The camera behind

Son of Saul, written by Laszlo Nemes and Clara Royer
directed by Laszlo Nemes

I dreaded seeing this film. Every trip to Auschwitz leaves me sick for days.  The subject is almost too much to be touched with a camera.  Regardless of the level of the craft employed.  

One day however I was taken to see this film.  The reaction noted below might be an extension of the just mentioned attitude.  When something is so much outside of one's ability to process and comprehend one can attempt to seek refuge in criticism of the aesthetics. 

Here is mine:

Son of Saul, with the exception of one dantean night sequence brining in your face with full harrowing force the Bosch like imaginary, has kept me confused. For surprisingly long gaps I felt out of the narrative. I wasn’t clear if I was supposed to feel with the hero or just watch his horror.

The immediate reason I think comes from too often placing the camera behind the hero’s back. Why don’t I see the face of the hero, I wondered many times. Then I learned that the main part was given to a rock musician/poet and a theologian.   Nothing wrong with basing a film on a non-professional actor but it carries certain limitations (unless one is David Bowie) and “Son of Saul” might be an example of them. To be fair, the musician playing the lead is doing fine as much as he can. But clearly when the task is too much (and the challenges of that role are huge), the director uses a substitutive camera technique, which when overdone, throws the experience of kilter.

The Instruments of Jazz

Who is playing what here?

How to show that which can't be shown

"Interstellar" by the Nolan brothers. 

My comment assumes that the reader knows the film:

Perhaps I saw it wrong or didn’t get something but the final sequence in “Interstellar” raised my eyebrows. It's possible I didn't get the connection between a library and that which is beyond them. But if a weird technological space structure was the justification for the "other side" of the bookshelf, it was not convincing.

The end of that film posses an interesting dilemma: how to show metaphysical? The script states that a more advanced civilization uses not four (space plus time) but five dimensions. This allows for interstellar travels, time manipulation and generally opens up the possibilities for interactions that we mere three dimensions living in time mortals can perceived and treat as metaphysical.

When the hero finally figures out this dimensional structure it cleverly explains the anecdote of the story and that’s great.

However in addition, the filmmakers chose to tackle the five dimensional challenge head on and to show it on screen. As is it looks complex and technological. And a bit ridiculous to my taste. What were other options? Perhaps to intimate the hyper dimensionality by more organic elements? Something like that is attempted in “Interstellar” when a spacecraft travels through a black hole? But that attempt wasn’t totally captivating either.

What’s amazing is that “2001” almost fifty years ago tackled these issues in a more convincing way. Seems that Kubrick was aware that he can’t escape the flatness of the screen and was successfully building on just that to transcend it.

The issue is crucial to any story trying to explain what’s beyond our senses. How should we intimate the existence of that which we don't have access to?

The Lure

"The Lure", written by Robert Bolesto,

directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska

When in Sundance watch amazing “The Lure”, a totally crazy, beautifully made new Polish film. It is a mermaid/vampire story directed with self-assurance and taste. The women/fish characters audaciously and successfully negotiate dangerous traps of the concept, the other women are also great. So are the guys: for example the manager of the night club where the mermaids work is played by Zygmunt Malanowicz, the same guy who acted in 1961 Polanski’s “Knife in the water”. In my mind his performance somehow bridges the two films: both are bold, intelligent and exploding with talent.

The director Agnieszka Smoczyńska and the writer Robert Bolesto while telling a fairy tale (modern, therefore appropriately bloody and in your face) treat us, the audience, with rare respect. Uff, thank you!

Yes, I love vampire movies but the subject is not enough to enthuse me. For example: I rarely walk out of a film but in case of the Jarmusch's “Only lovers left alive” just couldn’t stay till the end. Also, on the non-vampiric, but melancholic front - Smoczynska accomplishes more and better than von Trier frequently tries rarely getting it right.

“The Lure” has a weird original title “Corki dancingu” (the daughters of a dance hall?) While I like the export version better, I see that the Polish title also points toward a certain adoption and family dynamics on the screen. Although a subplot, it is also a tasty one.

So let “The Lure” charm you but watch out and don’t get bitten by a mermaid’s sharp teeth. If you meet her live, that is.

Endangered playfulness

"A Missing Self"

An upcoming Etiuda&Anima Film Festival screening of “A missing self” made me revisit this project. I've realized that it suddenly acquired a new and disquieting dimension:

Its seemingly light and playful action took place just a few years ago: a Japanese performer, who wished to be anonymous, sought her “Polish self” by placing around Tokyo “a missing person” posters with her face. I decided to follow with the camera because I found it intriguing pondering of the limits of our personal borders and identities.

Now, in 2015 yearning for creativity and exploration, for self exploration clashes with fear and aggression. The EU immigrant /fundamentalist/nationalist crisis pressures us to retract into our cultures, to strengthen our born identities, to seek power by separating ourselves from others.

Are we going to allow madmen to define ourselves by limitation, scarcity and separation? Are we going to take power from coiling in or from expanding? Is our missing self within or outside? The very worst would be to arrive at the conclusion that nothing is missing.  It would be the worst because hubris is always severely punished.  

So although “A missing self” is only a rough sketch I am glad I did it and hope to further explore its theme in a larger form.

Two Electras?

Persona by Ingmar Bergman, 

the first appearance of Electra (Liv Ullmann)

The second appearance of Electra

(Bibi Anderson?)

In Persona, Bergman uses two shots of Elisabeth Vogler acting on stage. The first comes early on when Alma is told about her new patient.  The second appears at the end when Alma, alone, leaves the house on an island.

I’ve been conducting a Bergman films analysis class several times already. This fall one student upon looking closely at the two shots proposed that in the second shot it is Alma (Bibi Anderson) and not Elisabeth (Liv Ullmann).

Such an interpretation would make perfect sense out of the film’s ending which puzzled many for years. Is it possible that Bergman planted such an “key” to understand his film and never revealed it? Is it possible that nobody (nobody!) noticed it since the release of Persona in 1966?

Of course the idea that Alma and Elisabeth are one is banal by now, and some have said that it could be all happening inside the Alma’s psyche, but never have I found the proof of it in the actual “double casting of Electra”.

Check it out for yourself comparing the screenshots above.   

What do movies show?

"Black Widow", directed by Bob Rafelson

I’ve re-watched “The Black Widow”, which is one of my favorite film noire flicks - mostly because of Theresa Russell. Then I found a 2006 interview with Bob Rafelson. Although he spoke there about directing fighting scenes he said something that resonates beyond a fight choreography: ”The audience doesn’t want reality.”

This given, what does an audience want? Escapism, visceral thrills and narcotic forgetting?

Or maybe the audience wants the reality beyond the everyday of banal, fast and superficial.

This beyond could be achieved either by giving them “more of the same”, usually with stepped up intensity, which camouflages for something different. Or the “beyond” is pointed to by intimating that there are ways to deconstruct (sometimes fancy and pretentious words are just right here when you need them) our matrix of learned behavior and perception. I prefer the latter.