Deaf Ears Madness

Helping oneself, helping others?

2012-01-25T05:07:00.000-08:00

"Code Blue"

written and directed by Urszula Antoniak

Code Blue is another film I recently did not get. Probably due to my own limitations. Anyway, with all respect to technical accomplishments, the film's view of the world is so weird that to connect with me it would need to have a bridge of some sort. I did not find such a connection on the screen, or in between the shots. The moodiness and the mastery of the sound design and the visuals are indeed convincing but then there is a story itself and the characters that override the achievements of the filmic background.

Instead of going further into the world of the characters, everything seems to be designed to be weird, to upstage extremes found in other movies (the director talks about the rape scene in The Irreversible - that’s one of my favorite movies ever) as the orientation point for a brutal encounter depicted in her film. Regardless if the director wants to oppose it or follow, it paints her references. She gets trapped in the viscous circle of trying to upstage the shocking that has already been done before.

When Lars von Triers, one of the co-producers of the film, enters the unusual, the dark and the disturbing the results usually reach out from the screen with some understanding and empathy. Urszula Antoniak just screams (in a soft voice) and multiplies the unbearable for the hell of it.

The tragic personal departure point for her film is indeed heart breaking but I am not sure if she has managed to make her despair universal. As it is the film only oozes coldness, death and separation.

In one of the interviews (with Ola Więcka in Wysokie Obcasy from the 21 of January) Antoniak elaborating on the fact that there is very little dialogue in the film says:

“People seldom use language to say something. Of course language can be used to express emotions, to share them but more often it serves to lie about reality. Language is a tool for hiding things, for showing oneself in a better light, it leads to a theater of the word. That’s why on the screen I am more interested in body language.”

Studying the film with such a perspective will most likely reveal its deeper layers.

Pitfalls of personal docs.

2012-01-18T01:18:00.000-08:00

Trying to keep with the self imposed restriction of not criticizing specific movies by other directors (OMG, is it difficult or what!), and after seeing a certain first person documentary, let me list a few dangers that await those of us who put themselves into their own movies:

Showing your own face in extended shots and looking pensive doesn’t automatically translate into depth.

A collection of interesting elements does not automatically turn into a subject. Since it is the connections between these elements that ultimately make or break the narrative we need to strive to join the elements rather than to just list them. Joining would be showing their connections or finding a common thread that on a certain level unifies them.

Our personal divagations, if not properly presented, do not necessarily have to concern the audience. The border that separates a display of narcissism from universal is ladened with traps of ridicule, boredom and stupidity.

Most of us are more boring, irritating, shallow or dumber than we think we are, therefore pointing the cameras at ourselves should be preceded by a hard look into the mirror. If there isn’t much reflecting back from the mirror but we still absolutely need to share our precious selves with the world let’s at least make it visually intriguing and try to push formal aspects of the storytelling.

Entertainment?

2012-01-14T09:22:00.000-08:00

In Darkness,

directed by Agnieszka Holland,

cinematography by Jolanta Dylewska

An important Jewish history professional says (perhaps as a provocation) that he won’t see “In Darkness” because the Holocaust and entertainment should not mix. I disagree (although the dilemma how to present the horror of the past needs to be discussed).

I watched “In Darkness” in a Warsaw crowded theater. The last scene of the film triggered there a wave of nervous, sprinkled with relief, laughter.

In good films often the camera assumes the dominating emotion in a scene. “In Darkness” takes it further and has the light telling the main emotion in a scene. This notion is masterfully carried through the entire narrative and explodes in the final, breathtaking scene, leaving the audience spellbound.

The reaction of the audience proves how needed are the attempts to understand the horrors of the past. Even when enveloped in a classical formula and therefore clearly belonging to the entertainment, such attempts work as catharsis, mirrors and powerful transformative tools.

Was the relieved and nervous laughter at the end of “In Darkness” caused by processing of (the collective) guilt? Clearly, the filmmakers took the audience by hands and made it follow the hero who, undergoing a transformation from racist to mentch, quite possibly validated in the viewers plenty of their own instincts - both good and bad. The bad most likely were often denied, the good were unattainable and outside of an individual contemporary experience. Yet both brewed and brew in the psyche of those even remotely touched by the Shoah.

Is the Hollywood formula a risky vehicle to talk about the Holocaust? Sure. We need to explore and seek additional ways to talk about it. Yet the value of the classical “entertainment” formula illuminating the most troubling aspects of our human experience is indisputable, particularly when the storytelling is so powerful.

My only beef with the film is the last line of the closing titles. It comes after the obligatory info about the subsequent events in the hero’s life. The last title jumps to a slightly sneering and moralistic comment which can devalue the just experienced intimacy of an individual human journey. In short, perhaps after a powerful story it’s better to restrain from philosophizing.

The ability to wonder

2011-12-21T13:49:00.001-08:00

I just finished 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami and loved it. Then looked at the reviews. The once I caught were mostly sneering and looking down at the Murakami’s craft. That pissed me off.

Don’t literary reviewers know the notion on style? If the same (skillful) narrative technique was applied to a film the critics would clearly get it and rave about the sophistication of the director.

Why do so many pompous and condescending reviews of the Murakami’s book point out to its (seeming) shortcomings and don’t allow the possibility that the book’s specific storytelling (supposed over-explaining, giving action though dialogue, cliche characters, describing simply simple and known details of life) might be a choice and a conscious use of such “naive” tricks in order to put a reader under a spell?

Which I think they are and which I find fantastically effective since to me 1Q84 is the deliciously vibrant and alert meditation on the wonder of the now and the human adventure as we all experience it.

I would go on about it but Steven Poole in the Guardian review (unfortunately followed by a horde of “sophisticated” and irritatingly snobbish commentators) has put it quite accurately:

“Murakami's heroes and heroines are all philosophers. It is natural, then, that his work should enchant younger readers, to whom the problems of being are still fresh, as well as others who never grew out of such puzzlements – that his books should seem an outstretched hand of sympathy to anyone who feels that they too have been tossed, without their permission, into a labyrinth.”

Vaclav Havel leaves the room

2011-12-18T14:45:00.000-08:00

I dialed a number. She immediately picked up the phone.
- Hi, this is Pawel, I said.
- We’re are all crying here, the Czech woman in Warsaw responded.
It was a few hours after the news of Vaclav Havel’s death went public.
- Can you help with a bit from the unused Havel’s interview?
- I’ll be right over.

With the subsequent help from an American we managed to prepare a few minutes from the final moments of the interview conducted in Prague in the spring of 2010.

In the piece, Havel’s final words before leaving the room seem to be: “Please edit my words properly.”

Can we do that?

Can we honor the spirit and the vision of this man?

The video is available at http://youtu.be/Sv1i2yfgpb0

On the station

2011-12-18T02:13:00.000-08:00

Does it have to be that

you are the platform

and I am the approaching train

which will depart shortly?

Or the other way around?

Does it have to be that

one of us needs to step back

when the other approaches,

not being certain

if this is the right connection?

Can’t we just whoosh

through the station

together?

Or stay on the platform

watching the passing trains

and holding hands?

The walls

2011-11-27T23:41:00.000-08:00

(to kvetchers everywhere)

Finally the walls are up.

Safety restored,

build with the shortcomings

of others.

Bad world, bad world, bad world.

The structure is needed

to keep wrong doers away

and her soul within.

For the soul to remain soul.

For her to be her.

Otherwise

she would leak out,

the little of her there is.

Bad world, bad world, bad world.

Her hurt is the weapon,

the mason and the surgeon.

Her indignation the corset

and the crutch.

Bad world, bad world, bad world.

No explanation needed.

No reasoning sought.

No empathy given.

The walls safely around.

Condemning the others.

Boosting the self.

Bad world, bad world, bad world.

Irony attacks, no way to know

who speaks from the heart,

who lies.

No way to know

what is this guy’s real game.

No way to know

what that gal truly wants.

No way to know

why they cheat and lie.

All of them.

Bad world, bad world, bad world.

And when the flash

“could she be also among them?”

flies through her mind,

it is forgotten promptly.

And when the thought

“perhaps I'm wrong”

knocks to her mind,

it is denied entry.

Bad world, bad world, bad world.

When will finally people

be open and honest and nice!

Bad world, bad world, bad world.

When will finally people

be open and honest and nice!

Dear Mr. Spielberg and Mr. Peli: can we make scary scarier?

2011-11-25T22:56:00.000-08:00

“Paranormal activity”, written/directed by Oren Peli

In case you have not yet seen the superb original “Paranormal activity” - be warned, I will discuss its ending.

I’d like to pose a question to those who did watched it and hypothetically even to those who were behind making it. The press materials say that the movie version ending was suggested by the Maestro Spielberg himself, hence the title of this post.

The body flying toward the camera is strong, shocking and fabulous. Yet it felt disappointingly fast as a conclusion of a very suspenseful scene and the film itself.

I wonder what would happen if an additional beat was introduced: mainly after the victim leaves the room and before the throw of the body toward the camera the victim escapes the horror of the hallway into the room, collapses onto the floor and lies there scared out of his mind.

Then the noise on the hallway intensifies and the body of the victim is whooshed back into the darkness of the hallway. Several seconds of horrifying cries follow and only then the body flies toward the lenses. Would it not milk the scare longer without taking away the final shock?

Genius as a thief - part four (of four)

2011-11-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

Finally, “Light Denied” assumes that we, meaning non-genial humans, can benefit from the presence of geniuses among us not only by consuming their culturally or scientifically “packaged” findings. In certain instances we can also in a safe manner participate in their dangerous, “promethean”, thievery escapades.

The safety is guaranteed only when journeys are done through fictitious characters, when enveloped in skins of screen, stage or page characters we experience catharsis and insights of the quests for truth. It is als close to the real deal as we can get without paying the ultimate price with our sanity or life. That’s is supposed to be the case of “Light Denied” where prof. Feliks Lewinski by gradually entering the Abyss reaches the Truth and as a result looses his mind. Watching Lewinski allows the narrator to diffuse the danger of Mystery and to internalize its wisdom. At the end he concludes:

“I was no longer fearing Nietzsche. I finally understood, that despite dangers, the Dionysian light must be embraces. Because it's the source of life and as such cannot be denied.”

This dramatic device aims to complete the subplot assuming that the viewers with similar sensitivities accept the screen ritual and experience integration with the Mystery. Despite, or because of it, that the integration is a third hand - a genial exploration of Nietzsche is lived through a fictitious character who is watched by the narrator - the viewer can safely participate in a journey. If that’s indeed the case then for some can apply a comment from Dan Pal from WDCB Public Radio (Illinois):

“This film will leave you contemplating its message for days afterward."

“Light Denied”

written/directed by Paweł Kuczyński

www.directing.com/light

Genius as a thief - part three

2011-11-02T01:23:00.000-07:00

Alicja Dabrowska and Krzysztof Janczar

in "Light Denied"

When a human mind attempts to penetrate the unreachable/forbidden regions of Knowledge it risks mortal dangers. Faith, theological axioms and religious rituals serve as effective intermediaries between the Unknown and human mind. A naked not covered by a religious insulator mind is helpless facing the forces and dimensions exceeding its grasp. That’s why plugging an unguarded mind into Mystery usually (always?) fries it.

This dangerous possibility is addressed twice in dialogue in the fictitious part of the film. During an encounter with a young librarian who, in his mind morphs into Mathilde Trampedach one of the women Nietzsche helplessly yearned for, prof. Lewinsky dreamingly addresses her:

“Mathilde? Mathilde, don't you think that each of us being together with the other will be better of, will be more free than if we existed separately? In order to withstand that terrifying Whirl, that overwhelming Abyss a human being has to be close to another one. Mathilda, one cannot always listen to music - it would lead straight to madness.”

In another scene prof. Lewinsky tries to pass the knowledge to the President of his university:

Krzysztof Janczar and Stanislaw Zaluski

Felix:

As the head of our institution, you should be the first to know it.

President:

Indeed?

Felix:

But not here. Please, Mr. President.

President:

Mr. Felix!

Felix:

We won't be disturbed here.

President:

Professor, this is highly inappropriate.

Felix:

Who cares. Mr. President, this is about fundamental matters. I finally got it.

President:

Yes?

Felix:

I have understood that...

(he whispers into the President’s ear)

President:

What do you mean by that?

(Felix whispers again)

President:

Professor, you must be joking. Don't forget that I deal with science, too. Please don't forget that we both carry watches. So time exists. At least for you and me.

Felix:

You understood nothing.

Prof. Hope Fitz comments:

“Probably at the of his life Nietzsche lost his mind. It seems to me there is not clear border between a creative mind and madness. Research confirms it. 80% of US writes had mental problems. I am not surprised by that. Imagine, they are on the edge far away from mass opinions in their thinking. They constantly test the borders.”

Genius as a thief - part two

2011-11-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

“Light Denied” was born out of three assumptions: the first states that a genius is a go-between our yearnings, phobias and awes and their answers given in coherent, articulated ways. A genius is a person who shortens the distance between our unattainable ontological “wants” and that which is at our disposal to make sense of the reality within and without. In order for the distance to be lessened, a genius has to apply his/her particular technology so that the people he communicates with can find themselves in the place where, due to their own limitations, they would not get by themselves. A genius brings them that which is forbidden. A genius knows or at least senses what others need before they do. Or he is driven by his inner hunger for insight.

Genius is a bit like a thief, like Prometheus, who in order to posses something that somebody else might want needs to get it first. First, using all his might, he needs to travel to the source of insight. Once at the destination a genius needs not only to spot and recognize “the goods” but also to find a proper form to translate them back to his tribe. For that he uses among others Images, sounds, words, abstract thinking and mathematic formulas.

A second assumption of “Light Denied” deals with danger. The film is not concerned with theories that Nietzsche’s madness was caused by syphilis or was genetic (his father died of brain softening). Instead the narrative states that Nietzsche went crazy because he crossed into a forbidden zone of knowledge.

There exist regions of exploration which are closed to human mind. Mind although being able to formulate abstract hypothesis, such as mathematic formulas can’t envision the border of the universe or the state of the universe before its beginning or radical micro or macro divisions of time and space. Actually, categories of time and space are the chains put over our imagination to prevent us from accessing Knowledge.

Genius as a thief - part one (of four)

2011-10-31T23:44:00.000-07:00

Paweł Kuczyński introduces “Light Denied”,

a screen riff on Nietzsche’s madness.

During the debate “Cultural status of a creator. Genius or madness” organized by the Philosophy and Sociology Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences Pawel talked about the assumptions behind the film:

“Light Denied” attempts to work through a narrator’s fear of entering too deep into the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. In a documentary part appear Werner Krieglstein (College of DuPage), Alan Rosenberg (Queens College), Hope Fitz (Eastern Connecticut State University), Victor Krebs (The Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú) and Karl-Otto Apel (University of Frankfurt am Main). In a fictitious part the film follows a philosophy professor (Krzysztof Janczar) obsessed with Nietzache. At the beginning a director/narrator set the stage:

“Dare to think! Reject all dogmas! Follow the light! These demands have frightened me ever since I was a teenager. I suspected that Nietzsche lost his mind because of the depth of his inquires. I was almost driven insane by his call to embrace the light of Dionysus. Hence I retreated waiting for years to approach Nietzsche again. (...) I returned to Nietzsche, when a fictitious philosophy professor Felix Lewińsky appeared in my films. He too badly wanted to find the truth.

The fact that Friedrich Nietzsche is an important writer is obvious even to his ardent opponents. Early on in “Light Denied, prof. Karl-Otto Apel explains:

“I am not a Nietzsche fan. Nietzsche, of course, as everybody knows, is a good writer first of all, exciting writer. I was never a fan of Nietzsche. For ethical reasons.”

Calling Nietzsche a genius is subjective. It springs from individual preferences and group/social/cultural setups. What exactly then in an individual, contemporary and subjective perspective could mean referring to Nietzsche as a genius?

The Bauman’s Window

2011-10-24T03:31:00.000-07:00

Before the screening of “Lawnswood Gardens”

organized by Polish Sociological Society

and Warsaw University Students Association

A panel discussion afterwards. Prof. Nina Kraśko - the moderator,

Paweł Kuczyński - director, Andrzej Chrzanowski - co-producer,

Piotr Rejmer - head of post-production.

“The film is brilliant. (...)

There is no such thing as a Bauman school.

However, there is a Bauman window”.

- Prof. Monika Kostera, Ph.D.

This comment refers to two elements of the film. The first comes from an informal talk where prof. Bauman’s says (in Polish):

“I don’t think I am going to leave behind something like the Bauman school for example, because in order to form a school of thought, you have to discover a method which distinguishes this school, and then any person who wants to do a Ph.D. has to prove that he can use this method adequately. This to me seems like schooling in conformism and in following a recipe, like unexperienced cooks who surround themselves with cookbooks and know (to add) 5 grams of that, 10 grams of that, here 5 minutes boiling, there 6 minutes etc. I’ve never created anything like that. What’s more, I think something like that would be against the sprit of the humanities.”

the second is a quote from “Modernity and the Holocaust”:

“...(the analysis) showed beyond reasonable doubt that the Holocaust was a window rather than a picture on the wall. What I saw through this window I did not find at all pleasing. The more depressing the view however, the more I was convinced that if one refused to look through the window it would be at one’s own peril.”

