (2009), but less expensive. At first the experience was like a slow descent into the depths of a jungle canopy. The tops of trees, enormous - green, blue and purple - covering the forest floor (which seemed endless), would blur and blend all around me. I'd dare myself to keep my hands pressed as hard against the eye for as long as I was able; to stay on this path, this trek, down into the abyss that my imagination was creating, to see what else I might discover. Eventually the whole thing would merge into a collage of colours, all melting and dissolving into a series of amorphous great blobs, like the shapes in a lava lamp, or a B-movie assimilation of the 'stargate' sequence from the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

I was sure that this activity was damaging my eyes but it was worth it to experience all that the mind could conjure. Like interpreting abstract art, it was something that I could claim as my own. It wasn't defined or restricted by what others suggested, but open to my imagination. The same is true of Brakhage's films, which are there to be looked at, intently, closely or from a distance, at the changing shapes that create images, ideas, emotions, stories and room for contemplation. Watching a film like Black Ice in the dark of this room on a small laptop, the light of the screen like a beacon, is a profound experience, though I can only begin to imagine how extraordinary it would be to see it as intended, as a theatrical projection. The entire cinema becoming the portal for some fantastic journey, like Jules Verne, sans contraption.

Water for Maya

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

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

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.