La barrière du verbe (Bergson)

"Quel est l'objet de l'art ? Si la réalité venait frapper directement nos sens et notre conscience, si nous pouvions entrer en communication immédiate avec les choses et avec nous-mêmes, je crois bien que l'art serait inutile, ou plutôt que nous serions tous artistes, car notre âme vibrerait alors continuellement à l'unisson de la nature. Nos yeux, aidés de notre mémoire, découperaient dans l'espace et fixeraient dans le temps des tableaux inimitables. Notre regard saisirait au passage, sculptés dans le marbre vivant du corps humain, des fragments de statue aussi beaux que ceux de la statuaire antique. Nous entendrions chanter au fond de nos âmes, comme une musique quelquefois gaie, plus souvent plaintive, toujours originale, la mélodie ininterrompue de notre vie intérieure. Tout cela est autour de nous, tout cela est en nous, et pourtant rien de tout cela n'est perçu par nous distinctement. Entre la nature et nous, que dis-je ? entre nous et notre propre conscience, un voile s'interpose, voile épais pour le commun des hommes, voile léger, presque transparent, pour l'artiste et le poète. Quelle fée a tissé ce voile ? Fût-ce par malice ou par amitié ? Il fallait vivre, et la vie exige que nous appréhendions les choses dans le rapport qu'elles ont à nos besoins. Vivre consiste à agir. Vivre, c'est n'accepter des objets que l'impression utile pour y répondre par des réactions appropriées : les autres impressions doivent s'obscurcir ou ne nous arriver que confusément. Je regarde et je crois voir, j'écoute et je crois entendre, je m'étudie et je crois lire dans le fond de mon coeur. Mais ce que je vois et ce que j'entends du monde extérieur, c'est simplement ce que mes sens en extraient pour éclairer ma conduite ; ce que je connais de moi-même, c'est ce qui affleure à la surface, ce qui prend part à l'action. Mes sens et ma conscience ne me livrent donc de la réalité qu'une simplification pratique. Dans la vision qu'ils me donnent des choses et de moi-même, les différences inutiles à l'homme sont effacées, les ressemblances utiles à l'homme sont accentuées, des routes me sont tracées à l'avance où mon action s'engagera. Ces routes sont celles où l'humanité entière a passé avant moi. Les choses ont été classées en vue du parti que j'en pourrai tirer. Et c'est cette classification que j'aperçois, beaucoup plus que la couleur et la forme des choses...

L'individualité des choses et des êtres nous échappe toutes les fois qu'il ne nous est pas matériellement utile de l'apercevoir. Et là même où nous la remarquons (comme lorsque nous distinguons un homme d'un autre homme), ce n'est pas l'individualité même que notre œil saisit, c'est-à-dire une certaine harmonie tout à fait originale de formes et de couleurs, mais seulement un ou deux traits qui faciliterons la reconnaissance".

Henri Bergson, Le rire, 1899

Lire aussi :

• Regarder (Desgouttes)
• Inerte : état d'âme (Bergson)

Rêveries du spectateur solitaire (Rousseau)

[..] Quand le soir approchait je descendais des cimes de l'île et j'allais volontiers m'asseoir au bord du lac sur la grève dans quelque asile caché ; là le bruit des vagues et l'agitation de l'eau fixant mes sens et chassant de mon âme toute autre agitation la plongeaient dans une rêverie délicieuse où la nuit me surprenait souvent sans que je m'en fusse aperçu. Le flux et reflux de cette eau, son bruit continu mais renflé par intervalles frappant sans relâche mon oreille et mes yeux, suppléaient aux mouvements internes que la rêverie éteignait en moi et suffisaient pour me faire sentir avec plaisir mon existence sans prendre la peine de penser. De temps à autre naissait quelque faible et courte réflexion sur l'instabilité des choses de ce monde dont la surface des eaux m'offrait l'image : mais bientôt ces impressions légères s'effaçaient dans l'uniformité du mouvement continu qui me berçait, et qui sans aucun concours actif de mon âme ne laissait pas de m'attacher au point qu'appelé par l'heure et par le signal convenu je ne pouvais m'arracher de là sans effort.

[..] J'ai remarqué dans les vicissitudes d'une longue vie que les époques des plus douces jouissances et des plaisirs les plus vifs ne sont pourtant pas celles dont le souvenir m'attire et me touche le plus. Ces courts moments de délire et de passion, quelque vifs qu'ils puissent être, ne sont cependant, et par leur vivacité même, que des points bien clairsemés dans la ligne de la vie. Ils sont trop rares et trop rapides pour constituer un état, et le bonheur que mon cœur regrette n'est point composé d'instants fugitifs mais un état simple et permanent, qui n'a rien de vif en lui-même, mais dont la durée accroît le charme au point d'y trouver enfin la suprême félicité. Tout est dans un flux continuel sur la terre : rien n'y garde une forme constante et arrêtée, et nos affections qui s'attachent aux choses extérieures passent et changent nécessairement comme elles. Toujours en avant ou en arrière de nous, elles rappellent le passé qui n'est plus ou préviennent l'avenir qui souvent ne doit point être : il n'y a rien là de solide à quoi le cœur se puisse attacher. [..] Mais s'il est un état où l'âme trouve une assiette assez solide pour s'y reposer tout entière et rassembler là tout son être, sans avoir besoin de rappeler le passé ni d'enjamber sur l'avenir ; où le temps ne soit rien pour elle, où le présent dure toujours sans néanmoins marquer sa durée et sans aucune trace de succession, sans aucun autre sentiment de privation ni de jouissance, de plaisir ni de peine, de désir ni de crainte que celui seul de notre existence, et que ce sentiment seul puisse la remplir tout entière ; tant que cet état dure celui qui s'y trouve peut s'appeler heureux, non d'un bonheur imparfait, pauvre et relatif tel que celui qu'on trouve dans les plaisirs de la vie, mais d'un bonheur suffisant, parfait et plein, qui ne laisse dans l'âme aucun vide qu'elle sente le besoin de remplir. [..]