While filming I considered exploring views from various places where the Baumans lived and naming the film “The Bauman’s window”. Even though I abandoned this path something from that concept must have filtered through into the final version.

photos by Anna Polańczyk

A short poem

2011-10-15T08:16:00.000-07:00

to be read alongside “The angriest dog in the world” cartoon.

http://www.davidlynch.de/chevalangry2.jpg

and "Lost Highway" and "Mulholand Drive" films:

We think that we don’t ...

but we do.

The independence of ideas, part two.

2011-10-12T03:28:00.000-07:00

High above our minds

there is a platonic world where ideas float

waiting for the human race

to mature enough to grasp them fully.

So don't kid yourself:

you don’t think ideas

they merely allow you to play with them

testing your character, assessing

if you are worthy of them.

Once an idea realizes

that you are not honest

that you’re using it

that you don’t respect it

it goes away leaving with you

a shallow caricature of itself

to carry on its revenge

to make a fool of yourself.

If your transgressions are

truly malicious and harmful

an idea stays within you

and kills you from within.

High above our minds

ideas await our maturity.

The independence of ideas, part one.

2011-09-30T12:41:00.000-07:00

The “I” is frequently too loud to hear that which wants to reach us.

Therefore the message falls on our ears deafened by the screaming ego.

On the other hand the realization of non-personal origination of ideas is often a road to individual recognition and personal greatness. Ironically, it is stepping away from the “I” that tends to build it. The trailblazers who humbly realize that ideas are not theirs achieve rightfully deserved admiration by showing us new vistas.

Two masters in their respective and very different games come up with quite similar conclusions regarding the origination of ideas:

“.... the process (of generating ideas), to a large degree, is in my opinion spontaneous, it has its own mechanism, its own logic. Like Levi Strauss put it beautifully: ‘I don’t think my thoughts but my thoughts think themselves”. - Zygmunt Bauman in “Lawnswood Gardens”.

“Ideas are the strangest things because they suddenly enter into your conscious mind and you don’t know really where they come from - where they exist before they were introduced to you. They could mean something, or they could just be there for you to work with. I don’t know.” - David Lynch in “Lynch on Lynch”.

It is something to consider when, enveloped in drunken hubris, we claim that ideas are “ours”.

Documentary truth, part 2

2011-08-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

"The Arbor" by Clio Barnard

This is an attempt to discuss the assumption that in a documentary the more unfiltered reality is, the closer to truth.

The previous post argued that in a documentary film a public, charismatic personality usually (either consciously or subconsciously) “performs” since being “on” constitutes the core of such a personality. Therefore one should not talk in such cases about “truth” understood as something that is revealed despite the filmmaking conditions. In short - I don’t see much of cinema verite in the documentary about Vaclav Havel.

The documentary truth in that group of films therefore is synonymous with “presenting oneself”, which assumes a certain amount of performing, where performing is not a negative term but the acknowledgment that in order to present something to the public that something has to be dressed up in a form (a bow to Witold Gombrowicz here.)

What about a form when a film deals with more private people or with events or trends that have no self-consciousness of their public dimension or simply do not have any trace of “performing”? I am inclined to say that the similar process could happen there as well.

“The Arbor” by Clio Barnard seems to be a case in which the more reworked (enveloped in a form) reality is the closer it gets to its core. (The core would stand for reaching a basic pattern or emotion or the dramatic origination of the story being told). For example an amazing energy is evoked when two sisters (portrayed by actors) recall their childhood trauma as this very trauma plays behind them in the room. This obvious break with reality only adds up to the intensity of the message.

Some, writing about techniques in “The Arbor” bring up Bertolt Brecht and his “distancing effect.” Perhaps, however many “quotation marks” narrative maneuvers in the film rather than alienating me from the events in order to force my thinking about them, have the opposite effect. By bringing up various “look this is not happening for real” tactics (like staging interior scenes from a play in the square while the neighbors watch or famous lip-synching) the film actually manages to dispense the ever present suspicion with the medium itself. Once the thorn (as a film form inherently fake and therefore untrue to reality) is named and brought up into the open, I the viewer, can relax and am able to travel straight where the storyteller wants me to be.

Therefore as performing of a charismatic individual is a must for his truth to emerge so the narrative that “performs” is often needed to reach the essence of a story.

Documentary truth, part 1

2011-07-23T00:54:00.000-07:00

On the set of "Citizen Havel".

What is truth in a documentary? What does it take to accurately portray a person on the screen? Does the term “accurately” relate to the way a person sees himself, the way others see him, or both? Are we who we think we are, or who we are in the eyes of others?

“Citizen Havel” by Pavel Koutecky, Miroslav Janek provides some food for thought on the subjects.

Some say this film is a “fly on the wall” documentary, or the ultimate “cinema-verite” of political films. To me it is more of a showman’s piece where the hero is most of the time “on” and fully controlling the message.

Despite statements from the filmmakers that Havel could “tune out” the camera there is always a clear indication that there is something between his very own self and the way he present himself to the public/camera. Yet even though this obvious barrier exists as a thin film over the screen we get the sense of Havel’s earnestness and his noble nature. It happens largely I think because we sense his efforts to be right.

Vaclav Havel is all about making an effort to be better, “to keep vertical” (as Kieslowski used to say, according to his friends), to improve the world around by leading, providing an example. That can’t be done without self examining and self consciousness. In this respect Havel by his very nature and his calling uses the presence of the film crew to telegraph his essence. Some say he forgets the camera, I would say he plays it as a good director or a stage play writer designing the story. His theatrical sensitivity should not be a surprise, he is a dramatist and probably, more than many of us would be capable of, sees himself as a character in a life's play. Luckily, Havel is congruent in his message and in the way he is. That’s why, the more the director gives him screen time, the more president Havel reveals his true self - a warm, genuinely carrying guy with an surprising sense of theatrics.

Overall this documentary film is a creative effort both on Havel’s and the director’s part to present a certain class, an attitude which Havel employs in his life and makes an effort to articulate and strengthen via his public appearances, to which the film clearly belongs. There is a noticeable effort on his part to be “right” - in things small and big. He wants to be always prepared because he knows that everything he does sends a message. We “civilians” could only learn from him.

There are two scenes in the film where the camera retracts mostly to high angles and watches cars from above: during the arrival of president Clinton and at the funeral ceremony of president’s Havel wife - Olga. Both times - with different moods of course - the filmmaking eye catches the essence of events in a very cinematic way mostly via the mechanical movements of soulless machines, yet the spirit of each occurrence is precisely telegraphed.

I’ve briefly met mr. Havel during a half hour interview for “Lawnswood Gardens”. He was exactly like the person in the documentary: thoughtful, sensitive, precise, concerned, slightly shy yet with power inside. It was a professional situation which at the same time spoke plenty about the private man. I may soon post on my youtube channel another “Lawnswood Gardens“ making of with a clip from that meeting.

Images want our sanity

2011-07-17T08:30:00.000-07:00

What follows is a totally subjective riff only loosely inspired by a few W. J. T. Mitchell remarks, which very well could be totally misunderstood.

It is intriguing that Mitchell, the premiere current theoretician of the visual in the modern culture, the man who flirts with giving an image a voice (“What do pictures really want”?) at the same time unleashes an attack at the abstract as if wanting to lessen its cultural power.

In his lecture “Seeing madness. Insanity, media and visual culture” Mitchell presents a claim that, well ... we all may be mad. How come? He starts with Kant. Kant opens his Critique of Pure Reason with a chilling sentence: “Human reason, in one sphere of its cognition, is called upon to consider questions, which it cannot decline, as they are presented by its own nature, but which it cannot answer, as they transcend every faculty of the mind.”

So we are doomed to be dumb. At least we know that the tool we got for making sense of the world is insufficient for the task. Yet the human hubris prevails and the madness thrives. The madness resulting not from chaos and disorder, but rather from having birth in actions of pure reason. Both madness and pure reason as expressions of our minds are hard edged on logic, order, causality. It is just that somewhere early on in their reasoning a fatal step of a wrong assumption takes place and then there is no escape from disastrous results.

For Prof. Michell madness seems to be a cultural tool defined to a large and perhaps decisive degree by those who decide what’s the norm and what’s madness. Therefore it can easily become an instrument of politics. That was the case with the mathematical findings of John Nash’s principle of equilibrium, which in addition of getting him a Noble Prize was also the base for the cold war philosophy with its doctrine of Mutually Assured Distraction (M.A.D.) Madness is therefore the result of reductionistic tendencies of the flowed reason coupled with our insane strive for order and clear answers.

In a world where mathematics supports insanity, where pure reason has to fail by its own definition, where images are aloof and mysterious in their desires ("What pictures want in the last instance, then, is simply to be asked what they want, with the understanding that the answer may well be, nothing at all" - as Mitchell finishes one of his early drafts of the theme), the power goes back to the discerning eyes and the minds and the souls of you and I. It is you and I and everyone who wants to make an effort of being clear, present and honest that could and should stand up against madness. It is us who are capable of restoring sanity by embracing images in their totality and learning from them not to reduce them by logic, interpretation, agendas or our petty "visions". Images are saner than us. They show us how to be more human. Let's learn from them.

The fake cosmos, part 2

2011-07-11T02:00:00.000-07:00

"The Three of Life"

written/directed by Terrence Malick

Before I continue the June "Melancholia" and "The Three of Life" post let me make one thing clear: I consider Terrence Malick a cinematic genius. What follows is not so much about his stylistic choices as about the current direction in visualizing the cosmos.

The opening quote of “The Three of Life”: "Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation...while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" telegraphs the upcoming film and at the same time sentences it to the unavoidable failure.

The answer to the Book of Job question is only one: “Dear God, thank you for singling me out and addressing me personally. As you know, I was not there. I have no clue how it looked like, what if felt like, why was it happening or even how to imagine it since the event you are referring to totally transcends my insignificant self, my ability to imagine, comprehend or visualize.” “ Yet, I will try, continues Terrence Malick (in making the film), I will try to sing a song of our human yearning to touch the divine, to see that which is impossible to see since we couldn’t have been there.” Hats off for this noble attempt.

Yet, 43 years after the Space Odyssey, after Kubrick, Tarkowsky, Lucas and NASA defined the way we envision the cosmos certain stylistic directions seem used up, not as fresh as they were decades ago. (The more splendid NASA photos are the more they reveal limitations in showing the totality of events they point to.)

We accept the (unavoidable) fakery of a “realistic” film language describing a typical psychological scene be it in a Mallick or a von Trier movie because a) we’ve been conditioned that it is the way things are (they are not!) and b) because we bring into the perception of such a scene a huge amount of our own references. We augment what we see on screen with our own personal experiences or cultural annotations beaten into us by education and culture. Things get more muddy when talking about the beginning of the world. The thin layer of existing iconography is clearly bogus, it does not represent the reality of things. We don’t have enough references to confirm or at least partially justify the reality of the existing canon of the cosmic imagery. How to make it more “real” for us? Whoever figures it out will be a new Leonardo.

For now however the stylistic path "Melancholia" and "The Three of Life" chose aims for the absolute visual truth in rendering the non-renderable. In this context, starting with the quotation from God himself only begs to close with a quote from the Lady Gaga Madison Square Garden HBO special in which the diva yells:

“do you know what’s the second thing after money I hate the most?.... the truth!... the absolute truth!.. instead give me a bucket of bullshit, anytime!”

Lawnswood Gardens

2011-07-02T19:35:00.000-07:00

"Lawnswood Gardens"

directed by Pawel Kuczynski

written by Pawel and prof. Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska

Last night we had a premiere screening of “Lawnswood Gardens” - a documentary portrait of professor Zygmunt Bauman. The hero himself attended, which as normal in case of his public appearances, attracted a crowd eager to meet him. We felt bad that the theater management had to turn people away due to the safety regulations.

Earlier in the day "Gazeta Wyborcza", a leading Polish newspaper, run an announcement calling the film “a comprehensive and insightful portrait of an eminent scholar, who grants the camera an unusually close access.”

Prior, culture.pl, the official site of the cultural program of the polish EU presidency has published the following write up:

"Lawnswood Gardens" is a 53-minute film portrait of Bauman, who serves as one of the main representatives of Polish intellectual thought. The core of the film is based on Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska's brief visit to the Professor's home at Lawnswood Gardens in Leeds in the spring of 2010. The film includes archive materials and other interviews, exploring the links between Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust" and "Winter in the Morning", a diary from the Warsaw Ghetto written by the Professor's wife Janina Bauman, who passed away in December 2009.

The film also includes a conversation with artist Mirosław Bałka about his "How it is" exhibition at the Tate Modern and the Professor's response to Bałka's work, providing a sociologist's perspective on art.

The film also features the Professor's friends from Leeds: Anthony Bryant and Griselda Pollock, as well as Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania, Nina Kraśko, Jerzy Wiatr and Vaclav Havel. Bauman's daughter, painter Lydia Bauman, served as the artistic consultant on the film.

The film was realized thanks to the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the National Centre for Culture and ZAiKS.

The full text of the write up is linked below (one correction in the director’s bio: my philosophy study lasted only one year)

culture.pl

The fake cosmos - part 1

2011-06-30T12:52:00.000-07:00

"Melancholia", by Lars von Trier

Two strong and very impressive recent films: “Melancholia” and “The Three of Life” base their philosophizing and the artistic “umpf” on enveloping human stories in a grandiose perspective of the cosmos. The stories however resonate with us predominantly because they access our own human reference points, fears and concerns. Be it a complex relationship between two sisters (“Melancholia”) or dynamics of growing up (“The Three of Life”) the screen breaths vitality, genuineness and psychological insights - all convincingly presented.

Then comes the cosmos. Promoting “Melancholia” Lars von Trier talks about his decision to put the end of the story up front so that the viewers know from the very beginning the finale. The issue of how much of the ending in a given story its consumers want to know, should know, expect to know or suspect could in itself be a subject for another post or even a Ph.D. dissertation. :-)

For now let’s just stick to von Trier’s way of presenting the ending, that is to the computer generated clash of the planet called “Melancholia” into Earth. This clash, in what will become indisputable only later in the film, ends life as we know it in a spectacular bang.

The opening of the film situates the CGI clash image of the end of the world in the company of art inspired tableaux taking their cues from art (Ophelia) or stylizing them as a high brow art situations. The opening therefore does not represent reality as such but rather dives into the territory of the possible, the feared, the subconscious. In this company the earth crash does not announce the reality of the ending, it only shows the possibility or a fear of a terrible thing coming. That’s why I don’t think the opening puts the end up front, rather it telegraphs in a teasing way a potential of something bad. Which, in a way, is much more interesting than "the end at the beginning" maneuver.

Documentary hubris

2011-06-16T04:04:00.000-07:00

Recently I’ve watched a few documentaries which did not impress me. Why do movies about fascinating events, people, problems often end up lame? Where does the lack of storytelling talent come from?

One of the working hypothesis is that it is generated by the inflated ego of the makers, who by not being able or not wanting to step aside, do not allow their subjects to fully shine. It’s plain hubris and the lack of humbleness on the part of those whose duties is to report, show, facilitate meetings between the audiences and their subjects.

Directors have “ideas”, present their own “insights”, are too impatient to think things through - and disasters strike.

Perhaps talent as the ability to step aside, to let things that are talked about in the particular piece of work come with full independence, bloom and their own reasons. On the other hand filmmakers can be paralyzed by the importance, statue, scope of their subjects and don’t seek interesting ways into the subject matters.

Clearly some balance must be achieved between the assertiveness of a storyteller who’s reporting what is and his skills to listen and watch. Without the assertiveness of a teller a film falls apart. So what is the role of the self in storytelling? What does it really mean: “a story cannot be told objectively, somebody has to tell it as there is no no objective reporting?”

Disturbing mirrors of a sci-fi thriller

2011-05-28T01:32:00.000-07:00

"Source code", written by Ben Ripley,

directed by Duncan Jones

Early on in “Source code” its hero, confused with not understanding who and where he is, glances into a train bathroom mirror and jumps in shock seeing somebody’s else face as his own reflection. This potentially intriguing revelation, due to the genre of the film, is quickly dealt with a stock sci-fi explanation. Yet, seeing that we are not who we think we are, breaking the safe walls of our identity convention is one of the rarely touched domains of film, which seems to be the ideal medium for such explorations.

Another disturbing moment of the screening occurred, this time, outside of the screen. As the plot kept moving around a terrorist thread hidden in a car, a voice come through the movie theater speakers calling for the owner of a particular car left in a parking space to immediately return to the vehicle. A slight wave of nervousness rolled throughout the theater: was the car just blocking somebody wanting to get out or was it already surrounded by anti-terrorists suspecting a bomb and the shopping mall was to be evacuated? Were we in danger? Was the reality mirroring the film?

What do we attend dark movie theaters really for? Is it to come close (but never too close) to those questions that we are afraid to face in reality?

Are the screens acquiring some sort of artificial intelligence and perhaps start to reflect back to us that which we may not be ready to face?

Isn’t the constant strive for films to become current plain dangerous? In a very practical way the reality and its screen representation may get entangled in each other so much that we will lose the sense of who and where we are.

Another strange conclusion from “The source code” - once dead, the only way to stay alive for a short while longer is to assume the identity of a (more?) dead person. If you do it with heart and for the right reasons, it may grant you new (alternative) life!

