Limitations

I haven't posted anything for a long time because of multiple projects that have piled up.  Now that a cold is making me stop for a day or two it's time to try to return to a more regular updates.

Unable to think/edit I reached for an unfinished book.  "Images" by Ingmar Bergman.  (I swam in Bergman earlier in the year conducting a semester long seminar on his films.) 

Two thoughts jump up: in a brilliant and short introduction to the book Woody Allen offers a handful of great remarks about Bergman and yet ends up with "me, me, me".  Is he unable to stick to giving respect to his master?  Is this a sign of Allen's limits?

Then Bergman himself on the very first page drops a bomb.  Recalling a failed (in his opinion) interview/book called "Bergman on Bergman" he comments on his insincerity in giving answers to the journalists involved. He writes the following, devastating sentence:

"I plead for an understanding that, in any case is impossible".

If a mind of such a caliber writes something like that, the earth shatters exposing the limits of the possibility of our knowledge of each other.

I am particularly sensitive to the issue of limits because I am struggling with a difficult creative process which pushes in my face my own limits as a storyteller.  I am also witnessing a farcical bickering among a group of people who, of all the people, should know how to transcend their "inter-subjective" limits.  I am borrowing this term from the Siemek film project - this is the project I am struggling with.

Hopefully I won't write more about the bickering group.  Instead I would soon like to post more about the way the Marek Siemek documentary evolves despite, or because of the limits of its filmmaker.

One thing however is certain: Bergman's bleak outlook at the inability to understand applies to a documentary as well.  A documentary that attempts to bring understanding to its subject is kidding itself.

No understanding is possibly.  Only subjective, (inter-subjective?) approximation from a very specific, singular point of view.  And such an approximation will always remain limited.