De quoi jouit-on dans une pareille situation ? De rien d'extérieur à soi, de rien sinon de soi-même et de sa propre existence, tant que cet état dure on se suffit à soi-même comme Dieu. Le sentiment de l'existence dépouillé de toute autre affection est par lui-même un sentiment précieux de contentement et de paix, qui suffirait seul pour rendre cette existence chère et douce à qui saurait écarter de soi toutes les impressions sensuelles et terrestres qui viennent sans cesse nous en distraire et en troubler ici-bas la douceur. Mais la plupart des hommes, agités de passions continuelles, connaissent peu cet état, et ne l'ayant goûté qu'imparfaitement durant peu d'instants n'en conservent qu'une idée obscure et confuse qui ne leur en fait pas sentir le charme. Il ne serait pas même bon, dans la présente constitution des choses, qu'avides de ces douces extases ils s'y dégoûtassent de la vie active dont leurs besoins toujours renaissants leur prescrivent le devoir. Mais un infortuné qu'on a retranché de la société humaine et qui ne peut plus rien faire ici-bas d'utile et de bon pour autrui ni pour soi, peut trouver dans cet état à toutes les félicités humaines des dédommagements que la fortune et les hommes ne lui sauraient ôter. Il est vrai que ces dédommagements ne peuvent être sentis par toutes les âmes ni dans toutes les situations. Il faut que le coeur soit en paix et qu'aucune passion n'en vienne troubler le calme. Il y faut des dispositions de la part de celui qui les éprouve, il en faut dans le concours des objets environnants. Il n'y faut ni un repos absolu ni trop d'agitation, mais un mouvement uniforme et modéré qui n'ait ni secousses ni intervalles. Sans mouvement la vie n'est qu'une léthargie. Si le mouvement est inégal ou trop fort, il réveille ; en nous rappelant aux objets environnants, il détruit le charme de la rêverie, et nous arrache d'au-dedans de nous pour nous remettre à l'instant sous le joug de la fortune et des hommes et nous rendre au sentiment de nos malheurs. Un silence absolu porte à la tristesse. Il offre une image de la mort. [..]

Cette espèce de rêverie peut se goûter partout où l'on peut être tranquille, et j'ai souvent pensé qu'à la Bastille, et même dans un cachot où nul objet n'eût frappé ma vue, j'aurais encore pu rêver agréablement. Mais il faut avouer que cela se faisait bien mieux et plus agréablement dans une île fertile et solitaire, naturellement circonscrite et séparée du reste du monde, où rien ne m'offrait que des images riantes, où rien ne me rappelait des souvenirs attristants où la société du petit nombre d'habitants était liante et douce sans être intéressante au point de m'occuper incessamment, où je pouvais enfin me livrer tout le jour sans obstacle et sans soins aux occupations de mon goût ou à la plus molle oisiveté. L'occasion sans doute était belle pour un rêveur qui, sachant se nourrir d'agréables chimères au milieu des objets les plus déplaisants, pouvait s'en rassasier à son aise en y faisant concourir tout ce qui frappait réellement ses sens. [..]"

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, 1778, cinquième promenade (extraits)

Inerte : état d'ame (Bergson)

"Je veux bien que le tableau n'ait pas la valeur artistique d'un Rembrandt ou d'un Vélasquez : il est tout aussi inattendu et, en ce sens, aussi original. On alléguera que j'ignorais le détail des circonstances, que je ne disposais pas des personnages, de leurs gestes, de leurs attitudes, et que, si l'ensemble m'apporte du nouveau, c'est qu'il me fournit un surcroît d'éléments. Mais j'ai la même impression de nouveauté devant le déroulement de ma vie intérieure. Je l'éprouve, plus vive que jamais, devant l'action voulue par moi et dont j'étais seul maître. Si je délibère avant d'agir, les moments de la délibération s'offrent à ma conscience comme les esquisses successives, chacune seule de son espèce, qu'un peintre ferait de son tableau ; et l'acte lui-même, en s'accomplissant, a beau réaliser du voulu et par conséquent du prévu, il n'en a pas moins sa forme originale. Soit, dira-t-on; il y a peut-être quelque chose d'original et d'unique dans un état d'âme; mais la matière est répétition ; le monde extérieur obéit à des lois mathématiques une intelligence surhumaine, qui connaîtrait la position, la direction et la vitesse de tous les atomes et électrons de l'univers matériel à un moment donné, calculerait n'importe quel état futur de cet univers, comme nous le faisons pour une éclipse de soleil ou de lune. - Je l'accorde, à la rigueur, s'il ne s'agit que du monde inerte, et bien que la question commence à être controversée, au moins pour les phénomènes élémentaires'. Mais ce monde n'est qu'une abstraction. La réalité concrète comprend les êtres vivants, conscients, qui sont encadrés dans la matière inorganique. Je dis vivants et conscients, car j'estime que le vivant est conscient en droit il devient inconscient en fait là où la conscience s'endort, mais, jusque dans les régions où la conscience somnole, chez le végétal par exemple, il y a évolution réglée, progrès défini, vieillissement, enfin tous les signes extérieurs de la durée qui caractérise la conscience. Pourquoi d'ailleurs parler d'une matière inerte où la vie et la conscience s'inséreraient comme dans un cadre ? De quel droit met-on l'inerte d'abord ? Les anciens avaient imaginé une Ame du Monde qui assurerait la continuité d'existence de l'univers matériel. Dépouillant cette conception de ce qu'elle a de mythique, je dirais que le monde inorganique est une série de répétitions ou de quasi-répétitions infiniment rapides qui se somment en changements visibles et prévisibles. Je les comparerais aux oscillations du balancier de l'horloge celles-ci sont accolées à la détente continue d'un ressort qui les relie entre elles et dont elles scandent le progrès celles-là rythment la vie des êtres conscients et mesurent leur durée. Ainsi, l'être vivant dure essentiellement; il dure, justement parce qu'il élabore sans cesse du nouveau et parce qu'il n'y a pas d'élaboration sans recherche, pas de recherche sans tâtonnement. Le temps est cette hésitation même, ou il n'est rien du tout. Supprimez le conscient et le vivant (et vous ne le pouvez que par un effort artificiel d'abstraction, car le monde matériel, encore une fois, implique peut-être la présence nécessaire de la conscience et de la vie), vous obtenez en effet un univers dont les états successifs sont théoriquement calculables d'avance, comme les images, antérieures au déroulement, qui sont juxtaposées sur le film cinématographique. Mais alors, à quoi bon le déroulement ? Pourquoi la réalité se déploie-t-elle ? Comment n'est-elle pas déployée ? A quoi sert le temps ? (Je parle du temps réel, concret, et non pas de ce temps abstrait qui n’est qu’une quatrième dimension de l’espace ".