All that is telegraphed, galloping with the requirements of a spectacle. Such films are as much intriguing, stimulating, entertaining as they are frustrating with their unrealized potentials. It seems that the genre is already nimble enough to deliver thrills without necessarily being contrived in their plots, issues and their solutions.

Original impulses

2011-05-21T00:42:00.000-07:00

Technologies in music conducting and documentary filmmaking.

Kai Bumann, a German conductor working in Poland, when describing his method stresses the importance of understanding the original impulse for a given music composition. Before conducting a particular piece he wants to know how its composer saw the word. For Bumann music is closely connected with philosophy and theology. Finding the impulse that preceded a given score becomes the basis for the conductor's work. For example, sometimes during these searches he arrives at “deep layers of sorrow.”

Seeking the original impulse is a noble and elegant technology of any interpretive craft. Can the same be applied to a documentary filmmaking? Not always, seems to me.

I’ve made a few film portraits that indeed were based on what at that time I perceived were the initial impulses forming the lives of their heros. Among others, “Philosopher’s Paradise” was based on such approach, so was “Red with Black”. The latter was obvious and easy since Henryk Musiałowicz speaks straight about his artistic turmoils. “Philosopher’s Paradise” (although favorably received by critics and viewers and accepted by its hero) left me concerned because my approach forced a spiritual diagnosis of the inner core of a philosopher, who to many (including himself) is a hard core materialist. Was I really allowed to force my POV on an image of another person? To this day I remain hesitant about my directorial choice in this film.

The above reflections were perhaps one of the few reasons why my latest project - “Lawnswood Gardens” - purposely stays away from any kind of (be it metaphysical or historical) investigating of its hero, instead it focuses on an attempt to render emotions connected with my meeting with Zygmunt Bauman. Granted that the word “my” is dangerous in this above context. Yet, there seems to be a qualitative difference between uncovering somebody’s initial impulses and reporting one’s own reaction to this person.

Does it mean that a conductor could be more free exploring his “heros” (composers) than a filmmaker exploring his screen subjects? Perhaps we are approaching here a wall of a documentary filmmaking. The wall of humbleness toward one's own limited understanding of others and of respect toward their complexities and vastness. Another wall would be potential harm that a film could inflict upon its heros -one of the reasons Kieślowski abandoned the documentary form.

It’s possible that I am just splitting hair here. It’s possible that a certain arrogance (of vision) is necessary to make documentaries. Perhaps this never easy maneuvering between one’s own perception and understunding of its potential dangers is the hardest element in a documentary film directing.

Screens “R” us

2011-04-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

A movie screen sizes you up
and evaluates carefully.
Beware, no mercy intended here.
You will get only what you deserve.
Do not go lightly
into that dark room.

2.
“I wish it didn’t happen this way
yet, those who approach me
for an autograph or to say
how much they enjoy my latest role
(of a killer or a lover or a hero)
forfeit for this moment
their dignity.
Dizziness of their
dislocated souls
pains and troubles me.
It is my duty

to make them

feel whole again.”

3.
Small words kill,
glances belittle,
silences condemn.
Monologues oppress,
wits chip away
chunks of souls.

"Movie stars in politics?

Look at Clooney,

what gave him the right to

throw his weight as

the ambassador of peace?

Ridiculous and pathetic."

Me, me, me
everyone silently screams
around a dinner table.
“Pawel, we hope

you won’t feel offended,
but we don’t like movies,
they are too shallow.”

---------------------

the middle part re-words a quote from George Clooney reported by Ian Parker in "Somebody has to be in control" published by "The New Yorker".

Know your rank?

2011-04-15T05:15:00.000-07:00

“Limitless” written by Leslie Dixon (script), Alan Glynn (novel)

directed by Neil Burger

The riff below is a subjective reaction not so much to the film itself as to a certain uncomfortable feeling after the screening. It could be the result of the film itself or a mind set of the viewer. Here we go:

“Limitless” despite its forgettable script enters an intriguing area of the power of the mind as the latest commodity, the key in a new division between brilliant people, the smart ones and the rest. That division replaces the earlier distinctions in social ranks based on blood line, wealth or popularity. The story makes clear that the achievements in social status or wealth are (or will be) a direct result of the power of the mind or another words - of intelligence.

According to the film a superior mind power blends total memory recall with the ability to connect its elements in order to analyze, predict and select the best action for a given task. Either by design or because of the haphazard scriptwriting, the conclusions of the story are a bit worrisome.

Regardless of the source, the lessons pouring from the screen seem to make the viewers resign to their own mind limits. Trying to exceed them would result in death or a major handicap (a fantastic episode with the sister of the hero), so folks - stay where you are, do not rock the boat. Accept your IQ and let others who are smarter rule over you. This governing conclusion finishes the film in such a blatant way that there is no doubt in the superiority of our elected officials. Since unfortunately this is not the case in the real world one wonders what was the basic emotional/world view premise of the entire storytelling here.

Of course the “Limitless” anecdote is a tech fairly tale, but underneath each fairly tale lies a specific worldview. Could it be that in this case this worldview is build with the following conclusions: “accept the oppression, let others decide your life, know your limits, since we are not equal”? There is something disturbingly opressive in the vibe of this flick.

On being human or tough film questions

2011-04-10T14:07:00.000-07:00

"Wall Street: money never sleeps"

directed by Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone’s DVD commentary for “Wall Street: money never sleeps” is way more interesting than the film itself. I am a fan of the original but the sequel feels tired. Strangely, or not, the production challenges pop in several times during the commentary. The ease or difficulty of the process of filmmaking is no indicator of the quality of the product yet when a director dwells too much on the difficulties of the logistics of the production and when at the same time the screen lacks joy and vibrancy the link seems clear.

(Michael Mann talking about his “Heat” with 5 times more shooting days than its cheaper version “LA Takedown” never once whines about the complexity and the difficulties of his big production. Isn’t directing for boys and girls big enough not to dwell on logistics, or as my teachers at the Polish Film School were pounding into our heads - “nobody cares about your production problems’.)

In addition to feeling sorry for himself for not having his toys big enough in the commentary Oliver Stone dispenses snippets of his life wisdom. It’s (purposely?) provocative and has a tint of the Buddhist spell in it. As a Sunday Buddhist myself I take issue with it. Commenting on his screen hero Gordon Gekko, Stone says:

“There is this ridiculous and crude stereotype of rich people being ‘oh what are they sorry for’. Are you a human being when you say that? Are you really trying to understand what it is being George Bush, Richard Nixon, somebody rich? Suspend this crap in your head about them having it better than you do. It is self depreciating because you are saying ‘hey I am having so hard because I am so poor, I don't have the money, why do they have problems’? That's the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. You are not human when you say that, you devalue your own humanity when you say that. You must understand everyone else, even if you don't like them. And that takes quite a stretch of your imagination and your heart. Keep your heart intact.”

Nice and profound, right?

From a narrative point of view a black character has to be given a chance to redeem or at least to reveal his inner complexities. Yet when talking to real people about the mega rich and powerful things change. The dilemma of “walking in somebody’s else shoes” appears.

Stone urges us not to envy the more privileged among us, to put ourselves in the place of their miseries and not to be petty. Yet, shouldn’t he put himself in the shoes of those who have less (than he, the rich and privileged himself) before calling them “not human” when all they want is a modicum of the comfort he enjoys?

Clearly everyone on this planet suffers, feels pain and despair. However before philosophizing or moralizing we have to be fed.

Stone is right urging to have empathy for a different other, to understand that we all are twisted, challenged and scared shitless. Yet the bottom line of basic life necessities somehow eludes him. Plus there is something strange in urging the less fortunate of us to empathize with the dimension of suffering in those who are so privileged (and often corrupt).

On the other hand perhaps Stone knows more, perhaps his moral and spiritual stance is simply more advanced and I just don’t get it. Perhaps. Similarly, when Michał Oleszczyk argues from a moral point of view with my raving about “127 hours” (see the comment to the previous post) he may very well be right, yet I am not spiritually mature enough to accept his point. The issue is where does apotheosis of life stop and exploitation begins. We both feel the problem differently and no amount of arguing will change that. With Oliver Stone it could be something similar - where does empathy turn into self-excusing mechanism? Those who struggle with life's necessities will never know unless they find ourselves in his (rich) shoes.

If only life experiences were exchangeable, we all would be wiser and more moral.

“It happens”

2011-03-31T22:32:00.000-07:00

"The Kids Are All Right"

Written by Stuart Blumberg and Lisa Cholodenko,

directed by Cholodenko.

A lady married to another lady has a swing with a guy. The guy happens to be a sperm donor whose “goods” both ladies used way back to get pregnant. The key word here is “happens.”

The lightness and the speed of the story, its charming, California light bathed characters are deliciously vulnerable, vaguely self aware of their shortcomings yet unable to successfully conquer them, in short they are us, seen through the emphatic writing and directing lenses.

The character work done by the creators and the actors is of such a caliber that it is not the externality of the persons on the screen (for example their sex orientation) that drives their development. Rather it is the characters’ inner psychological struggles with their own growth or the lack of it (which we all can relate to) that makes the heart of this storytelling.

Strangely enough (or not, since what follows is a classic recipe for good writing) this universal dimension is achieved largely because the story told is the story lived: the co-writer and the co-writer/director explore their own issues and experiences in the script.

The anecdotical devise of the marital cheat “happens” to involve the guy who eighteen years earlier or so anonymously donated sperm and who now, tracked down by the resulting kids, meets the mothers and goes nuts over one of them. She does too. However the fact that he is the father of her kid is of secondary importance. What’s most pressing is their mutual inner void and vulnerability, coupled with physical attraction. That’s at least what I saw on the screen and what I heard as the explanations for this plot maneuver given by Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg at the Creative Screenwriting Podcast conducted by Jeff Goldsmith.

The way the filmmakers treat the reasons for the fling’s attraction is the key to the tone of the story. The woman sees a man. The fact that he is the (anonymous) sperm donor/the father of her child does not trigger any “mystery of the DNA”, "oh God, he is the father of my child" fascination. Such approach could have possibly resulted in a take on the story bordering on philosophical ruminations - still potentially remaining a comedy. And it would not have to be pretentious: image what Woody Allen or Charlie Kaufman would do with such a concept.

The Cholodenko/Blumberg take however purposely keeps the events and the motivations of the characters south of “profound”. The characters struggles with their overwhelming weaknesses are enough to fuel a satisfying narrative and keep us glued to the screen. After all, in our daily lives we first encounter our own character limitations and only then rarely (if ever) become aware of the underlying metaphysical or evolutionary dimensions of our existence.

chemical in your brain

2011-03-04T15:48:00.000-08:00

"127 hours" A film by Danny Boyle, Simon Beaufoy, James Franco

OMG! What a film!

“Free Blood” sets up the “narcotic” vibe with their furious “Never Hear Surf Music Again” and the story that follows keeps up the mad pace and never releases its grip. This pace keeping is by itself already amazing considering that the film is about an immobilized man. How do you tell a story of a guy who can’t move? As an action flick. Naturlich! The structure resembles an hour-glass shape (a clever poster): from the “in your face” universal opening crowds montage through a singular ordeal zeroed in on a rock in the middle of the canyon slot we go back to the universal, because as “Free Blood” sings:

There must be some fucking chemical
(Chemical in your brain)
That makes us different from animals
(Makes us all the same)

Danny Boyle (whom previously I disregarded - both “Trainspotting” and “Slumdog Millionaire” plainly bored me) here grabbed me by the throat and forced to follow his storytelling exactly as he designed it. (I got that after hearing him and Simon Beaufoy talk with Jeff Goldstein on the Screenwriting Magazine podcast). To so effectively create a racing visual story about an immobilized fellow takes extraordinary skills. I came out of the movie theater shaken to the bone (no pun intended - for those who know the pivotal scene).

Some critics say the storytelling is manipulative and cynical forcing upon the viewer notions of guilt and redemption of Aron Ralston. I didn’t get that this way at all. My understanding of the film was that whatever happened to the hero happened because “shit happens”. The misfortune wasn’t brought by Ralston's shortcomings as a human being. It just happened. Granted, he did not leave a message where he was going and so nobody was able to help him, but, from a dramatic point of view, that was to keep the guy alone, and in reality it was everyday carelessness of being already high on his drug (as most of us are most of the time anyway). The scenes from his past were most likely the reaction of the psyche to the horrifying predicament. They were triggered by the “If I hadn’t only....” mechanism, more the result of the horror of the entrapment and not a court case for the reasons of the misfortune.

Misfortunes are around us. When they strike we usually react by “why me”. That’s why the filmmakers take this aspect and magnify it to the limits by the music video opening. It clearly says “it’s about all of us, folks”, “we are all drugged one way or the other”, “his kick is the outdoor sport, what’s yours?”

The second psychological mechanism of a misfortune is the already mentioned “if I only had not ...” We seek in our past justification for what befalls upon us. Sometimes shit happens with a reason, sometimes not. In case of Aron Ralston, we really don’t know the reasons. A transcendental intelligence maybe knows it. Not Ralston. Certainly not Danny Boyle.

I feel Boyle just tries to get inside the hero’s mind and recreate the “if I only had not...” mechanism. Accusing him of cruelty and manipulation and of feeding off some “gore porno” tendency does not in my opinion have any grounds. His work is light years away from such exploitation flicks like for example “The hostel” (that was a morally bankrupt film!) The final act in "127 hours" is not redemption (for some previous sins), but the result of fighting for once’s life and being strong enough and focused enough to win. On the other hand, films are individual, magical encounters and everyone should be free to experience them in a singular, original way. One man’s poison is another man’s medicine.

Vibrancy is one of the words Danny Boyle stresses when discussing the film. He indeed keeps the story alive. Is it the two DP units of (as he stresses) equal status that add energy to the storytelling? Not to mention a virtuoso direction itself, a very precise script and of course an amazing actor. Simon Beaufoy talks about the virtue of speed (not that speed!) in orchestrating a movie going experience. When he teaches screenwriting he makes his students to write a script in (if I remember well) three weeks. He explains that “what is missing in structure and depth is compensated by energy and drive”. Something like this says Werner Herzog when he talks about editing. Judging by their work the guys are right. (How come I struggle for a year with the editing of an hour long sociological documentary? That’s a rhetorical question I do not even wish to start answering here.)

Anyway, “127 hours” is a paean to the human spirit, an uncompromising invitation to participate in a brutal (but screen safe) experience that through its extremes reiterates with full gusto what it means to be alive. Or as “Free blood” sings in the motto:

"Take it if it makes you numb
Take it if it make you come
Take it if it makes you naked
Take it!"

At war

2011-02-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

"Restrepo" by

Tim Hetherington, Sebastian Junger

A few quotes from the makers:

On the best advice for a documentary filmmaker: “Do not, under and circumstances, cede editorial control of the film to anyone else.” They did not and financed the shoot themselves.

On not including close up graphic shots in the film (despite having filmed them): “It’s better to watch death from a distance. It forces the viewer to be more engaged. A shocking close up disconnects”.

Tim says that the camera became his gun giving him a way to control the experience (“the camera was my gun. (...) Because of it I was not afraid.”)

Indeed, the immediacy of this film is shocking from the moment it becomes clear that the filmmakers are right in the middle of combat and their obsession with covering the scene at times stays ahead of their safety, while the soldiers main objectives is kill the enemy without getting killed.

So, what does it take to provide the viewer with an emotional experience of the events filmed? Clearly being close to the subject of the storytelling, becoming one of its participants and acquiring their perspective helps. But there is more: a balance of restrain and immediacy is needed as well. It seems that to the makers of Restrepo withdrawing certain elements of the subject matter (not creating a narrative porn with showing everything in full detail, and I do not mean only the physical stuff) makes space for the viewer to experience that which the heros themselves struggle with.

The filmmakers select their canvas and style by sticking to the filmed unit, by avoiding an attempt to give the “bigger picture”, by limiting their ways of handling traumatic moments, by carefully entering (or not entering) the psyche of their heros. The combination of these decisions is very powerful.

The audience together with the characters on screen does not fully comprehend or is able to fully process the experience. And, contrary to the intuitive urge to show more, this controlled discrepancy between the limited narrative approach and obviously full filmmaking access to the surface of events creates an emotional, gut wrenching feeling of being in the middle of things. Because being in the middle excludes full control and understanding.

Brainwashed

2011-02-19T02:18:00.000-08:00

"Exit through the gift shop", directed by Banksy.

This extraordinary film (among its many other virtues and accomplishments) is a metaphor and a warning to filmmakers: do not attempt to compete with the real life you film. When you do you most likely will become pompous and ridiculous. Know your place!

On the other hand if you choose to switch places and become “the theme” yourself, you may become rich as did Mr. Brainwash. Actually, the warning seems rather a saddening reflection on human nature - as we know from even a casual glance around many a time those on top (in many fields - not only art) are there mostly because they want to be there more than the others, not because of their superior merit. All thanks to the quill-ability of the brainwashed public who doesn’t know shit from Shinola and doesn’t want to strain too much for understanding and self-examining, which as we all know is painful, time consuming and simply damn hard. This biting undertone is very Banksy-ish.

The film is also a very successful exploration of tensions between the narrative as such and its subject. The self-awareness of the filming tool (and I do not mean Mr. Brainwash or his earlier incarnation Mr. Guetta, but the meta narrator calling himself Banksy) allows the narrative to be actually split into two parallel plots: in the first we watch the unfolding of “the real” story of Thierry Guetta, in the second we glimpse into the intentions of Banksy as a storyteller, commentator and our guide to the strange world of his field. Banksy’s choices to come in and out of the film, to switch its path by pushing Guetta to become an artist himself, to frame everything in a strong, focused, first person narrative create a powerful sense of not only intense looking at the portrayed world but also at the tool he uses to portray it with.

