Genius as a thief - part one (of four)

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

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

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.

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.

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

"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

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.