Henri Bergson, La pensée et le mouvant, 1934 [PDF]

 

Lire aussi :

• Temps et récit (Ricœur)
• La Barrière du verbe (Bergson)
• Regarder (Desgouttes)

Fuir le présent (Pascal)

"Nous ne nous tenons jamais au temps présent. Nous anticipons l'avenir comme trop lent à venir, comme pour hâter son cours; ou nous rappelons le passé pour l'arrêter comme trop prompt: si imprudents, que nous errons dans des temps qui ne sont pas nôtres, et ne pensons point au seul qui nous appartient; et si vains, que nous songeons à ceux qui ne sont rien, et échappons sans réflexion le seul qui subsiste. C'est que le présent, d'ordinaire, nous blesse. Nous le cachons à notre vue parce qu'il nous afflige; et s'il nous est agréable, nous regrettons de le voir échapper. Nous tâchons de le soutenir par l'avenir, et pensons à disposer les choses qui ne sont pas en notre puissance, pour un temps où nous n'avons aucune assurance d’arriver. Que chacun examine ses pensées, il les trouvera toutes occupées au passé et à l'avenir. Nous ne pensons presque point au présent; et, si nous y pensons, ce n'est que pour en prendre la lumière pour disposer de l'avenir. Le présent n'est jamais notre fin: le passé‚ et le présent sont nos moyens; le seul avenir est notre fin. Ainsi nous ne vivons jamais, mais nous espérons de vivre; et, nous disposant toujours à être heureux, il est inévitable que nous ne le soyons jamais.".

Pascal, Pensées, 1670

Films de festival (Thoret)

Cinéma, l'académisme d'auteur

Dans son édito du dernier numéro des Cahiers du Cinéma [n° 620], sobrement titré «Dégueulasse», Jean-Michel Frodon s'indigne de l'émergence insidieuse d'une expression «nouvelle» et «infâme» qui s'immiscerait dans les couloirs du CNC et autres organismes d'aide à la création cinématographique. Depuis peu (quand ?), on y entendrait ainsi parler de «films de festivals» (FDF), expression jugée «injuste»,«infâme»,«insultante». Pourtant, les FDF existent bel et bien, je les ai rencontrés. Ce sont les Films d'auteur académiques (FAA).

Il serait fastidieux de procéder ici à l'inventaire des codes et de la rhétorique du FAA. Mais il suffit de parcourir certains des innombrables festivals de cinéma qui ont lieu chaque semaine dans le monde entier (j'omets ici les vitrines cannoises, berlinoise et vénitienne) pour se convaincre, moyennant un minimum d'honnêteté, de l'existence d'un genre dont l'omniprésence n'a d'équivalent que sa rareté dans nos salles. Ce fut par exemple mon cas, au mois de novembre dernier, lors du festival du film de Séoul, qui m'avait honoré d'une invitation en tant que membre du jury. Huit jours de sélection intensive et une vingtaine de films venus du Chili, d'Iran, du Japon, d'Inde et bien sûr de France, vortex esthético-idéologique du FAA dont l'horizon terminal se résume aux films de Godard (dernière période) et des Straub. Le programmateur du festival était ainsi convaincu de l'extrême popularité du couple auprès de la critique française. Quelle ne fut pas son étonnement lorsque je lui fis remarquer que dans la France de 2006, les films de Michael Mann, de Tsui Hark, de Clint Eastwood ou de Brian de Palma, mobilisaient autant d'énergies critiques que ceux des Straub.

En quoi se distinguaient ces vingt propositions de cinéma parmi «les plus audacieuses» du moment ? A quoi ressemblaient les contours artistiques de cet altercinéma si vanté par Frodon?