It is an insightful look into a pitiful state of ourselves as a consumer culture. Done with sadness, empathy, love and a sense of humor. Bravo.

The quotes

2011-02-11T12:41:00.000-08:00

“Each photo violates its subject”

“To speak is not to see”

“Unless you know your own story you do not exist”

“Get rid of your defenses so you can go the furthest”

“What you do for the least important person, you do for me”

“An anecdote cannot embrace reality”

“Movies are not character, but question driven”

Camera as consciousness

2011-01-26T08:28:00.000-08:00

Gaspar Noe before introducing “Enter the void”

“Enter the void” is a wonderfully mad film, experimenting with the subjective, which could possibly be the next breakthrough in screen storytelling.

This daring experiment in visual representation of consciousness is based on three devices: camera as a point of view, compression of key emotional memories, camera floating above after death.

During the Q&A Noe brings up studies of how brain stores memories, how consciousness reacts to visual stimulus, possibilities of using 3D to better represent life experiences on the screen. One sentence from his talk particularly jumps at me: “in many respects the future is more real that the past.”

While “Irreversible” had a 3 page long script and was done on the fly, “Enter the void” was written in 103 pages during several years. Yet, the structure in “Irreversible” is stronger. There are at least two possible explanations of that:

Perhaps it was meant to be like this. For Noe (at least from what he is saying) “The Void” was to be like a trip, with all pluses and minuses of a trip including an oppressing length (‘my trips were always too long”) and certain meandering. So it is rather an exercise in a state of mind than an exploration of the flow of our lives (which seems to be the theme of “Irreversible”.)

Or:

Noe believes in spontaneity and removal of any obstacles to the “creative flow” - he is his own camera operator and insists that the energy has to come to the set at the last minute. Yet, such directorial spontaneity did not seem to translate into the writing spontaneity/freshness and so the basic structure got surprisingly predictable in the long time it took to write/prepare the film. Noe “overcooked” the storyline a bit. If his directorial freshness could be applied to designing (writing) of such technologically complex film as “Enter the void” it could mean revolution not only in screen storytelling but also perhaps a step forward in our self-understanding.

Essential cinema

2011-01-07T14:49:00.000-08:00

“Essential Killing”, script: Ewa Piaskowska, Jerzy Skolimowski,
DP - Adam Sikora, directed by Skolimowski

Upon disappointments with “The Social Network”, “Inception” or the latest “Harry Potter” I rejoiced with “Essential killing”, almost danced upon seeing it. Cinema is not over! New paths are possible.

The other films felt tired, used up, artificially jazzed up, whereas the Skolimowski’s latest brings in zest, energy and aliveness. It displays humbleness about the events being told. The storyteller of this film does not present himself as smarter than the story. He follows it with respect, with his eyes wide open and ears ready to receive signals that are not predetermined by narrative cliches. In "Essential Killing" there are questions rather than answers. There is openness rather than arrogance. Empathy rather than pushiness. The film does not feel calculated and displays naturalness, mystery and poetry. At the same time there are moments which rise eyebrows in the plausibility department. If that’s the price for the overall energy, so be it.

Reality in Skolimowski's hands gets more penetrating treatment than in those other extravaganzas. I do not think it is only because “Essential killing” is not a Hollywood film and as such can afford to be a more genuine representation of what life feels like. (After all there are Hollywood directors who do not talk down to audiences.)

Conclusion: If a plot is unclear, muddy and or spotty (that’s the case with the four mentioned titles) it may be better to pay less attention to justification of such undercooked structures and instead focus on life and emotions contained within them. Creating scenes that (supposedly) explain psychological or plot intricacies usually reduces sequences to mechanical statements dutifully strung together. Skolimowski does not care much for that - instead he focuses on life which floats in front of the lenses. Thanks to that his screen pulsates with vitality so rare in today’s fiction cinema.

Opinions

2011-01-05T12:33:00.000-08:00

"The Social Network"

writers: Aaron Sorkin (screenplay), Ben Mezrich (book)

director: David Fincher

“The Social Network" is a nicely packaged empty shell. Here, I said it. The film upon its first viewing left me at best indifferent - surely the craftsmanship was there: scenes were wonderfully put together, each layer of the film worked by itself, the DP knew how to light a scene, the director made sure there were not empty narrative spaces, the composer felt the drive, most technicians deserved Oscar nominations for their contribution, yet all together was ... well... lame. Trite.

I felt bad since everybody on the planet went bananas over the flick. So I decided to give it a second try. My reaction was the same. My cinema screening companion at first refused to comment, then she said something to the effect that “the film cleverly puts you in the brainless state of mind similar to that which results from hanging out for a while on the net”. An intelligent remark, yet still with a negative vector, I suppose.

My biggest beef with the film was that it seemed to cheapen something that I felt was profound and truly exciting - the hero and the story of his battles. Instead of showing wide and deep dimension of the amazing technological and cultural revolution the film distilled it down to the issue of who among the players was a bigger dickhead.

Call me naive but I refuse to believe that such great thing as Facebook could be achieved by a bozo. A very gifted, even inspired computer science maverick, yet still a bozo. So I looked at some videos of the real Mark Zuckerberg. Surprise, surprise. The film critics rave about the performance of Jessie Eisenberg. I am sorry but any given beat with the real Zuckerberg brings in more zest, light, focus and drive than the entire two hours of the film. The two hours which, granted, due to the superb skills of the filmmakers, fly very quickly. Still the screen rendering of Zuckerber felt inadequate and even offensive to the spirit of the real Zuckerberg. Judging by the material on the net, the film storytellers flattened the character of the hero, flattened his motives, flattened the plot, - all in a very glossy way. (McDonald De Luxe does not make a gourmet meal.)

I felt terrible, not understanding the enthusiasm pouring from film critics I valued and liked. Being on the edge of depression I goggled for “The Social Network negative reviews” and discovered Armond White, a major New York professional film critic. He didn't like the film. He even championed (causing wide ridicule) “Transformers 2” by Michael Bay, one of my favorite directors. “You may be thinking against the tide but you are not entirely alone.” - I prepped myself. Then I discovered that Mr. White considered my hero Gaspar Noe a fraud and a fake and that he trashed “There will be blood”, to me a true masterpiece.

I was alone again.

Science and storytelling

2011-01-04T09:28:00.000-08:00

"Tess", screenplay by Gerard Brach, Roman Polanski, John Brownjohn,

based on the book by Thomas Hardy, directed by Polanski

Kevin Warwick from Reading University, UK, experiments with electronic enchantment of human senses. He hooks himself into a nervous system of his wife - which results in him knowing what she feels, or connects his system to a third, artificial arm which he can mentally control. He ponders how allowing our nervous systems to electronically read roentgen or ultraviolet radiation could change our perception of reality. Prof. Warwick assumes that since our inferior senses cut us off from 95% of electromagnetic radiation, for all practical reasons, we are death and blind. Furthermore, that which reaches our brains is represented via a very clumsy and primitive four dimension scheme. Thus, reality remains not-penetrable.

Enters Roman Polanski with Tess. The film uses techniques that seem to advocate a Warwick like approach to reality: throughout our lives we are subjected to huge forces which we only occasionally are aware of. In Tess these external forces present themselves in dreams, yearnings, premonitions, in sensitivities of animals and peculiarities of our fates. Those of us who are more attuned to that which is not blatantly seen and heard are weirdoes, aliens, Tesses (“sometimes we can make our souls leave our bodies”.) Society does not take liking to such creatures: Tess has to be sacrificed on the altar of Stonehenge to the god of Sun.

Polański said somewhere that for him each scene has to address more that just one element of plot, one plot point. This multidimensionality of events steams evenly during the unfolding of the story. Most beats seem to posses larger meaning than that of their immediate function in the story. We sense this via many narrative techniques: upcoming occurrences sneak themselves into events currently presented, scenes, backgrounds, actions return revealing their usually darker, tragic layers. The repetition of situations brings disaster. The second carriage - husband chasing scene throws Tess into the miserable relation with the fake d’Uberville, the second wedding night with Angel brings their capture and her death. Many key points in advancing the story - the decision to visit d’Ubervilles, a child delivery, christening of this child, his death, are not shown directly. The web of destiny is too permeating and ever present to naively zero in on its obvious singular manifestations.

Visually, characters are introduced with much delay (Tess, Angel) as if also emerging from a web of emotionality that hoovers over that which is. Emotions emanate outward into surroundings, or surroundings mess with the sensitivities of characters - the rows of maturing cheese hanging in the cellar are nothing less than the souls of young woman sleeping in the room above, the furious working of the threshing machine is the troubled and pained psyche of Tess. The forces that trash us are either social (Angel reads “das Kapital” and acts as its blind and idealistic follower) or metaphysical.

Tess gives a noble fight. Twice during her ordeal the storytellers (Polanski and the composer Phillipe Sarde) point their fingers at her struggle suggesting (inner) triumph. The same glorying music comes during her burring the child and her “burying” herself in the forrest. The second “advancement” is additionally attested by the appearance of a deer. A quite metaphysical, (approving?) deer, as if a messenger of the gods.

Polanski subscribes to “American Science”, has a predilection for clear, rational thinking, sneers at attempts to interpret his work through some cheap spiritual lenses, is furious when journalists suggest connections between his life and subject matters of his films (particularly Rosemary’s Baby). We may therefore safely assume that his storytelling perspective displayed in Tess is not a nod to some superficial “new age” leftovers but rather is a result of analysis of the forces that shape our world, the analysis coming close to possible future extended sensory perception suggested by prof. Warwick.

The difference is in timing: Warwick works to make additional sensory perception accessible to all by technological means, Polanski suggests the possibility of knowing right now more than is given by our five senses. It can be done through a properly constructed screen tale.

Storytelling and Self

2010-12-31T08:23:00.000-08:00

Claude Lanzmann in his biography “The Patagonian Hare” includes his thoughts about film-making. Two of his quotes (my translation and emphasis) coincide with my current “editing mode”:

“I worked on (...) newspaper articles the same way,
I work now on my films.
I wanted thoroughly examine the issue,
take myself out of the picture,
enter into the reasons and impulses,
lies and silences of those
whom I want to present or whom I ask questions.
All needed for reaching
a state of hallucinatory and precise hypersensitivity,
which for me is a model for the imagination.
Only such approach allows me to uncover, reveal the truth
and, if needed, make those I speak about alive and present.
Anyway, this is the law I obey.
I consider myself a seer
and strongly advocate to all
who write about cinema
that they include the term “seer”
into their writing techniques.”
- Claude Lanzmann

To take oneself out of the process so that the subject or the theme comes through is a noble but a very tough order. I keep struggling with my own off screen knowledge, biases, over or under sensitivity. My brilliant editor keeps saying “let the material speak by itself, don’t let your ideas mess it up, allow it reveal itself in its own way.” Sounds great but how to really see and hear without influencing with our own apparatus of perception that which is being perceived? How to represent reality in such a way that it won’t end up being a series of subjective perceptions? Is it possible? Of course the concept of “storytelling” implies “a storyteller”, hence subjectivity is at the very core of the process. A story won’t happen by itself. And yet more often than not the less of a storyteller the better.

“Editing is a long, serious, delicate and subtle operation.
Many a time I felt totally blocked,
as one is during a mountain climbing
during which one can’t find a proper passage
that would allow to climb higher.
Usually one such passage exists.
Not two but only one that is any good.”
- Claude Lanzmann

That’s also true, and yet it brings about the same tension between “the storytelling self” and “the reality being told”. In order to move through the story there has to be an entity to make necessary steps. Yet, the moment a proper step has been made the self should forget itself in order to be open, pure, receptive, hearing and listening to that which is outside (of the perceiving self.)

Otherwise, there is only deaf ears madness.

On the other hand “Shoah” is so effective because it is emotionally lived through, because we feel the emotions of the storyteller, because one person took the challenge to take himself out of the (normal to that point) way of relating to the subject. So perhaps the real compromise in this dilemma of how much of a storyteller should be in a story (aside of course from a first person narrative) is not how to balance the presence of a storytelling self and the events/things/people/themes described but the quality of that self who should not be present in the story. Another words in “who is telling the story” the crucial is not “who” but “who is not”.

And so in this bizarre conclusion it turns out that the quality of the storytelling self relies on the ability of the self to be not! Only a few are talented enough to do so. Strangely, since their work is the most effective, they are the most recognized.

Tokyo everywhere?

2010-12-22T23:15:00.000-08:00

Yasujiro Ozu and Kôgo Noda, the writers of "Tokyo story"

Nobody disputes that "Tokyo story" is a masterpiece yet a quick run through the internet brings in surprising reasons.

For example a Guardian reviewer writes “The film condemns no one”. Hmmm ... during the screening I had a feeling of a relentless, brutal and furious accusation constantly pouring from the screen. Granted, all done in a restrained, elegant and measured way, which just increased the power of this quiet yet terrifying howl over our smallness, stupidity and wasted chances. So, it seems that contrary to the quoted line, the film condemns everybody. Even the gentle visitors are guilty. Guilty of being too complacent to their children, of playing the game, of allowing the quiet evil of coldness and indifference to spread with its small, banal, everyday steps.

“There are too many people in Tokyo” means all dwellers are bad or are bad because there are too many of them. But there are not “them”. It’s “us” that we should beware. Tokyo is everywhere. Incidentally, I buckle over giving one of my beloved cities such a bad rap. But we all know what Ozu means: in “Tokyo story” it’s not important that it happens in Tokyo, it is important that it is “a story” which happens everywhere.

Almost every writing about this film brings in the aesthetics, the framing, the camera level and such as the key elements. Surely there are there, but that’s just the skin deep formal “clothing”, which feels totally secondary. What jumps out the strongest are the characters, the timings as well as the overall structure of the story. (That's why the reported remake of the film makes perfect sense.)

“Tokyo story” is terrifying because of the gentleness of most of its characters. Their smiles and under-spoken reactions telegraph hidden cries of their souls. The situations extend just a bit longer than needed but not too long to call attention to their slight elongation. It is a teasing approach. The story arc leads from the banal through the tragic to the everyday. This hurts.

Regardless of why “The Tokyo Story” works, it is also fun to poke “behind the scenes”. The reported 43 bottles of sake consumed over the 103 days of writing of the script intrigue. Were they drinking to get stimulated? Perhaps they were just numbing themselves since the story opens access to a very painful spiritual human nerve, the nerve almost impossible to handle while being sober.

While the above could make a good story, it isn’t extraordinary in its excess but rather in its restrain. In a wonderful clip Shizu Noda, recalling the writing practices of Yasujiro Ozu and Kôgo Noda, says it usually took them 100 bottles of sake to write a script. Perhaps sensing the importance of this particular story they decided to stay sober on this one. Well sort of sober.

Harry Potter and the movies

2010-12-17T14:22:00.000-08:00

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

writers: Steve Kloves, J.K. Rowling

director: David Yates

The audience was mostly full of twenty-something girls. All eagerly awaiting the screening. The opening shot - the extreme close up of the eyes was strong but also suspicious. Something about it was too much, too fast, too eager and too cheap. “Oh boy, somebody is going to treat me as if I was an idiot”, somebody sighed next to me. As the story was unfolding there were occasional giggles and some smart-ass remarks, yet all got quiet fast. The screen took charge over the hormones, the nervousness of energy, the tiredness and wiggling of the bodies. All of us became subjected to the shiny beets dangling in front of our eyes, moving “24 frames per second” (or whatever visual trick this posh digitally equipped movie theater offered). A few times the audience even laughed at a few lame jokes.

Additional and clearly unintentional laughs the audience awarded to some particularly clumsy staging. Those laughs spoke plenty: we go to the movies to be visually hypnotize, mesmerize and spellbound by succession of sounds and images. The faster, the slicker and the more intriguing the elements the better, however once the human behavior on screen rings false - we are merciless.

I was shocked by the lifelessness of the young characters. They mostly behaved (with the exception of Ron Weasly) as if totally surprised that they are not in a proper vampire movie or something. Somehow all the charm of the first installments of the series was gone. I understand that final confrontation with the evil Lord Vordemort is a serious matter but the movie wasted plenty of time for idle sitting around anyway.

After the screening the audience was borderline disappointed. “I wasn’t floored”, “It was OK, but I can’t wait for the second part”, “The book was better” - were mostly the comments I overheard. Afterwards I spoke to a ten year old, a huge fan of Harry Potter. When I said “but the film was so sad, wasn’t it”, his face for a second clouded - for this short moment he allowed the reality of the film to surface, but then it quickly passed. I suspect that for him the fun of the film was not in its execution but in the subject matter, in the young character of Harry Potter, in the wonderful initial world created by J.K. Rowling. Besides, what's the film's reality? Perhaps our yearnings that we bring into a movie theater are way more important than the skills with which stories flicker on the screen.

In "Deathly Hallows 1" shrewd marketing and our collective eagerness to carry on with magic, innocence and charm triumphed over quality. We can pretty sure envision the second part. It will be laud, fast, furious and victorious. In the human department it most likely is going to be so-so. (There is no reason to change anything or anybody since the formula brings in buckets of cash anyway.) And guess what? We are all going to be there. Glued to flickering images. With sweaty hands and glittering eyes. Gasping at the shinny screen.