Il suffit d'ouvrir les yeux pour se rendre compte combien le cinéma d'auteur académique constitue le pendant naturel du cinéma industriel, moins son antidote ou son refus que son négatif parfait, son double inversé. Si le cinéma hollywoodien valorise la vitesse et le mouvement, le FAA lui, met un point d'honneur à ralentir le rythme (on parle alors de beauté contemplative), à étirer la longueur des plans jusqu'à l'immobilisme total. Si le cinéma industriel a tendance à surligner ses effets et à saturer ses plans d'informations visuelles et sonores, le FAA, lui ne montrera rien ou très peu. Ici, tout se passe alors dans le creux de l'image, et ce qu'il y a à voir n'est surtout pas visible. L'académisme ignore les frontières de même que le passage du grand ou petit marché ne garantit, a priori, aucun gain artistique. Pour des raisons rhétoriques et idéologiques (je suis ce que l'Autre n'est pas), le FAA a besoin de celui qu'il a érigé en ennemi puisqu'il s'y oppose et qu'il trouve dans cette opposition même, la matière de son identité. Ce que l'un filme, l'autre le rejette, et vice versa. Rabattre ainsi l'audace sur le simple refus, c'est prendre le risque de ne plus savoir distinguer Solaris du FAA indien [sic] The Forsaken Land, l'Avventura de l'iranien Portrait of Lady Far Away.

Si le cinéma industriel peut apparaître, souvent à juste titre, comme répétitif, formaté et véhiculant une idéologie consensuelle, le FAA en reproduit naturellement les travers et n'échappe donc pas à une forme d'académisme. D'une certaine façon, le FAA est l'allié objectif du film commercial. Il confond l'épure et le rien, l'abstraction et la pose, le vide et la raréfaction, la contemplation et l'ennui, l'enregistrement de la réalité et la vérité du réel qui, on le sait depuis les frères Lumière, n'a de chance d'advenir qu'à condition d'en fabriquer la fiction. Entre le pire film commercial et le pire FAA, un même néant est atteint, mais par deux chemins opposés. La caractéristique essentielle du FAA réside enfin dans le souci de ne jamais céder (ou le moins possible) aux sirènes du plaisir, de la forme, du spectacle, en bref, il témoigne d'une haine de la fiction, suspecte de faire le jeu d'un ultralibéralisme aliénant. Tel est son paradoxe: censé exprimer une irréductible et résistante singularité, il n'est que l'échantillon conventionnel, et donc interchangeable, d'une même formule.

Jean-Baptiste Thoret, Libération (07 Fév 2007)

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see other posts on this debate : 1 (Flanagan) - 2 (James) - 3 (Shaviro 1) - 4 (Shaviro 2) - 5 (Thoret) - 6 (Guardian) - 7 (Boring is not an argument) - 8 (Lavallée) - 9 (Frieze) - 10 (James 2) - 11 (Romney)

The Films of Sharunas Bartas

Lithuanian auteur Sharunas Bartas is the kind of filmmaker one would immediately be tempted to label “pretentious” and “self-indulgent” because there is absolutely no concession whatsoever that he gives to the viewers in terms of the narrative, artistic, political and personal ambitions of his films, burying them deeply within their part-hyper real and part-surreal constructs. All his films have hinged themselves onto a particular moment in Lithuanian history – the nation’s independence from the USSR, just prior to the latter’s complete collapse – and they all deal with the loss of communication, the seeming impossibility of true love to flourish and the sense of pointlessness that the political separation has imparted to its people. The characters in Bartas’ films are ones that attempt in vain to put the dreadful past behind them, traverse through the difficult present and get onto a future that may or may not exist. With communication having been deemed useless, they hardly speak anything and, even if they do, the talk is restricted to banal everyday expressions. Consequently, Bartas’ films have little or no dialog and rely almost entirely on Bressonian sound design consisting mostly of natural sounds. Also Bresson-like is the acting in the films. There are no expressions conveyed by the actors, no giveaway gestures and no easy outlet for emotions.

The outdoor spaces are deep and vast in Bartas’ films while the indoors are dark, decrepit and decaying. The landscapes, desolate, usually glacial, nearly boundless and seemingly inhospitable, are almost always used as metaphors for a larger scheme. His compositions are often diagonal, dimly lit and simultaneously embody static and dynamic components within a single frame. Interestingly, his editing is large Eisensteinian and he keeps juxtaposing people, their faces and landscapes throughout his filmography. But since the individual images themselves possess much ambiguity of meaning, the sequences retains their own, thereby overcoming the limitations of associative montage. Another eccentric facet in Bartas’ work is the amazing amount of critters found in his films. There are puppies, kitten, frogs, seagulls and flies seen around and over his characters regularly. May be, not considering the specific connotations that these creatures bring to these scenes, the intention is Eisensteinian here too – to indicate that the characters have been reduced to a level lower than these beings, unable to either communicate with each other or be at peace with nature, devoid of the notions of nationality and politics.

In many ways, the cinema of Bartas stands in between that of Andrei Tarkovsky and Béla Tarr – both filmmakers concerned with chronicling life in a communist state. While the childhood memories, existential crisis and spiritual yearning in Bartas films directly has its roots in Tarkovsky’s films (all the films starting from Mirror (1975)), the visual (dancing in entrapping circles, meaningless glances and chatter over banquets and eventual self-destruction of the drifting characters) and aural (the Mihály Vig-like loopy and creepy score consisting of accordions, accentuated ambient noise) motifs, stark cinematography and political exploration are reminiscent of Bartas’ Hungarian contemporary. But, more importantly, it is the attitude towards his characters that puts him right in midpoint between Tarr and Tarkovsky. Bartas’ work has so far been characterized by two impulses – a warm nostalgia and sympathy for his characters that betrays the director’s hope and love for them, as in Tarkovsky’s cinema, and an overpowering cynicism, clearly derived from the (post-neo-realist) films of Tarr, that keeps remarking how the characters are all doomed and done for. This (unbalanced) dialectic is evident in Bartas aesthetic itself, which employs copious amounts of extremely long shots and suffocating close-ups. In the former, characters are seen walking from near the camera and into the screen, gradually becoming point objects eaten up by the landscape while, in the latter, Bartas films every line and texture of their faces with utmost intensity in a way that obviously shows that he cares for them and the pain that they might be experiencing. This conversation between optimism and pessimism towards his people also places him alongside the Armenian filmmaker Artavazd Peleshian – another historian of traumatized lives in a Soviet state before and after independence.

Praejusios Dienos Atminimui (In Memory Of The Day Passed By, 1990)

One of the finest films by Sharunas Bartas, In Memory of the Day Passed By (1990) is a somber, evocative mood piece set in post-independence Lithuania and opens with the image of large flakes of snow moving slowly along a river. This is followed by a shot of a woman and her kid walking on a vast, snowy plain and moving away from the viewer until they become nonentities assimilated by their landscape. This pair of shots provides a very good synopsis of what Bartas’ cinema is all about. The rest of the film presents us vignettes from the daily life of the people living in the unnamed city, possibly Vilnius, and from the garbage dump outside it. One of them presents a tramp-like puppeteer wandering the streets of the city without any apparent destination. Like the puppet that he holds, the people around him seem as if their purpose of living has been nullified, now that the national strings that had held and manipulated them so far have been severed. Consequently, there are many shots that deal with religion and the intense Faith that these people seem to be having, perhaps suggesting a yearning for the replacement of a superior power that guides them. Bartas suffuses the film with diagonal compositions indicative of a fallen world – a world that can go nowhere but the abyss. Appropriately, the film closes with a variation of its opening image: flakes of snow flowing downriver – an apt metaphor for the many nations that would drift without a base after the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Trys Dienos (Three Days, 1991)

Three Days (1991), Bartas’ maiden feature length work, unfolds in a harbor town in Lithuania where two men and a women search for a shelter in the largely uncaring place, possibly to make love. The first Bartas film to feature his would-be collaborator (and muse) Yekaterina Golubeva, Three Days plays out as a post-apocalyptic tale set in an industrial wasteland, complete with decrepit structures and murky waters, where both positive communication (Even the meager amount of dialogue in the film turns out to be purely functional) and meaningful relationships (Almost everyone in the film seems to be a vagrant) have been rendered irrelevant. Every person in this desolate land seems to be an individual island, stuck at a particular time in history forever. The visual palette (akin to the bleached out scheme of the director’s previous work) is dominated by earthy colours, especially brown, and the production design is highly redolent of Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). The actors are all Bressonian here and do no more than move about in seemingly random directions and perform mundane, everyday actions. Like in Bresson’s films, there is no psychological inquiry into the characters’ behaviour and yet there is much pathos and poignancy that is developed thanks to the austerity of Bartas’ direction and the intensity of Vladas Naudzius’ cinematography. The film is titled Three Days, but it could well have been titled ‘three months’, ‘three years’ or even ‘eternity’ for, in the film, all time is one, the notion of future nonextant and hope for escape futile.

Koridorius (The Corridor, 1994)

If Three Days presented people stuck in time and moving aimlessly through desolate landscapes, The Corridor (1994) gives us ones stuck geographically and drifting through abstract time. Bartas’ most opaque and affecting film to date, The Corridor is a moody, meditative essay set at a time just after the independence of Lithuania from the USSR and in a claustrophobic apartment somewhere in Vilnius in which the titular corridor forms the zone through which the residents of the building must pass in order to meet each other. Extremely well shot in harsh monochrome, the interiors of the apartment resemble some sort of a void, a limbo for lost souls if you will, from which there seems to be no way out. Consisting mostly of evocatively lit, melancholy faces that seem like waiting for a miracle to take them out of this suffocating space, The Corridor also presents sequences shot in cinema vérité fashion where we see the residents drinking and dancing in the common kitchen. Of course, there is also the typical central character, played by Sharunas Bartas himself, who seems to be unable to partake in the merriment. Conventional chronology is ruptured and reality and memory merge as Bartas cuts back and forth between the adolescent chronicles of the protagonist, marked by rebellion and sexual awakening, and his present entrapped self, unable to comprehend what this new found ‘freedom’ means. Essentially an elegy about the loss of a sense of ‘being’ and ‘purpose’, The Corridor remains an important film that earns a spot alongside seminal and thematically kindred works such as Paradjanov’s The Color of Pomegranates (1968) and Tarkovsky’s Mirror (1975).

Few Of Us (1996)

Few of Us (1996) is perhaps the least political of the already highly noncommittal works of Sharunas Bartas. Not that this film does not base itself strongly on the political situation in Lithuania, but that the now-intimate backdrop of independent Lithuania is transposed onto a remote foothill in Siberia where a tribe called the Tolofars maintains a spartan life style. It is into this rugged, almost otherworldly land that the beautiful protagonist of the film (Yekaterina Golubeva) is air-dropped like an angel being relegated to the netherworld. She seems as isolated from the people of this land as the Tolofars are from the rest of the world. However, as indicated by the incessant cross cutting between the worn out terrain of the village and the contours on Golubeva’s face, this mysterious, hostile and unforgiving landscape is as much a protagonist of Bartas’ film as Golubeva is. With an eye for small and intricate changes in seasons, terrains and time of the day comparable to that of James Benning, Bartas pushes his own envelope as he lingers on eyes, faces and landscapes for seemingly interminable stretches of time. Each image of the film carries with itself an air of a still paining, vaguely familiar. All this sure does bring to surface the experimental and, I daresay, self-conscious nature of Bartas’ work, but what it also does is familiarize us with the hitherto alien and draw connection between this abstract representation of protagonist’s cultural disconnection in Tolofaria and the typical Bartas territory of desolate, directionless lives lead by the people of post-Soviet Lithuania.