Do we love Harry Potter series despite its steady turn to morose and grim, or because of it? Let’s hope the turn does not announce some upcoming collective shadow.

Counting elegies

2010-11-30T12:08:00.000-08:00

One of the most shocking, penetrating and devastating poems ever written comes from the Nobel prize winner Wislawa Szymborska. Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh translated it as Elegiac calculation. It’s pretty audacious of me to suggest an alternative translation. Yet I feel compelled to seek feedback on my own version of the entire poem, posted below:

Counting elegies

How many of those I knew
(if indeed I knew them)
men, women
(if this separation stands)
have passed over this threshold
(if it’s a threshold)
have run over this bridge
(if it’s a bridge)

How many, after a shorter or longer life
(if it still makes any difference for them)
good, because it has started
bad, because it has ended
(unless they would have preferred to say otherwise)
have found themselves on the other shore
(if they got there
and the other shore exists)

I’ve not been granted the certainty
of their fate
(even if it’s at least one common fate
and still fate)

All
(if with this word I don't restrict)
is behind them now
(if not in front)

How many of them have jumped out of the speeding time
and is sweetly vanishing in the distance
(if the perspective is to be trusted)

How many
(if that’s a sensible question,
if it’s possible to reach the final sum
until he who counts won’t add up himself)
have plummeted into that deepest sleep
(unless the deeper one exists)

See you,
Till tomorrow,
Till the next meeting.
They don’t want,
(if they don’t) to repeat this.
Subjected to the endless
(unless otherwise) silence.
Preoccupied only with that
(if only that)
which is forced by their absence.

The poem by Wislawa Szymborska
Translation by Pawel Kuczynski

Who sees the farthest?

2010-11-28T04:34:00.000-08:00

24th of November. A screening of 22 min. from
“1 Lawnswood Gardens: the world according to Zygmunt Bauman”
Directed by Paweł Kuczyński,
written by Paweł Kuczyński and Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska

After the screening Zygmunt Bauman entered the hall to meet the crowd. The discussion, including Anna Zeidler-Janiszewska and Tomasz Majewski, was devoted to the Bauman's just published book "Between moment and beauty. About art in the racing world" (in Polish). The panelists agreed that the artists are like army forerunners while philosophers are the troops who come afterward when the field has been scanned and recognized. I kept silent on the issue however would like to ad here my two cents:

Bauman himself with the visceral, emotional reaction that his work produces proves that the rational observation and reasoning can be emotionally satisfying and a true forerunner of the approaching times, a profound opener of meaning and sense. (Which are the qualities of great art.)

Secondly, perhaps the pre-visual and pre-conceptual domain is the common source of power and creativity in any discipline. Perhaps the veil from which true talent gets its flow is common to sculptures, philosophers, musicians, dancers, writers etc. Those who are able to drink from it directly and who have the capabilities to pass it to us use specific of “art” or “thinking”, or “life”. Perhaps the source is the primary and the same to all, while the language via which it gets communicated is secondary.

And so one more time (at least in my mind) it turns out that it is not "what tools" but "who" that's the most important when seeking meaning, sense and comfort in our common journeys on this planet.

Photos by PK.

A Zygmunt Bauman documentary film update

2010-11-19T12:20:00.000-08:00

Prof. Zygmunt Bauman during the Gloria Artis Medal ceremony.

Photo by Pawel Kuczynski

On November 19th. Bogdan Zdrojewski, the Minister of Culture of the Republic of Poland presented prof. Zygmunt Bauman with a Gloria Artis Golden Medal. The ceremony included a 22 min. of selected scenes from a documentary “1 Lawnswood Gardens: the world according to Zygmunt Bauman”, the project produced and directed by yours truly.

The same selection from the film will be included in two public appearances by prof. Bauman during his stay in Poland:

22 of November, Monday. Poznań. Teatr Ósmego Dnia

24 of November, Wednesday. Łódź. Muzeum Sztuki MS2

How deep is the surface?

2010-11-11T15:28:00.000-08:00

“The truth is always on the surface”
says Prof. Lewinsky (Christopher Janczar) in
“Phenomenology of Truth”.
Written/directed by Pawel Kuczynski

Q&A. PK and prof. Agnieszka Kozyra, the moderator.
Behind - the final frame of the film.

Yesterday prof. Lewinsky via his screen appearance met with a group of academicians and students during the Japan Days at Warsaw University. The ensuing discussion posed a question about the connections between the phenomenology of truth and the Kyoto school of philosophy.

According to prof. Kozyra the Kyoto school stresses the affirmation of our sensual experience of reality. Such experience should not be thrown away even when we attain enlightenment. The newly acquired understanding does not invalidate the sensual knowledge nor does it make it something of a lesser value or transitory. In Buddhism there is no escape from the real world and there is no need for such escape. Each moment even the most ordinary is as important as the eternity, or simply is the eternity. Such mind frame was for example behind the evolution of the tea ceremony - which developed from ordinary to celebratory.

If so, a possible similarity between the Kyoto thinkers and Lewinsky is most likely only a skin deep. Or “only on the surface” if one could quip about the Lewinsky’s pet intellectual project. Would the sophistication of the Kyoto school be something that Lewinsky could endorse? Not really, I would venture to say.

Lewinsky is much simpler in his approach. The Kyoto sages cherish the reality of the now because of its context in the much greater whole. For them the big endorses the small. “Each moment is the eternity” validates one by the other. For Lewinsky such distinction would be another philosophical disgrace. He avoids metaphysical or transcendental undertones of any kind. There is only the surface.

In a synchronistic follow up, the next evening I watched “A room and a half’, an absolutely superb creative biography/fantasy of Joseph Brodsky. Afterwards, I found an interview with Brodsky conducted by Nick Watson and placed in the archives of The Argotist magazine. Here is a quote:

“Nick Watson: "Appearances are all there is" (Less Than One). David Hockney has said "all art is surface" and that surface is "the first reality". Are you talking about the same thing and what depths are negated by privileging surface?

Joseph Brodsky: There are no depths. Appearance is the summary of phenomena.”

This is the gist of Lewinsky’s thought! I wish him and Brodsky could get a chance to hang out together. In Kyoto perhaps. Because the question of the nature of surface is still unanswered.

Thickness of time

2010-11-08T23:23:00.000-08:00

Warsaw. Claude Lanzmann promotes his just published autobiography “Le Lièvre de Patagonie” (The Patagonian Hare). Somebody asks about his former leftist political views. He explains the war and post war realities and then adds that when talking about the past “one cannot forget about the thickness of time”, that back then not everything was obvious. (This reminds me of Kierkegaard’s “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”)

Flipping trough the book I find a scene during a high school lesson on Rabelais. Young Lanzmann unwisely brings up Bergson. His favorite teacher cuts him with “Boy, Rabelais did not read Bergson”. (This has cured Lanzmann from comparativeness.)

Both insights fit with his documentary style in “Shoah”, the film that seems the end result of an almost alchemical process of entering “thickness of time” while avoiding any external, that is comparative, yearnings. Sticking to the subject matter no matter what. No matter the pain. Early on in “Shoah” after one of the survivors tells a particularly shocking horror story, the director asks off screen - why do you talk about it. Because you Mr. Lanzmann insist, comes the replay.

It took Lanzmann 12 years to make the film. He says that that during those years “the time has stopped”, for him and afterward he had to “reconstruct the time”. Yet even now his relation to time is skewed because of that experience. (Something was off with the translation so I suspect that in French Lanzmann articulated it clearer) Still, that his directorial alchemy involves time becomes apparent from the very first reel of “Shoah”.

Lanzmann in person is remarkably sharp, honest and upfront in his controversial opinions. He is also warm and with a healthy distance to himself. The Q&A is conducted by surprisingly aggressive interviewer who does not always sound smart. A few times Lanzmann boils (“with all due respect Anna, that’s a dumb thing to say”). Yet afterward he reaches out and squeezes her hand in a gesture of (?) reconciliation or forgiveness. I am almost shocked by this small, fast and spontaneous looking action. Yet, after a few seconds it all becomes clear. Of course he won’t hold any grudges. He knows that it’s OK. He has pierced through the thickness of time.

Documentary access

2010-10-30T02:54:00.000-07:00

"Thieves by law", written/directed by Alexander Gentelev

Is documentary as good as the access a filmmaker is able to obtain? In most cases yes although I’ve seen a number of boring films with great access to their subjects. “Thieves by law” succeeds bringing to us three real Russian gangsters. Two of them admit their murderous and chilling past, the third, the most famous one, plays an innocent, yet does not particularly bother to hide his amusement with the situation.

Actually just after the screening I was not convinced that the characters were real. It was too much of good stuff from the filmmaking point of view. I thought that perhaps it was all staged. Then I learned that one of the heros (the "innocent" one) is on the FBI most wanted list as the most famous Russian mob figure. OK, it’s a real documentary, showing real gangsters.

Their agreement to appear in the film says volumes about our times. The fact that they openly give interviews and that, after seeing the film, whoever wants to could probably quite easily locate them, even though they are on the Interpol search list, proves that what they do is pretty much sanctioned by the powers that run the show on this planet. Obviously the film is done only by the grace of its heros, as it clearly serves their PRs, personal whims or other objectives.

If it’s true that 20% of the world’s financial trade is mafia based no wonder the guys in the documentary don’t hide their faces, nor do they mind telling stories of killings they committed in the past.

Alexander Gentelev, who has made the documentary, supposedly in the ‘90s survived a bullet because of a thick wand of notes in his breast pocket. Alexander appears briefly on screen. He does look like a guy who can access powerful gangsters, make them talk and walk away alive. Bravo.

The most mysterious is a poker face gangster who having retired from mafia (yeah, right) wants to be a film director. However watching the sequence about his filmmaking plans (which I think includes a real snuff clip) there is a sense that perhaps for the first time in his life, he faces a challenge he may not be ready for.

In a subtly implied inference the film at this point seems to be saying that even a ruthless, smart and powerful gangster most likely will fold trying to make a (good) film. Because it takes more than mastering intimidation, stealing and murdering in cold blood to become a good filmmaker.

Technology and the human nature

2010-10-20T14:41:00.000-07:00

"The game of death". Produced and written by Christophe Nick

Directed by Thomas Bornot, Gilles Amado, Alain-Michel Blanc

"The Singularity is near". Director: Anthony Waller

Interviews Directed by Toshi Hoo

Co-Directed and written by Ray Kurzweil

Watching movies back to back sometimes sharpens their otherwise single perception. Such was a case when after a shocking “The Game of Death” I saw “The Singularity is near”.

“The Game of Death” repeats a famed Stanley Milgram’s 1961 experiment. Milgram found out that 62% of his participants, mindlessly and heartlessly obeying authority, were inflicting cruelty to other humans. 60 years later, in a TV reality show medium, the percentage of the willing executioners rose to 81%. Watching this documentary made me sick in my stomach. It did not happen however because, as a The Huffington Post reviewer claimed, the doc was a gratuitous exploitation of the worst in television while pretending to critque it. It was not. Rather it was nauseating because it honestly, brutally and skillfully revealed a sad truth of our nature.

Locating itself on the other end of the spectrum, “The Singularity” addresses wonders of the upcoming merger of high-tech with human biology and the universe. In a few decades nanorobots will clean up our bodies and allow our minds to retain wast encyclopedic knowledge. Rocks and matter will turn into computing fields for more tech power. Wonderful. The only question is: will it make us better as human beings? Raymond Kurzweil, at least in his film, seems to be little concerned with the fact that we are failing as species, creating oceans of moral and social catastrophes and are completely unprepared for gifts that the splendid technological and biological revolution offers.

I have reservations not only with philosophical and sociological shortcomings of the way the future opportunities are presented in the film, but also with the crafting of the message. The narration is high on technological vision, which while clearly monumental, important and stimulating, is nevertheless presented in a too fast, too shallow and strangely outdated fashion. Granted, the heralded upcoming glory of nanotechnology, exponential technological growth and AI explosion is truly fantastic. Yet the film shows it in a cartoonish way, racing and obsessing over technological wonders with little or no concern with their humanistic implications or lack of them.

Red light goes up when front credits state that that Raymond "Ray" Kurzweil is a “co-director”. In addition one learns that the interviews were directed by a yet another person. Unfortunately what follows does not dispel concerns. The exchanges between Kurzweil and the experts look like created in the editing room with both interlocutors shot in different time and space. The film feels like a giant ego trip and a promotional vehicle for the otherwise brilliant and extremely accomplished guy. Overdoing his mundanely shot close ups and the abundance of the “me” factor don’t help the elegance and the impact of the message.

Somebody could say that it’s not fair to compare the conformists and cowards portrayed in “The Game of death” with some evolved individuals, including Mr. Kurzweil, who are trailblazing the glorious future for our planet. Yet until we learn compassion and cooperation the upcoming wonders of technology will only make most of us miserable.

“The Singularity” has narrative fun (pedestrian as far as the latest animation goes) following the case of a sexy AI female Ramona who, a few dozen years into the future, court battles for the recognition of her individual rights as a being equal to humans. (Allan Dershowitz makes a wonderful allay in her quest). It’s all fine and dandy. But how about setting the clock back to 2010 and trying to get 1/3 of humans deprived of proper education, food and shelter to become possessors of full human rights as well.

In a footnote: as a huge fan of Tony Robbins I protest against flat and borderline ridiculous use of his persona in this film.

On bitching and moaning and other stupidities

2010-10-05T02:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday while working on a complex editing/linguistic/translation issue with Irene, a Chinese friend of mine, I was growling with frustration. She looked at me sharply and said: “Why don’t you do it with a smile, sine you have to do it anyway and since it’s not such a big deal”. The remark instantaneously stopped my exasperation. She was so right.

In most cases within a normal contemporary lifestyle, privileges of any given situation vastly outnumber any possible discomforts and upsets. Yet not many of us “count our blessings”. What is it within ourselves that gravitates toward the negative, that seeks holes within the whole, that tends to get high on problems rather than to celebrate that which is and works?

I recall that Catherine Firpo in her Beijing 2010 ISUD conference presentation looked at the issue from a broader cultural perspective, pondering the fact that in most cultures dominating myths, like the end of the world, are apocalyptic, dark and negative. (Soon on youtube I will start posting selected Beijing interviews/panel scenes including the Firpo remarks.)

Back to my Chinese friend: later I shared with her my recent mistake of taking an antibiotic. Her response was fast: “you are just too impatient, if you took natural remedies it would had taken longer but would be much better for you.” Of course she was right again. Why are we so ridiculously rushing at our own expense even when we know that what we are doing is wrong, dumb and dangerous? Saying that we behave this way because of self destruction is just renaming the question.

The Kafka’s way

2010-09-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

Franz Kafka

How much of our (storytellers, screenwriters, directors) primary concern should be transparent in our narratives? Should our intent or obsessions be fully disclosed in the tales we spin?

The audience may not necessarily want to be led by hand, which is the case when a screen or a page turns into medium to primarily transfer information or diagnosis. The audience wants an experience (not knowledge). For that it needs space for (emotional) movement, a necessary element of any experience.

That Kafka is a genius we all know. Encounter with his works shatters our souls and minds. Only the passage of time, pressures of our daily lives and the barrage of sometimes petty, sometimes not so petty human dramas eases the inner turmoil caused by Franz.

So what does “The process” mean? Why is it so disquieting, so devastating, so shocking? A tint of metaphysics, a hefty dose of surreal, a social satire, a psychological vivisection - it’s all there. But what’s the primary engine that drives the narrative?

Milan Kundera in his awesome “Testaments Betrayed” warns against attempts to figure out the meaning in Franz’s Kafka works. For Kundera asking questions like “what does it mean” or “what does Kafka want to say” is plain ridiculous. Such efforts miss the point, flatten his artistic scope and cheapen the Kafka’s experience.

On the other hand Karl Erich Grozinger in his “Kafka und die Kabbala” convincingly shows the ties between “The process” and the cabala tradition of seeing our existence as the subject of the ongoing metaphysical judgment. Grozinger amply quotes chassidic scholars whose images and structures have striking similarities to the scenes and events used by Kafka in “The process”.

After reading Grozinger there is no doubt that Kafka, intensely participating in the life of Jewish Prague, was enveloped in the chassidic metaphysics. Yet his writing does not immediately reflect that. The scholars place the eternal process in the majestic and imposing “heavens”. Kafka locates the same in the everyday, the gray, the cheap and the dirty. He removes all transparently ethnic and religious indications but keeps a bare bone assumption central to the cabala - that all our deeds are constantly evaluated and judged by the Higher Court. That our existence is in fact the subject for an ongoing judgment. That our faulty souls are eternally judged in the process. That all of us are guilty.

Perhaps the Kafka’s storytelling lesson is to keep the transcendental core of a story hidden. Or to stripe one of our inner torments of its religious and cultural “clothes” and present it raw. Or to mix the metaphysical with the mundane.

Now that I know what Kafka wanted to say in “The process” his prose remains as intriguing and inspiring as before. Luckily no amount of analysis can destroy meeting a masterpiece.

Should she wake up?

2010-09-05T04:26:00.000-07:00

The Sixth Sense

written and directed M. Night Shyamalan

“The sixth sense” even (or especially) on the repeated viewing makes a huge impression. When the plot is nearing its resolution we wait for two revelations about the boy’s abilities. By this time we all know that his mom and his friend psychologists would need to face his sixth sense. We know that it’s not going to be easy, as it counters reason and both “recipients” have been drawn as logical and sensible people.

The revelation to his mother I would place among the best scenes ever written for the screen. I think it works so powerfully because the script does not leave time for the mother to buckle over his preposterous claim (“I see dead people.”) The information about the grandma he provides is so emotional, so right and so to the point that she does not have time to reason. The scene races, even though they just sit inside the car. The speed comes from her feeling torment, astonishment, relief and finally closure.

The same emotional ride needs to meet the psychologist. The scene pivots on a technicality (the wedding ring) which triggers the explanation illustrated by flashbacks and much running around by Bruce Willis. It all works, closes the narrative, everybody understands the point, the properly shocked public gets its “narrative satisfaction”.

Yet, I can’t stop thinking that the two revelations are not on the same storytelling level. What Willis is asked to do in this scene does not provide him with the same “playing field” that the mother got, neither offers it to the wife. The limitation comes from the decision that the wife needs to be asleep and turned away. The psychologist follows the boy’s hint to talk to his wife when she is asleep. That’s a great devise, but the way it’s written/directed results in the characters not looking at each other at the most important situation of their emotional life.

So....

.... what if this final confrontation changes into a face to face situation. Another words: they “talk” much as it’s now, then the wife turns around and wakes up. Now both are looking at each other. Yet she, awakened, can’t see him.

It is then, looking right into her face, watching and trying to make sense of her reaction he realizes what’s going on. Then without moving away he can do his closure face to face with her. It would give both plenty to explore as actors. And the flashbacks and the ring are still within the scene.

Yet, they clearly rejected this idea.

Words and images

2010-09-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

a scene from a book “Winter in the morning”
written by Janina Bauman
Nina Chrzanowska as “Janina”
director Pawel Kuczynski

An upcoming documentary on Zygmunt Bauman will include a few scenes from “Winter in the morning” by Janina Bauman. The book inspired “Modernity and the Holocaust”, hence an attempt to explore the relationship between the two titles: the Warsaw Ghetto memoir and the ground breaking sociological treatise.

In staging the “Winter” scenes we wanted to pay tribute to the written word. At the same time we knew that the exact presentation of that which the off screen voice reads would result in a mere illustration. This would diminish both worlds and images and produce a lame scene.

While playing with the footage it became clear that any slight gap between the voice and the corresponding images would open up the scene, allowing for some air. It would trigger the imagination and make the perception active.

Perhaps such “non illustrative” approach is healthy not only when one has to join a text off screen with its visual representation but also when any text, any script has to be manifested visually.

That would mean that a goal of a narrative visual storytelling is not to show the content but to trigger imagination so it can enter the content.

The shot above by Andrzej Belina Brzozowski. Some "making off" material from the production is here.

Prof. Lewinski returns!

2010-08-31T01:14:00.000-07:00

"Dragolosophy"

written and directed by Pawel Kuczynski

On Saturday we completed a scene for the next “philosophical adventure” of professor Lewinsky. The shoot had a quite elaborate background: floating dragons, laser lights and explosions. My miniscule yet wonderfully capable crew took advantage of a powerful sight and sound night extravaganza organized by "Teatr Groteska" in Cracow. Thanks to the theater kind permission we could be in the right spot on the right time to film our scene. I am quite happy with the results and hope that from now on professor Lewinsky will be more “public friendly” and commercial in his film appearances.

And yes, the figure on the right side of the frame is myself. Due to production logistics I have put myself into the story as a filmmaker/journalist investigating a strange behavior of the professor and his cute female assistant. This means that not only does prof. Lewinski return but he also brings with him his very own opponent, who actually writes the entire story.

Credits: The shot above by Joanna Urbaniec. Paweł Soja operated the second camera. Grzegorz Juras became prof. Lewinski and Małgorzata Makosz his lovely assistant. Andrzej Robak organized the shoot. To be continued.

The “what” distinctions

2010-08-15T01:18:00.000-07:00

“Poste Restante”

written, directed by Marcel Łoziński
camera by Jacek Petrycki

The latest by Marcel Łoziński got him the 2009 European Film Award for best short film. The film is a 14 min. tale about a letter addressed to God and what happens to it at the Undeliverable Letters Department of the Post Office.

What follows is from the interview he gave Joanna Sławińska in the 1/2010 issue of the SFP Film Magazine:

Łoziński (Oscar nomination for “89mm to Europe”) believes in extensive documentation. Unlike most who say “know what you’re saying”, he pushes it further. The documentation is essential in order to be able to know the following:

what one wants to say,

about what one wants to say it,

why one wants to say it,

how one wants to say it.

Once the documentation is thoroughly done, due to the production logistics he “compresses reality”. By provoking, stimulating what’s already there or planting external elements into the photographed scenes he brings about that which he knows is already there (which, with patience and lots of time and money would eventually reveal itself naturally)

At the same time he advocates that there is no objective truth and that every camera set up is subjective by its very nature.

Nolan, Hitch and Michael Bay

2010-08-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

"Inception"
written and directed by Christopher Nolan

Somebody wrote that Nolan’s problem is that his dreams are directed by Michael Bay. I disagree. Were his dreams directed by Michael Bay “Inception” would be much more fun. Yes, I think Michael Bay, together with Steven Spielberg, are the best showmen of the Hollywood raze-dazzle.

Pseudo-psychological or pseudo-intellectual pretenses are grave sins of storytelling. A few truly spectacular shots and fantastic visual concepts can’t hide them. (Whoever came up with the city folding upon itself shot is a genius! If for only one shot.)

True that while watching the flick I though “Amazing that he gets away with such shallow shit! Anybody else would fall flat on his face and die. Yet, this guy keeps the story moving. That’s an impressive skill. Still, I felt cheated and bored by the overall set up. Boring characters played by boring actors inside a half baked story. All spiced up by mountains of dollars and super talented technicians.

While Nolan toils hard, Michael Bay kicks ass with gusto and ecstasy of dealing with the medium. He truly pushes the envelope in rhythm, speed, visual elegance. That’s why I love his directing. Nolan plays it both ways, tries to be hip and profound. Ends up neither.

Where is Hitch in all of that? Well, coming back from the screening I felt “dirtied”, so I pulled out “The Secret Agent”. Great characters, great wit, palpable pleasure of storytelling. All jumped out of the screen and restored my faith in the medium.

I think that Hitch and Bay have fun when telling their stories. Nolan flexes his muscles and strains. That’s a big difference.

The fighters

2010-07-30T03:03:00.000-07:00

Two quotes:

Victor Korchnoi, 79. Last year speaking to “The Independent”:

“Sometimes I felt I had to stop”, he admits. “They say: ‘You have done so much in this life. You can relax’. Then I play a game, and I lose to somebody. And I look at him. I look at who he is, as a chess player. And I look at who he is, in general. And when I do this, I know why I will never stop.”

These two words “in general” are troubling, aren’t they? No mercy to the weak ones? That’s correct, once they decide to enter the game.

Another quote comes from Andrzej Kostenko, a close collaborator of Roman Polanski, age 77, one of my favorite directors:

“Even when a director has talent, but lacks the tenacity - he lets things slip. But he (Polanski) does not allow things go (contrary to his vision).”

The same principle, isn’t it?

Both in chess and film one has to first fight one’s own weakness.

Only then comes victory.

The Lewinski update

2010-07-21T11:25:00.000-07:00

Prof. Feliks Lewinski (Krzysztof Janczar) lecturing

To answer a few recent questions concerning Feliks Lewinski:

Prof. Lewinski's theory is gaining momentum in the academic word. Scholars are dissecting his early publications, doctoral dissertations on Lewinski are in vogue, many congresses devote entire sections to discuss his philosophical contributions. For example see the Lewinski panel at the 2008 Congress of The Contemporary Philosophy, Boston, USA: link

Feliks Lewinski is a Polish philosopher who has written extensively on topics in philosophy of language, ethics, and metaphilosophy. Until the publication of his “Phenomenology of truth” he was best known for his writings on Wittgenstein, and his association with the New Wittgenstein School. He has also written on Stanley Cavell, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Soren Kierkegaard, edited two volumes of Hilary Putnam's papers, and edited (with Adam Hottgeland) one volume of Thomas Kuhn's papers. He lectured extensively in the United States, Israel, Great Britain, Germany, Iran and Brazil.

Lewinski was born in 1950, in Warsaw, Poland. He received his B.A. in Philosophy and History of Science from Warsaw University, and his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Krakow University in 1970. He joined the philosophy faculty at the University of Krakow from 1991-1999, and then became Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warsaw where he continues to teach.

For more info see also "Phenomenology of Truth" and "Light Denied". Prof. Lewinski graciously appears in both.

The camera power

2010-06-12T01:48:00.000-07:00

The Cove" written by Mark Monroe,
directed by Louie Psihoyos

“The Cove”, an Oscar winning documentary about the dolphin killings in Japan is upsetting and uplifting. The set up and the images of the slaughter bring disgrace to our species - hence upset, to say it mildly. When we realize that the camera becomes an instrument of the fight and at the end turns into the redemption device - the power of the medium rings laud.

The climactic scene with the TV monitor is one of the most powerful and dramatic I have ever seen on screen. Elation and sadness walk side by side there. The hero moves forward. Because he has to.

The director, in an interview says that through this film media become “the weapons of mass construction.” That too, yet the final results are unclear and the tormented soul of the hero remains just such.

Will he redeem himself? Or better, will the world grant him the redemption, since he has done everything he could have to erase his earlier wrongdoings?

Servicing the story

2010-06-08T20:57:00.000-07:00

A master class with Werner Herzog

More from Werner Herzog, the guy who's not afraid to challenge seemingly obvious and commonly accepted :

He does his own slate - to be the last in between the actors and the crew. He bans cell phones, viewfinders and video village from his sets saying that looking at the monitor on the set is a major mistake. It gives false security.

He emphasizes the word “rhythm”. Rhythm is established in the shooting not in the editing. Esthetics must come from the moment. “Storyboards are instruments of cowards and book keepers”.

He claims not being interested in understanding himself nor exploring his inner boundaries. “That’s all new age bullshit.” “There is only a story.” “Be a storyteller and a professional - that’s all.”

Digital shooting pushes decisions into the future. That’s bad. Be present. Shoot fast and little, edit fast. “I try to edit with great urgency”. “Versions are diseases of a filmmaker.”

Piercing through

2010-05-30T14:24:00.000-07:00

Miho Iwata at the Popper’s Synagogue, Cracow.

She appeared all dressed in white and with the sheer intensity of her gestures brought in unspeakable drama.

It was like a slap in the face to this sunny courtyard.

To the artsy crowd,

to the feeling of hipness,

to contentment,

to the need for entertainment,

to the underlying boredom.

A quintessential bourgeois afternoon in an old square

was scratched to the halt.

Faces froze.

Shivers run through spines.

A few laughed (oh well.)

Later, she explained that

it was all spontaneous and improvised.

Just reacting to “too much sun, too much of things being right”

The performance took place in an old synagogue courtyard.

What was she really reacting to?

How to report on reality

2010-05-21T05:33:00.000-07:00

Documentarians of words and images often think alike. Take for example Werner Herzog and Ryszard Kapuscinski, two masters of reportage.

“Shah of Shahs”, by Kapuscinski, immediately grabs you tight. You experience the world written about with your own skin, you care.

From the very first moment of this reportage the author puts his own sensitivities center stage. In the very first chapter he does not describe the reality he is supposed to report on: instead he describes his inability to grasp it. In the second chapter he writes about three photographs and while he describes each accurately the heart of “the photographs” story are his own imaginary scenes about possible (and absolutely likely) scenes leading to their taking or following them. From the very beginning of this story the approach is subjective, imaginary, poetic. So why do people moan and groan now about his supposed transgressions from reporting the facts, about not belonging to documentary but rather fiction?

Kapuściński’s personal approach chimes with Herzog’s who’s master-class I attended a few weeks ago.

Herzog says that since nobody can describe truth, we have to be a little vague.

We can’t find the real truth but still should strive to approximate it. That’s why one should seek the ecstatic truth as opposed to the cinema verite truth.

Furthermore, facts do not constitute truth. Cinema verite was too much based on facts. So, don’t be a fly on the wall, admonishes Maestro. We should be thorns that pierce. Be a director. Be a film MAKER - inspires this almost 68 years old wonderfully alive and insane maverick in his 3 hour long intense lecture.

What’s also interesting is Herzog’s approach to literature. He unequivocally claims that nowadays one cannot be a filmmaker without voracious reading.

With no one to protect them

2010-05-06T22:06:00.000-07:00

A video about injustice done to others

by not doing.

Or reacting.

Or at least acknowledging.

The writers’s smile

2010-05-06T03:21:00.000-07:00

Ryszard Kapuscinski talking to Charlie Rose.

I've just finished the Kapuscinski biography. A giant undertaking of a book. The final note of it is a bow toward the towering Maestro. Yet at times I felt uneasy reading more intimate findings and allegations about Kapuscinski’s character.

To learn more about the man I watched his conversation with Charlie Rose. Seeing the Maestro I realized the reason for my ambivalent reaction to certain parts of the book.

Although the biography author indicates a few times the Kapuscinski’s charm and constant smile yet these remarks are overshadowed by the remains of the material (the book runs 600 long). The style of writing does not indicate Kapu’s ever present charismatic personality. Rather it is a descent, engaging account of the search for true Kapuściński. Domosławski writes his story from within himself, and not from within his hero.

Both writers do not use much humor in their writing styles, yet Kapuscinski as a person is all about charm, ever present warmth and a humorous smile. His face constantly telegraphs the distance to the ridiculous (and tragic) game which he nonetheless plays with gusto.

Had Domoslawski written about the Kapuscinski’s writing only, his choice of style would be fine. Yet since he attempts to write about Kapuscinski the man, the style does not fit the theme. Clearly it’s very difficult to find the structural and stylistic equivalent to charm and humor. Yet, it’s not impossible - somebody like Milan Kundera, for example, could pull it off.

Anyway, the Charlie Rose interview is fascinating also because of its content: Maestro revealed that he did not take notes, did not record his interviews. He had two reasons for such approach. First, note taking or turning on a recorder usually alters the behavior of an interviewee and he wanted it straight and pure. Secondly, it forced him to concentrate on what was being said, on those 2-3 key messages usually contained in a conversation.

Indeed the tools and toys we use to record something while seemingly helping us to memorize the experience often rob us from experiencing its core.

Fiction truer than non

2010-04-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

How much fiction is allowed in a documentary? A recent biography of the famed reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski (“Non-fiction” by Artur Domosławski) brings forth the issue with gusto, power and craftsmanship. Being half way through this book I do not understand the controversy it has caused. Supposedly Kapuscinski betrayed the reportage pact with his readers by embellishing reality, fictionalizing events and dramatizing situations.

Back in my Film School days during a seminar with W.J. Has one of the students was feverishly attacking a film scene for being not realistic. Has allowed the exalted student to finish, looked at him for a long time, sighed and quietly asked: “and what is reality?

Indeed. What is reality? How to talk about it? Does a documentarian (using either written words or moving images) need to show events as they are or rather their essence? If we stick with the “as they are” concept, we still need to answer the following: “as they are” to whom? Can representation be devoid of its maker? What is objectivity?

Isn't "objective" just another word for "subtle"? Isn't subjectivity in actually a bow to reality, which in our human perception is always personal?

Perhaps objective does not exist. Perhaps a good documentarian has to be a poet and a storyteller. The differences between (good) subjective reporters and (good) objective ones could only be quantitative.

Some of the poets work so subtly that they are called “realists”, “cinema verite” stylists or “objective reporters”. Kapuscinski at first perceived as the realist, according to the current analysis of his work, was in fact a creator, servicing reality with poetry disguised as reporting - in the name of truth.

What's in the air?

2010-04-25T21:57:00.000-07:00

Early April, a city in Europe

Three weeks before a havoc creating volcanic cloud descended upon the continent.

The Presidential Crash

2010-04-14T03:22:00.000-07:00

Warsaw Presidential Palace

In my currently conducted film workshop I insist that effective storytelling does not present an event but its meaning.

If so, what did crash in Smolensk? Wasn't it a physical manifestation of many tensions that have been tormenting Poland for decades? Perhaps this one:

The unbelievable grandiosity, hatred and hubris have kidnapped Polish politics ever since the country become drunk on a vicious political post-Solidarity confrontation. On the one side there was the conservative, martyrdom fueled, often right wing leaning, catholic church supported populist movement. On the other liberal, “live and let live” democratic, western oriented, progressive, mostly youth supported orientation.

Such telegraphic distinction clearly can’t give justice to the complexities of the new post 1989 nation particularly since both sides claim tradition, progress, social solidarity, modernization and the well being of the citizens as their utmost concerns. Yet, the cores of their distinctively opposite stands were screamingly clear. I was increasingly glued to the TV screen watching dueling political opponents eagerly assuming roles of modern day gladiators - their weapons being wit, quickness, intelligence and cold blood. All employed in the name of the only truth.