A Casa (The House, 1997)

The House (1997) opens to the image of a mansion as the narrator reads a confessional letter written to his mother about their inability to communicate with each other. The house and mother are, of course, metaphors for the motherland that would be explored in the two hours that follow. It seems to me that The House is the film that Bartas finally comes to terms with the trauma dealt by the country’s recent past that he has consistently expressed in his work. Consequently, the film also seems like a summation of the director’s previous films (One could say that the characters from Bartas’ previous films reprise their roles here) and a melting pot of all the Tarkovsky influences that have characterized his work (especially the last four fictional works of the Russian). Shot almost entirely indoors, The House follows a young man carrying a pile of books as me moves from one room of the Marienbad-like mansion to the other, meeting various men and women, none of whom speak to each other and who might be real people of flesh and blood, shards of memory or figments of fantasy. The house itself might be an abstract space, as in The Corridor, representing the protagonist’s mind with its spatial configuration disoriented like the chessboard in the film. Furthermore, one also gets the feeling that Bartas is attempting to resolve the question of theory versus practice – cold cynicism versus warm optimism – with regards to his politics as we witness the protagonist finally burn the books, page by page, he had so far held tightly to his chest.

Freedom (2000)

Sharunas Bartas’ chef-d’oeuvre and his most accessible work to date, Freedom (2000) is also one of the most pertinent films of the past decade. Taking off from the wandering trio setup of Three Days, Freedom begins with a chase scene right out of genre cinema transposed onto Bartas’ highly de-dramatized canvas. The two men and women seem to be illegal immigrants who are on the coast guard’s wanted list. If The House was national politics distilled into a claustrophobic setting, Freedom is the same being set in seemingly limitless open spaces. The most rigorous of all Bartas films, Freedom is the kind of film Tarkovsky might have made had he lived to see the new century. Like the Russian’s characters, the people in this film are all marginal characters (and are often aptly pushed from the centre of the frame towards its margins) who want to escape the oppressive, unfair politics of this world and become one with nature and the unassailable peace it seems to possess. Alas, like in Blissfully Yours (2002), they are unable to depoliticize their world and start anew. The tyrannical past is catching up with them, the present is at a stalemate and is rotting and there is no sight of the future anywhere. Bartas expands the scope of his usual investigation and deals with a plethora of themes including the artificiality and fickleness of national boundaries, the barriers that lingual and geographical differences create between people and the ultimate impermanence of these barriers and the people affected by it in this visually breathtaking masterwork.

Septyni Nematomi Zmones (Seven Invisible Men, 2005)

The most unusual of all Bartas films, the pre-apocalyptic Seven Invisible Men (2005) starts off like a genre movie – a bunch of robbers trying to evade the police after stealing and selling off a car. It is only after about half an hour, when one of them arrives at a farm that is near completely severed from the rest of the world, that the film moves into the world of Bartas. Seven Invisible Men is the most talkative, most rapidly edited and the most politically concrete of all the films by the director and that may precisely be the idea – to serve as a counterpoint to all the previous movies. All though there is too much talk in the film, rarely do they amount to meaningful conversations, bringing the characters back to the hopelessness of the director’s earlier works. Like Freedom, all the characters here are people living on the fringes of the society – con men and ethnic and religious minorities – who seem to have sequestered themselves with this settlement of theirs. All these characters seem to be trying to escape their agonizing past and the politics of the world that seems to give them no leeway in order to start afresh (The heist may have been the last attempt at escape), in vain. In the final few minutes that recall Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice (1986), we see the house, in which the characters have been living in, burn down to dust. But, unlike Tarkovsky, it is Bartas’ cynicism that overwhelms and he sees his characters as ultimately self-destructive beings that have lost all control of their lives and hope for a better future.

The Forsaken Land

Sri Lankan filmmaker Vimukthi Jayasundara’s debut and only film to date, The Forsaken Land (2005), opens at dusk with the shot of an armed man carefully surveying a vast stretch of land, walking over it in a zigzag pattern and pausing occasionally to observe specific points on it. Following this, we see a montage of seemingly unrelated images – a hand running over a tube light, a rigid arm jutting out of a stream of water and a couple sleeping, filmed head on – that recall Weerasethakul’s films for some reason and announce the otherworldly nature of this land where the story is to unfold. The Forsaken Land embodies the quintessence of the radical, new age aesthetic known as Contemporary Contemplative Cinema with its penchant for protracted, long shots and accentuated, hyper-real direct sound (particularly the sounds of elements of nature), its keen eye for landscapes and its tendency to favour the documentation of rhythm of life and gradual changes in human behavioral patterns over construction of intricate plots and dense theoretical analyses and announces (as do most of the films employing this aesthetic) that the time for action is over and the time for reflection has indeed begun. Having been slammed by the right wing for being anti-war and, indirectly, pro-terrorist, and received threats from the ruling majority, Jayasundara hasn’t made a film since.

The Forsaken Land is set at a time when war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of the Tamil Ealam (LTTE) has reached a deadlock and is at a point where either side can trigger the next phase of battles. But it becomes clear, as the film unfolds, that this abeyance of war is just an illusion of peace that will be disrupted anytime, as indicated by the threatening presence of tanks, trucks and jeeps everywhere. The film charts the lives of six individuals living in a remote area in southern part of the country – Anura (Mahendra Perera), the lone guard at the local military outpost who goes to duty everyday to protect it from a nonexistant enemy, his wife Lata (Nilupli Jeyawardena) who stays home, spending her time observing the world around her, his sister Soma (Kaushalya Fernando) who goes to work in the town nearby and who is either unmarried or has lost her spouse, his colleague, the old man Piyasiri (Hemasiri Liyanage), who seems to have a strange affinity towards the little girl Batti (Pamudika Sapurni Peiris), who may or may not be the daughter of Soma and a soldier Palitha (Saumya Liyanage), who has an affair with Lata. Not only is none of these relationships made clear, but they are also rendered irrelevant. Information is aptly given in extremely small amounts with only barebones of a story to support it.

The first thing that one notices in the film is how sparse the locales are. There are hardly any people seen. There is no connection of the village to the world around it save for the occasional bus that takes Batti to her school and Soma to her workplace. There are no TVs, no radios or even newspapers that are seen in the film (till Soma decides to buy a radio from her salary). Anura’s house, itself, stands as the lone man-made structure in this seemingly limitless plain. Additionally, the film does not particularize the location and hence it can be assumed that Jayasundara is universalizing the conditions of his central characters. It is not only a geographical vacuum that these characters seem to be living in, but also in political, moral and cinematic vacuums. Clearly, these characters are suspended in the hiatus between two brutal civil wars, unable to settle down into a permanent life style. They amuse themselves with petty sexual games and illicit affairs while murder is not an uncommon act around here. Somehow, all the characters in the film seem to have landed smack dab in the amoral middle of the moral spectrum (Only Anura turns out to be residing in a void within this void, with a shade of positive morality within, as indicated by the final minutes of the film). Moreover, in the indoor scenes of the film (there aren’t many), Jayasundara and cinematographer Channa Deshapriya light and film these characters in such a way that they seem to live inside a black void, unable to get out and soon to be annihilated by it.

But these people also harbour a hope, in vain, of escaping this limbo. Palitha wishes that he can go north and fly a helicopter, Soma decides to move out and teach at schools in other villages and Anura criticizes Palitha for blaspheming, betraying his belief that there is a higher power that will carry him through. They even speak about reincarnations in these lands forsaken by god. But, of course, they are sucked back by the void and dragged back into the vicious circle. It’s a circle alright. Piyasiri tells Batti a story about a dwarf girl and a hunchback. Like the hunchback who destroys his own house (and later himself) to protect his vanity and keeps doing the same mistake ad infinitum, all these characters seem be going in the same enclosed path (This seems to be the very case with the civil war, in fact, where for some arbitrary ideologies, people seem to be killing each other). Like the eternal repercussions of the hunchback’s deeds, the mistakes of the past – both personal and national – seem to bear upon each of the adults in the film. Only Batti, the icon of future and posterity in the film, with her innocence and untainted morality, free of any scar from the past, offers some hope when she boards the bus out of this blasted village as the film fades to black.

Anura guarding the outpost that is far from being under threat is reminiscent of Herzog’s Signs of Life (1968), where, too, the very purpose of existence of the characters was questioned. But unlike Herzog’s protagonist who attempts to induce aggression onto the ruined, dead and harmless surroundings, the characters in Jayasundara’s film succumb to it. The sudden passivity that follows an intense period of violence seems to have thrown them out of control. But, rather than Herzog, Jayasundara’s use of landscapes to underscore the moral depravity and pointlessness of the character’s lives suggests Rossellini and Antonioni. The house the characters live in is breaking down; there are hints of death around them regularly; the characters are ironically cleansing themselves now and then as if to rid themselves of this stagnation. Why, the building that unites all the characters and is placed physically on the highest ground, as if it is a sacred monument, is, of all things, a toilet. There is an image in the film early on of Anura sitting naked, stripped of his uniform and hence his identity, within bushes holding on to his gun. This could well represent the whole idea that the film presents. What’s the use of a weapon when you are dying out there, stark naked? What’s the use of boosting your defense systems when your people are dying of hunger and cold? However, Jayasundara’s film, although a maiden work, rarely lends itself to such propagandistic statements and, instead, lets us discover what it is like to be out there.

Godard once remarked that the best film on Auschwitz is one that unfolds in the house of one of the prison guards. Jayasundara’s film comes very close to that. It is more interested in what the war has done than the war itself. The focus of the film is the indelible scars a war leaves on its land and its people. The people in The Forsaken Land are those who have not been able to get rid of the inertia of fear and instability triggered by the war. They have resorted to nihilism, indulging themselves in superficial relationships and casual sex, perhaps in a belief that this state of peace is only transitory and there is no escape from the war. Like the fortunate turtle, which Batti finds, that escapes the claws of the vulture for a brief period of time, like that fish out of water waiting for the rain to pull it back into its routine, these people are merely waiting for fate to sweep them along and out of this limbo. And Jayasundara’s film proficiently shows us how such a precarious situation can prompt a human being to shed all the values he/she holds dear. By actually presenting the insanity that happens during a period of ceasefire, in the form of tortures and custody killings, as grotesque, brutal and indigestible, Jayasundara’s film indirectly questions the absurdity of justifying the very same routines during the war as acts of glory and honour.

Still Life

Sohrab Shahid Saless’ Still Life (Tabiat-e Bijan, 1974) is, barring Kiarostami’s Homework (1989), the greatest Iranian film that I’ve seen. To see that even during the pre-revolution era, when the escapist cinema of Hollywood and its imitations were much more popular, such uncompromising and quality films were being made is both surprising and hope-instilling. Typically European in its form but uniquely Iranian in its content, Still Life is the kind of movie that contemporary contemplative cinema takes off from. Produced by a newly formed group called Kanun-e Sinemagaran-e Pishro (Centre for Avant-Garde Filmmakers), that also produced some of Mehrjui’s early features, the film was one of the many films that were discontented with the existing way of governance. Although never overtly political, Still Life not only manages to critique deeply the disparity that existed between villages and cities of the country during the Shah’s regime, but also remains one of the best works from the country till date. Let’s wait and see what the present-day Iran brings in reply to this masterwork.