The spectacle was reaching such a high pitch that (it surfaces only now in the post-crash reflections) some of its participants felt the need to back off. Yet, the main line of the confrontation continued to escalate. On the front-line were the President and the Prime Minister. Behind them - the presidential cabinet and the government. It was not a pretty picture. A tiring, shameful and unwise spectacle - resulting in belittling of self and millions of co-citizens.

When it became unbearable - it exploded, or tragically (plane) crashed, if you will.

Now the entire country sincerely and profoundly mourns. We weep for the crash victims who were flying to Katyn to pay respect to the 22 thousand polish officers executed there 70 years ago, orders of Joseph Stalin.

We also weep for the fragility of our own existence, for its own mystery, brutality, shortness and incomprehensibility. Last night a former First Lady on a TV show was talking about her warm relationship with the tragically departed First Lady. A talk went smoothly until it turned to the Wife's coffin publicly transported to the presidential palace two days (the time needed to identify her body) after the coffin of her Husband traveled the same route.

As the former First Lady talked about the poignancy of the fact that the Presidential Wife after all will be buried next to her Husband, tears started forming in her eyes. She only managed to say “I would want the same” and choked.

The host, a seasoned TV personality (and the past frequent critic of the departed President’s politics), choked too, not hiding her tears. She was only able to turn to the camera to utter "thank you very much”. The show, in its half time, was cut to black and not resumed.

Where is Pandora?

2010-04-08T00:29:00.000-07:00

"Avatar"
written and directed by James Cameron

Does the dialogue in “Avatar” at times scream paper? Obviously. Do certain exchanges give off a stink of “let me explain what you are looking at”? Yes. However I registered such pains only a few times during the screening. The rest of the time I was enveloped in awe. Clearly, designing ‘Avatar”, James Cameron had been smoking some heavy duty shit. Thank God for that.

The resulting parable is a truly extraordinary bow to the indigenous traditions and the Gaia concept. Its simple yet powerful ecological message is coupled with a furious cry against the corporate assault on the environment.

Yet its message is extrapolated into another world (which is not a fantasy world as would Slavoj Żiżek want in his New Statement review of the film.) It is extrapolated for a few reasons: first it allows for the post mescaline like visions to attain the status of reality. The world of Pandora is real for its inhabitants and is “narrative real” for the moviegoers (sorry Slavoj). That way the whole issue of whether the “new age” shows the real dimension of reality or is just a mind trip has been solved: Pandora is real enough that a corporation from Earth furiously robs its precious resources, willing to exterminate its population.

In our reality of 2010 Pandora is nothing else than our inner world connected with Gaia (in the film called Eywa). It is as things should be here on our planet if we lived in harmony and respect with nature.

The second reason for placing the “let’s not destroy our treasures” message far away in time and space is our preference to consume Truths via metaphors. A metaphor is a knife and a fork in our feast on Truth. Consuming Truth directly, with our fingers, would lead to death by choking. Or in another words: we are constantly hungry for Truth and yet unable to keep it in our stomachs.

Imagine a planet consisting of moronic beings who, unable to cope with reality, design strange narrative games of diluting Truth so that A: a weak version of Truth can somehow reach their shallow minds, B: once it travels down to their hearts its potency weakens enough that they do ... nothing. Bingo - they know a little bit (a safe amount) and remain idle. Happy consumers.

Or/and we became so jaded that the meal has to be “metaphorised” just to reach us and be properly digested. If art is not the way, we’ve got plenty of substitutes to deafen and numb ourselves with: psychosis, delusions, mayhem and other assorted goodies we serve ourselves with strange gusto - if I may borrow some Freudian sauce from Mr. Żiżek.

It seems that the possibility that Na’vi are us upsets many. This upset may lie beneath the common dismissal of the film (I keep hearing it from many earthlings) - “yeah, the film was beautiful but the story is simply not there, it's full of cliches, it's shallow, not deep enough”. Oh really? So you so very refined moviegoers go to see a Hollywood extravaganza and later complain that it aint’ Dostoevsky? Please!

Some professional intellectuals, especially those bitten by the “leftist” bug, writing about the film equally trip over their own legs. The already mentioned Slavoj Żiżek describes the “Avatar” as “the ordinary world of imperialist colonialism on the one hand, and a fantasy world, populated by aborigines who live in an incestuous link with nature, on the other.”

Once sentence - two infuriating wrongs. Why does Żiżek deny Pandora its reality? Perhaps because in a world perfectly balanced and harmonious he and other Marx quoting fellas would have nothing to do. Secondly, why is the harmony labeled “incestuous”? Why does he degrade the harmony of nature? Professor Żiżek - would you please lied down on the coach now - you have some serious issues to work with. It will take many sessions, I am afraid.

“an array of brutal racist motifs: a paraplegic outcast from earth is good enough to get the hand of a beautiful local princess,” - do I read it right? What’s wrong with a paraplegic getting the babe? How dare Żiżek to insinuate that the less fortunate of us can’t get laid with the most beautiful of our women? “Good enough” is clearly sarcastic. As if being crippled prevents somebody from being fully alive. If my fury is politically correct so be it. I wonder what is Żiżek’s whining the sign of? What does it telegraph?

“The film teaches us that the only choice the aborigines have is to be saved by the human beings or to be destroyed by them.” - hello! Have we stayed till the end of the film? Doesn’t look like it.

Yet, in later in the review Żiżek returns to his previous form (I am a big fan of his Hitchcock and Kieślowski analysis) discussing what he calls the Hollywood coupling formula. It says that all script events service the main story goal which is the coupling of the heros. Indeed while watching the extended battle finale of “Avatar” I felt it to be a necessary ritual to repair the broken love affair.

Does the finale also mean that getting rid of our sick selves and protecting the planet can’t be achieved without violence? That’s really upsetting.

About fear

2010-04-05T03:21:00.000-07:00

A week ego I had a privilege to watch works competing in the final round of the Polish edition of the 2010 Democracy Video Challenge (http://www.videochallenge.america.gov/index.html). One of the two winners already chosen by the Jury (we could vote to select the third one) was a documentary style impression from Belorussia.

The video shows glimpses of students’ life, street commotions, the opposition activities. Among a few characters presented is Aleksander Milinkevich, the opposition leader, a former presidential candidate.

Politics in Belorussia is not for the timid. It’s a tough, brutal and dangerous struggle. It seems that once you start rocking the boat - intimidation, arrests, beatings are possible at any moment. At the end of this short (got to be under 3 min.) piece, the filmmaker asks Milinkevich:

The filmmaker: - Aren’t you afraid?”

The response is immediate, with wide open, curious and warm eyes, containing a mixture of curiosity, amusement, certainty, commitment and power. All communicated with a smile:

Milinkevich: - “Of what?”

Academic resurrections

2010-04-02T02:13:00.000-07:00

“The Visitor”
written and directed by Thomas McCarthy

The Easter-Passover spirit has moved me to ponder rejuvenation. Recently I’ve watched two flicks about lifeless academicians overcoming their deadness: “The Visitor” and “Disgrace”. Both are “on the nose” metaphors executed with hugely different skill level. (Why one works much better than the other should be a separate entry). Together with one of my favorites ever - “The Wonder Boys” they belong to this peculiar campus film (is it a genre already?) about a weak eggheads’ struggle to become a mentch.

The Economist in “The Visitor” does not live. He is all shallow and empty pretenses, has no joy, just displays meanness, or carelessness. By the end he has found his own voice and takes a stand.

The Professor in “Disgrace” is a cold blooded manipulative fuck, full of himself with no clue about the other. The unfolding of the film allows him to find humanity embracing the feelings of others in a compassionate way.

The Literature Teacher in “The Wonder Boys” just can’t wake up from the self imposed and degrading wasteful life spin. The finale finds him powerful again.

Each of heros overcomes his spiritual death reaching deep within himself. It is possible when confronting the Outside; either because of a chance meeting (“The Visitor”), personal tragedy (“Disgrace”) or life pressure combined with inspiration from others (“The Wonder Boys”). Each “resurrection” happens as a combination of the inter and the outer.

While religious myths (for their believers - realities) at the core of resurrection place the metaphysical, the will of God, something that acts from Above, the "normal life" stories in the discussed films are driven by a tightly connected dance between the external and the internal. This human level of their metaphorical spin I find truly inspirational in its reality.

Come to think about it, perhaps most film stories with wide and profound audience reach are in fact more or less disguised resurrection metaphors.

If so,

Happy Resurrection Everyone!

“I was misinformed”

2010-03-19T03:06:00.000-07:00

RAINS
And what in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca?

BOGART
My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters.

RAINS
Waters? What waters? We’re in the desert.

BOGART
I was misinformed.

William Goldman in “Which lie did I tell” quotes this Casablanca dialogue and then comments on its elegance, depth and style. Then he writes this amazing paragraph: (emphasis his)

“The character of Rick, of course, is very old - he is the Byronic hero, the tall dark handsome man with a past. Most movie stars - actors, not comedians - have essentially all played that same role. And they have to always face front, never turn sideways -
Because, you see, there’s nothing to them. Try to make them full, try and make them real, and guess what? They disappear.”

and further:

“Hollywood heroes must have mystery. (....) the more you expose that character to the sunlight, the more he starts to fade.”

Is Goldman right? I think so. Perhaps the greatest gift a movie hero offers us is validation of our suspicion that there is mystery to our lives which even the fullest biography or psychological analysis can’t reveal.

Indeed the allure of the “I was misinformed” is all around us - and not only on screen but also as the source of charisma of many earthlings we meet along the way.

An example of the “I was misinformed” turned into a two hour long film parable (one of my favorites) - “The man who fell to Earth” directed by Nicholas Roeg from the script by Paul Mayersberg (based on the novel by Walter Tevis)

Crisp, gripping and gloomy.

2010-03-01T07:36:00.000-08:00

"The Ghost Writer" written by Robert Harris and Roman Polanski,
directed by Polanski

So does “The Ghost Writer” follow "Chinatown"?

Clearly the narrative technique has changed. The “camera talk” does not celebrate the events as much as it did when describing the ordeal of J.J. Gittes. The staging moves faster, is more compressed and more ... well nonchalant. This seemingly more casual approach again delivers the Chinatown truth about evil of the world. This time in an updated 21 Century way, mixing sophistication with in your face signals. The strong ones for example build the opening scene when the empty car on the prom is repeatedly “marked” by visual clues.

Polanski and Harris adapting the novel punch up the emotions every step of the way. The decision to move an empty car on the prom scene up front shows the problem instead of talking about it, which in the novel happens later. The ending of the film is a visual representation of the potentiality existing in the novel’s last paragraph. The entire final sequence of the film adds up to the character of the Ghost making him much more interesting. In short, the master storyteller when translating a novel into the screen makes the story and the hero stronger.

Is Polanski concerned with the things that jumped at me during the read? The verbalized reflections on the difference between the reality and its media representation achieved in the novel through the helicopter scene do not interest him at all. Yet, the bitter commentary about the difference between the reality and its media presence is telegraphed beautifully a scene later when Lang delivers a statement to the crowd of journalists. This short public persona of Lang when compared with his private presence speaks volumes about political truth. That’s clearly the way to address a serious “socio-psychological” issue if one has secured services of Pierce Brosnan.

Others do great work as well. Somebody wrote that in this flick Polanski and McGregor channel Kafka. Seems like a very perceptive comment.

Yes, a grumpy gardener from the "Chinatown" and the Harris novel has made it into the film. This time he appears with a new twist on his absurd work. With the exception of the final shot Polanski does not quote “Chinatown” directly. Instead he and Pawel Edelman spice up their visuals with comments on futility, madness and hopelessness that reign on this crazy planet of ours.

Because their work is so delicious I do not care that the novel-lifted plot is actually an outrageous (and I hope rather silly) Google advertisement. I guess within the “film noir” genre it has to be presented with a straight face, even though Harris himself calls his novel “satirical”. “The Ghost Writer” is still a great movie entertainment.

Is Martha's Vineyard a Chinatown?

2010-02-22T22:35:00.000-08:00

In preparation for the latest from Roman Polański, I am reading “The Ghost” by Robert Harris, set largely in Martha's Vineyard.

The diagnosis of our world as it appears in this page turner of an airport novel is grim: nothing in our lives is fresh, original or spontaneous. We are hollow, without our own true emotions or a sense of the inner. In order to become “somebody” we have to get help from “the outside”, nowadays that’s media. It is the external culture that tells us who we are, what we think, what we remember, who we are. The novel shows it via ghost writers who have to put human emotions into the memories of their clients, who without them would be shallow, would “not exist”.

It’s not only the media that lie to us. We do it to ourselves. Gladly. Our own lives are so pathetically dull that memory serves as a mechanism to space them up (post fact, but who cares):

“Most of us tend to embroider our memories to suit the picture of ourselves that we would like the world to see." — Ghostwriting, by Andrew Crofts (Each chapter of "The Ghost" opens with a quote from this book)

We are like fish in a tank never being able to touch the reality. Or worst, we could touch it but it would be less real than watching it professionally presented by the media. Specifically: television offers a better way of experiencing reality than the reality itself. Here the Ghost Writer watches the exit of his high power client from a mansion where they both hide:

“I COULD HAVE GONE down to see them off. Instead I watched them leave on television. I always say you can't beat sitting in front of a TV screen if you're after that authentic, firsthand experience. For example, it's curious how helicopter news shots impart to even the most innocent activity the dangerous whiff of criminality."

We are weak, lying, inauthentic and that's just scratching the surface. The more conscious of us don't even think of going any further:

“I have no opinion on the human condition, except perhaps that it's best not examined too closely.”

Even if we sense that something is not right, even if we feel the need to speak in a true, new, revealing voice, the resistance of the mater, of the reality is overwhelming. Our steps drag in a mud. Be it the mud of immoral (the thesis of the novel), be it the mud of the limitations of our talents:

“A book unwritten is a delightful universe of infinite possibilities. Set down one word, however, and immediately it becomes earthbound. Set down one sentence and it's halfway to being just like every other bloody book that's ever been written.”

The world is overcast, gloomy, gray. People are not who we think they are. The motifs for their behaviors are low. The naive ones who try to fight the way things are end up dead. The rest buy into the system or live their lives in quiet despair and frustration. The world of the novel strangely resembles some of Polanski’s films. Even the Asian gardener is there, with the almost “bad for the grass” line:

‘Duc kept his eyes on the ground. "Soil bad. Wind bad. Rain bad. Salt bad. Shit."

In short, it all smells like Chinatown.

Half a shoe

2010-02-20T01:30:00.000-08:00

Vancouver Olympics

Justyna Kowalczyk at the finish line

Whistler, British Columbia. The Winter Olympic Games. The 15 kilometers ski race. A grueling fight among the best athletes in the field.

The finish line. A Pole, Justyna Kowalczyk, the number one in 2009 ranking, fights with a Norwegian, Kristin Stoermer Steira, for the third place.

Both, applying a classic finishing technique, crossing the line stuck out their shoes.

Justyna’s foot goes half a shoe further.

The photo finish grants her the bronze.

Kowalczyk is elated. Steira devastated.

Seconds after the photo finish grants her the win (not yet officially announced), Justyna is called to see the judges: there has been a formal motion submitted by the Norwegians that at one point during her race she applied an illegal skiing technique. The jurors consider disqualifying her. She defends her actions. The motion is rejected.

Before the Games Justyna is considered the favorite. Everybody expects her to wind gold medals. Yet, so up until now she's got only (!) a silver one. This could be her second medal of the games.

Justyna is the only athlete among the world top 6 who does not suffer asthma. Those who do take steroids, normally illegal. Steroids taken before a race increase the amount of air in the lungs - a huge bonus for a competitor.

Just before the official announcement of the results of the 15K race, a TV camera catches a glimpse of a never crying Justyna.

This time she does, waiting for the decision.

Finally it’s official, the bronze medal goes to her.

Half a shoe.

Every step of the way.

Random “Niagara” notes

2010-02-18T23:08:00.001-08:00

"Niagara", directed by Henry Hathaway

“Let me stay dead” - that’s at least as good a line as “drag me to hell” - except the former actually comes from a screen dialog. It’s Niagara (1953). Strange picture: watching Marlin Monroe there, one senses her huge and unstoppable wave coming. Or is it just one’s off screen knowledge of her other films slated by destiny to appear later? A very few can see the future screen stardom cocooned in a performance. Afterward everybody “knows”.

Some say “Niagara” is a Hitchcockian film: in some remote and pale way it could be true. Yet such comparison unavoidably brings a question “how would the Master himself handle the plot and show the Falls”? I bet it would be different than in this (absolutely watchable) Henry Hathaway’s film.

The Niagara location insists to be more than a backdrop for action. When a young couple gets on the “Maid of the Mist” the film action stops and dissolves into a state of some unnerving, mysterious expectation. As if the location forced itself upon an anecdote.

The same happened to me when I was there shooting a documentary. In the doc ("A Philosopher's Paradise") a group of philosophers got onto the boat facing the brutal nature. Immediately the situation turned allegorical.

Furthermore, in the doc and in the “Niagara” the scenes on the “Maid of the Mist” are similarly edited and the shots similarly composed. Clearly there is something “in the air” there that forces such an approach.

The above similarities bother me. Anybody can show a roaring falls as dangerous and awe inspiring. A true visionary filmmaker would squeeze out of such a location its true psychic essence. I am thinking of the sequoia trees in “Verdigo” - which for me is one of the best use of space for expanding a character’s psyche. Such handling of the Falls I would love to see!

The conclusion that I am directing to myself is - even if it looks good, never shoot the obvious.

Disturbing sociology

2010-02-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

"Modernity and the Holocaust' by Zygmunt Bauman says that the Holocaust was a direct result of both modern technology and bureaucracy which in themselves tend to disarm and corrupt ethics. Therefore our current contentment and closing the books on Holocaust as something evil that happened in the past and belongs only there is dangerous. The very foundations of the ways we organize ourselves as a modern society are pregnant with demoralizing tendencies, that, if met with right conditions, can (easily!) explode in mayhem, inhumanity and unspeakable evil.

Some learned scholars argue to what extend this gloomy vision of ourselves is correct. I think that unfortunately it not only unveils our darkest potentiality, but in a very scary way announces something. Let's pray that the announcement has to do with the way we ought to process the past and analyze the present. However, what if it is also the announcement of something approaching. Something real.

The book shows how a complex matter of mass murder aiming to exterminate the entire nation was possible by diluting, shifting and obscuring moral responsibilities of the individuals involved. In short, how a truly unspeakable became possible by breaking it down into smaller, acceptable steps.

Not us, not here, not now - you'll say. Really? Are our social choices fully ethical? Don't we accept hypocrisy, cynicism and blatant lies because the system (elected officials, media, science, experts) absolves us from the immediate responsibility? Don't we swim in conformity, even though we know that things are not right?

On the record: it was the Germans who did it in the 30s and the 40s. Yes, the ship was turned around, yes the bankers could care less, yes the peasants were oblivious, yes some helped the murderers, but it was the Nazis and other assorted Germans who did it. No ifs, no buts, no excuses. Or if you want a more hardcore version see my entry on "Inglorious Basterds" ("Remake of "Basterds" needed" - the tragic memory label.) I still stand by it.

Yet, the Bauman's disturbing analysis makes the past calamity more contemporary than we would want it to be.

Therefore on a certain level it is justified to ask:

What are we really involved in this time?

The Japanese influence

2010-02-06T01:53:00.000-08:00

Gerhard Riessbeck, 'Kamchatka"

From his current exhibition at Manggha,

Museum of Japanese Art and Technology, Cracow

Manggha is a great institution. Its way of thinking about the Japanese aesthetic and "the rest of the world" is wide and inspirational. I am reminded here of a quote from Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński, whose collection of Japanese art became the basis for the museum.

What he wrote is a pretty good recipe for a strong visual composition, effective artistic installation or a captivating film:

“All that is best in modern European landscape art is owned to Japanese influence. And it is always a synthesis of the most essential properties, intensification of the primary features, omitting the secondary ones. (..) A narrow blue stripe here is your sky. A few lines - here is your tree. Through the furious study of nature, which is still manifest, the whole ballast is ultimately discarded, and what is reached is a kind of brilliant artistic shorthand.” - Feliks “Manggha” Jasieński, 1906

(emphasis - PK)

Opera everywhere?

2010-02-05T04:16:00.000-08:00

La Traviata at the Valencia Market
November 13, 2009

Recently and elsewhere I have written some rather shallow remarks about an opera as a dead art form. I want to bark them off! The Velencia Market La Traviatta event looks so wonderful that it adds faith in the human spirit and creativity.

Perhaps the only deadness in anything is its form and not its spirit. The spirit of an artistic expression, like opera for example, can always be updated, humanized and presented as a joyful inspiration. (Or a relevant statement of another emotional and conceptual meaning.)

So let's sing! Let's break the barriers between storytelling ways of the past and the demands of the present.

Qualities that control life

2010-01-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

"The Limits of Control"
written and directed by Jim Jarmusch

Imagination and paying attention, that's what controls life according to this film. I agree.

Getting the signs, being able to recognize them and to follow ones path seems to be the subject here. Will you be deaf and blind or will you read and hear? Many allies appear, each knowing only a part of the equation, hence the ultimate challenge of putting it all together is upon you. You the hero, you the audience, you the storyteller. Everyone got an equal chance.

Searching for clues, finding them and then empowering them with all the might we can provide, mostly through our imagination, is what we do in life, don’t we? Perhaps a lot of what we label as correct clues are just our arbitrary decisions, taken out of a thin air. Like leaving Madrid to go to Seville.

Our maps are self generating, so are our tasks. What’s best about this film is the humility of the storyteller. Surely he has designed his tale, otherwise it would be impossible to sustain a narrative yet it all feels as a genuine search. The Lone Man searches, the storyteller searches with him and so do we. There is a sense of being treated seriously, without the paternalistic “I’ve got a plot to unveil upon you” attitude.

This seems to be an honest approach to something that remains an enigma to the majority of us who are humble enough to know that they don’t know. That “something that remains an enigma” is called life. In its maze it is us who generate our own scenarios, our own surprises. elations, and the limits of self control.

What’s the story? No way it happens for real. Maybe it's a tale of a lonely janitor working in Centro de Arte Reina Sofia and fantasizing. Maybe of a hit man, or some other tough guy getting ready to “do something.” In such case the real story would begin when the film stock is literary broken at the end. The real life starts off screen. Yet without the imagination, that is the film, life would be flat, or plain impossible.

Inside the film, the impossible (the stylistic disappointment that is) happened in the fortress. Somehow the Bill Murry’s scene flattened everything into a cheap cartoon. It's not the question "how did he get there". It is rather the lack of intensity needed to make the impossible not only possible but absolutely necessary. This is the scene that really needed for Jarmusch to continue channeling David Lynch, as he brilliantly did earlier in the scene in a bar, where nothing happened and yet everything was pregnant with unrealized importance.

Still, with no disrespect to Jim Jarmusch, whom I like a lot, this is the best David Lynch film signed by somebody else.

Best movies of the decade. 2

2010-01-23T13:04:00.000-08:00

"The Dark House"
written by Lukasz Kosmicki and Wojciech Smarzowski
directed by Smarzowski

“A mysterious follow up” to my list of 10 “film energy clusters” is going to change:

Initially, I did want to pull off a nepotist maneuver and announce a new “film energy cluster” emerging from Poland calling it “The Integration.” The said integration would cover aesthetic as well as political. Such 2009 polish produced films as “The Reverse”(Andrzej Bart writer, Borys Lankosz director), “My Flesh My Blood” (writers: Grazyna Trela, Marcin Wrona, director Marcin Wrona) and (my absolute favorite ) “The Dark House”, mix the past with the now on political and personal levels. Each does it differently, each movingly and effectively. A superb “My Flesh My Blood” is the least political of them. Watch out for these titles on the festival circuit.

At the end I decided not to name the Polish films as the eleventh energy cluster of the decade for two reasons. These great films are actually announcing what’s potentially on the horizon since some are only now being released. More importantly, I can’t turn the blind eye on what has been going on in Russia for the last decade. I just love “The Day Watch” and appreciate “Euphoria”, “Return”, “The Island” or “Tulpan” just to name a few titles. However since “Tulpan” is a polish co-production and is shot by Jolanta Dylewska let’s just put the Russians and the Poles together. It will take some more finagling to come up with the encompassing category since the Poles mostly attack the political while the Russians probe the existential dimension. So for now let’s just call it “the new Slavic energy.”

His own voice

2010-01-13T01:39:00.000-08:00

"All the Ships at Sea"

written and directed by Dan Sallitt

The style, the temperament and the subject matter finally come together in “All the ships at sea” the latest (2002) by an independent American filmmaker Dan Sallitt. It is a pleasure to watch how its rhythmic narrative and elegant compositions support a serious, honest and measured meditation on faith, reason and heart.

The film describes a meeting between two sisters. Evelyn is a catholic theology university teacher. A younger Virginia has just been thrown out of a cult. The two mostly talk, yet it works due to its framing, pacing, delivery, seriousness and the overall restrained approach. Sallitt uses similar sparse fimmaking style in his two earlier features. Their themes deal with male-female circus of sex and relationships. “The Polly Perverse strikes again” (1985) warns against losing one’s true self to a career and normal life (“- You're doing wrong kind of drugs, - I am on reality, man.”) “The Honeymoon” (1998) begs to first fuck, then marry, not the other way around.

The fimmaking skills in probing human interactions pay off, even though the films are hard battles to win considering that their plots center around impotent, brooding fellows who manage to suck into their miserable existences interesting, usually neurotic women. Bad for the gals, good for the script. So so for the audiences. (With all honestly, I can't complain about those guys too much since prof. Lewinsky a certain philosopher who has already appeared twice in my recent fiction attempts ain't a James Bond type either.)

With its third feature Sallitt wisely disposes of a boring guy part (a priest who appears there is just a sidekick) and concentrates on women and their respective faiths. Sallitt allows characters of the two sisters try to understand each other, without being manipulated by the demands of an anecdote. As a result in “All The Ships at Sea” there are real people on the screen, not actors.

Clearly, Dan Sallitt has found his style. Or a theme. Or combined the two. In any rate such congruency is refreshing. Another cool thing about watching Dan Sallit's films is that one can see how over the years he has developed and improved his style and has finally arrived with a strong and convincing handwriting. “All the Ships at Sea” is meticulously crafted. I am particularly impressed by the rhythm and the visual elegance of this film.

The film's web site has a part where the director points out some of the visual references that he as a learned film aficionado sprinkled out throughout the film. I urge those who want to learn to check it out.

The world as a story

2010-01-09T02:55:00.000-08:00

Levitating monks battle the devil
who tries to break their
world sustaining storytelling.

"The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"
Written by Charles McKeown and Terry Gilliam
Directed by Terry Gilliam

To me one of the most alluring aspect of screenwriting is its connection to life seen as a story. In this respect investigating the craft of writing is a bit like pondering our existence – and vice versa. That's why writing is not trivial. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why screen writing today is such a popular trend.

One of the best scenes in “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” deals head on with the subject of the world as story. The scene is a beautifully shot flashback to the first meeting between dr. Parnassus and the devil, Mr. Nick. Milleniums ago, a towering and fantastic cave/fortess/temple deep in (Himalaya?) mountains. Dr. Parnassus – as a lead monk – oversees a kick ass (most participants levitate) group meditation. Clearly they are engaged in a super important activity. Suddenly the wind blows and the devil, Mr. Nick appears:

MR NICK
What exactly do you do here?

DR. PARNASSUS
We tell the eternal story.

MR NICK
Oh.... What's that?

DR. PARNASSUS
The story that sustains the universe.
The story without which there is nothing.

MR NICK
Nothing? Really. Are you telling me
that if you stop telling this story...
that the universe ceases to exist?

(After Mr. Nick stops the story and freezes the monks, a bird shits on his head, and the bad spell is broken.)

DR. PARNASSUS
A sign! A message! That bird was a messenger...
from distant places we know not of!
(triumphant)
Other places! The point is, you're wrong!
And I'm wrong! It doesn't have to be us here!
(indicating monks)
Somewhere in the world, right now...
someone else is telling a story! A different story!
A saga.. a romance... a tale of an unforeseen death.
Tragic or comic.. it doesn’t matter.
It’s sustaining the universe!
That's why we're still here.

Best movies of the decade

2010-01-06T06:21:00.000-08:00

Bitten by “the end of the decade in movies” craziness I am going to put my two cents in. Never mind that technically we still have a year to go, any excuse to talk movies is a good one.

I decided to create and rank “screen theme clusters”, stylistic events, trends that impressed, seduced, amazed, shocked or astounded me the most. The “clusters” are defined by any of the following: writing, directing, geographical origin or common themes. Each cluster represents tendency that advances or strengthens the way we use the medium. Most do not list all of the titles belonging there.

The ranking seeks commonalities and as such excludes many great singular films which I have not put (yet?) in a group context. For example “Training Day”, “The Wonder Boys”, “Y Tu Mama Tambien.”

Here is the list:

1. Space as consciousness, memory and identity:

“Being John Malcovich”

“Adaptation”

“The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”

(Charlie Kaufman)

2. Mystery of the visual, auditory and structural made visible:

“Mulholland Drive”

“Inland Empire”

(Lynch)

3. Pacing the oppressive and the tragic, the Romanian style:

“4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days”

“The death of Mr. Lazarescu”

(Mungu, Puiu)

4. Fast and furious perception of action:

"The Bourne Trilogy"

(Lyman, Greengrass)

5. The explorations of terror:

"Hunger"

"United 93"

"Munich"

"Gomorrah"

(McQueen, Greengrass, Spielberg, Garrone)

6. The mosaic narrative connections:

"Amores Perros"

"21 Grams"

"Babel"

(Arraga, Inamitu)

7. Time moving in all directions:

"Irreversible"

"Memento"

(Noe, Nolan)

8. Metaphysics of the long shots:

“The Werckmeister Harmonies”

“Gerry”

(Tarr, Van Sant)

9. Playful storytelling with imagination and heart:

"Finding Nemo"

"Wally-E"

(Stanton)

10. Empathy, consistency and towering skills - Clint Eastwood:

"Mystic River"

"Million Dollar Baby"

"Gran Torino"

A mysterious follow up will be announced shortly. So stay tuned!

The filmmakers’ hell

2010-01-03T02:37:00.001-08:00

"Drag Me to Hell", written by Sam and Ivan Raimi,
directed by Sam Raimi

In the filmmaker’s hell there are many rooms of various sizes, intensities and status. I have certainly assured myself a modest place in one of the least noticeable of them, but that’s not the subject of this entry.

This entry is concerned with Sam Raimi. I am afraid that with his “Drag me to hell” he might be possibly going there himself. That he would - very deservingly so - be treated there as a major celebrity would be to him a small consolation, I guess.

I suspect all filmmakers, after the screenings of their own lives run last frames, want to reside in some privileged sector of the afterlife, far removed from the unpleasantness of hell and the unbearable boredom of heaven (at least in its biblical version.) What would such “Filmmakers’ Hell” be is another story. Yes, this is a play on my “A Philosopher's Paradise,” which although liked by many (of the very few who actually saw it I must disclose in order not to end up in the wrong circle of hell), is one of the reasons I am definitely going to the filmmakers’ hell.

So why do I think Mr. Raimi might be heading the wrong way? Here are his possible sins:

A delicious Alison Lohman is 95% of the time on the screen and she is never seen naked. Not even a modest bathtub relaxing scene. Not a single change of blood soaked clothes, not a shower scene. That's a major transgression which by itself should assure any director of such a flick eternal hellfire.

If I were a cat or a goat appearing in this flick I would definitely sue. Not a single close up for any of them. A total lack of any character building there. (The argument that humans don't get that much either does not stand, animals in a horror flick are privileged). Here, the cat is too shyly dealt with, the goat's cool single action is thrown away. Only a fly gets some attention and perhaps some “personality development.” (Still not enough for me)

The loudness and the overall bravado of the film successfully hide its shortcomings. For example production design wise the office scenes (the bank and the boyfriend's campus office) are surprisingly devoid of verve. The absolutely captivating historical prologue sets such high expectations that the bank office scene that follows is a let down. Granted, to squeeze something interesting out of such a dull space is almost impossible, but that's Raimi directing. He is a great director, when he wants to be. The next scene in the parking garage proves it.

The script's flatness and predictability could be excused by the “B picture” ambition of the film, yet with such high directorial talent engaged this should have not happened.

A writer departs …. Does she?

2009-12-30T23:27:00.001-08:00

We were siting around a conference table talking business when a cell phone rang. Andrzej pick it up, greeted the caller who turned out to be our mutual friend, and listened for maybe five seconds before his face went gray. I instantly realized the news. So when Andrzej turned toward me and whispered “Mrs. Janina has passed away this morning”, I was already prepared to hear it. Yet, it was the spoken confirmation of the bad news that made it irreversibly tragic, hit hard and produced a lump in my throat.

The third person in the meeting was aware of Mrs. Janina but never met her or had any emotional ties to her. Yet, she too was visibly shaken, trying to remain calm after the announcement of Andrzej. Such is the power of words which can cross the tees and dot the facts of our lives.

It so happened that for the last few weeks I have been immersed in re-reading Mrs. Janina's book “Winter in the morning”. Every morning and every evening a new section of this harrowing and so very moving account of a young girl's survival in the Warsaw ghetto and beyond assisted me in greeting the day and departing to sleep. Were the borders between literature and my life blurred? I can't say they were, but the impression produced by the book has been huge. So vivid, so powerful, so shocking and so telling were the scenes I was reading that the situations they described kept returning as flashes throughout the day. Such is the power of words, which can be the guardians of our decency and the watchdogs of our sins.

For example: at one point in the book Mrs. Janina quotes something she wrote in 1942 and shared with others cramped for days in a hiding place on the Aryan side of the ghetto wall. This Umschlagplatz real event based scene ends this way:

“For a while he could not bring himself to start, his fingers trembled. Then, suddenly, he played. It was a subtle, inspired music which sounded like a prayer, like a mighty call for help to God himself. The condemned and the butchers held their breath. They all believed the life of the gifted child was going to be saved. The boy knew it, too, and smiled. He finished with rich powerful chords of thanksgiving. There was silence again. The boy waited. The listeners waited, too. Commandant Brandt stood numb, spellbound. Raising himself, he glanced at his watch and pointed at the boy: “Same time tomorrow,” he said with a spark of amusement. “He'll play in Treblinka.” And, as if to himself, he added, “Pity!”

Those who master the words and through them offer us insight, remembrance, warnings and hopes are with us forever. Such is the power of words.