Still Life documents a period in the life of Mohammad Sardari (Bonyadi), a veteran employee of the railway services living in a rural part of the country and whose sole job is to close and open a railway crossing few times a day. He is waiting for a festival bonus from the department that is long pending. He is married and his wife (Zahra Yazdini) supplements his income by weaving carpets and carrying out minor tailoring jobs. We are only given such utterly quotidian details from his everyday life – he operates the railway gates in the morning, he rests at his accommodation near the crossing, he returns home for lunch, he goes back to operate the crossing for the evening train, he returns home for dinner and he sleeps - but that is all there is to Sardari. We are also given a few glimpses of his son who returns home for a day from the military service and a bunch of customers who exploit Sardari by underpaying him for the carpets his wife has woven. One day he receives a letter from the railway department that intimates him of his retirement from service. Sardari is unable to comprehend the meaning of the letter and starts to believe that he has been unreasonably given the sack. Heartbroken, he decides to go to the department headquarters located in the city and find out the reason.

Saless’ style is remarkable here. Almost throughout the entire film, he presents us long, uninterrupted extreme long shots of Sardari going about doing his routine at the railway crossing. Even when the old man is home, Saless and cinematographer Hushang Baharlu give us mostly medium and long shots that are filmed with the camera placed at the ground level, sometimes reminiscent of Ozu. In either case, Saless’ eye is that of an ethnological documentarian - interested in what his protagonist is doing, but never wanting more than that. The mise en scène is spare, stripped down to bare essentials, with a chunk of space between the characters and the camera. Even gestures, dialogues and movements are reduced to an absolute minimum. Watching the indoor scenes in Still Life is like gazing at an aquarium in which the fishes indifferently perform the same mundane activities over and over again. Halfway into the film one is acquainted with the routines of the old man and his wife. He comes home, rolls his cigarette, and starts smoking and she continues to stitch clothes and weave carpets. Even when their son returns home after a long time, conversations are perfunctory and the character functions are unhampered.

But what is singular about Still Life is the way it handles cinematic time. Saless, while letting us witness individual scenes unfold in real time – be it entire dinner sessions or railway transitions – without hindrance, shuffles the order of these scenes in a way that disregards chronology. In one scene in the film we see the couple’s son return home and in the next one, he is missing. And then he’s back in the subsequent one. Soon one notices that most of the scenes could have taken place in any arbitrary order in real time and each of those orders is essentially irrelevant, given the idea of the film. What’s the use of chronology when time repeats itself by going in cycles? In Jeanne Dielman (1976), Chantal Akerman used each day of the protagonist life’s to illustrate its microscopic deviation from the previous. She seemed to be essentially constructing a spiral out of Jeanne’s life – a structure that made her life seem to go in circles but which, in actuality, ends only in annihilation. Saless, on the other hand, treats time as some form of stray deadlock that could only be resolved by an alien intervention. Within this loop, all time is one and each day is virtually indistinguishable from the other.

In one scene that comes towards the end of the film, Sardari visits the railway headquarters to seek an explanation for the retirement notice. In the building, he notices a pair of officers scanning through old photographs reminiscing about the past and talking about plans for the weekend, And just there, Saless provides the most overt and powerful contrast between the life in rural and urban Iran. The officers with a lush past and a busy future stand directly in opposition to Sardari, whose past is almost non-extant and whose future promises nothing different. Still Life would definitely form an interesting companion piece to Antonioni’s Blowup (1966), which seems to resonate more and more with the years. Both Thomas (played by David Jennings) and Sardari are perfectly alienated creatures who pass through life without an iota of an idea about their place in the world. Only that their geographical locations are poles apart. Thomas is one of cinema’s many alienated urbanites trying to impart a meaning to their lives. On the other hand, Sardari is the rare villager who believes that life will go on as it is and who is nudged to action only when that belief is shattered. But in essence, both of them are individuals wallowing in their own world unable to snap out of it.

Even with all its serious themes, Still Life isn’t entirely humourless. There is a constant undercurrent of dark comedy throughout the film (In a masterstroke of black humour, Saless has Sardari regularly tune the alarm clock!), but, like all the other elements of the film, it remains extremely subtle and never thrusts itself upon us. Instead, Saless builds one stretch of time upon another, elevating the film from the territory of mere narrative cinema to the realm of the philosophical, the experiential and the contemplative. In the shattering last scene of the film, we see Sardari, who is now forced to accept the reality that he can no longer work at the railway crossing, vacating his quarters. After he loads the cart with his possessions, he decides to check the house one last time for any object he may have forgotten. As he stands in the middle of the now-empty house, gazing at the room of whose inanimate furniture he had become a part of through the years, Sardari notices the final remnant of his life at this place – a piece of mirror hanging on the wall. He reaches out to collect it and, in the process, looks at himself for the first time in the film. Mohammad Sardari has indeed become old.

A Song of Growing up Delivered from Fear

On behalf of Yvette Biró I post her review of Claudia Llosa's film : La Teta Asustada / The milk of sorrow (2009/Peru)

A Song of Growing up Delivered from Fear

Winner of the Golden Bear, the Best Actress and the International Critics Prize in Berlin 2009

There is a prologue to this beautiful film. A saddened young woman accompanies her mother to death. Before saying farewell, the mother sings a terrible, ageless song of horror and sufferings she underwent while bearing this child in her womb: violent rapes, experiences of cruelties she transmitted to the girl with the milk from her breath. Therefore the malady she is afflicted with: “La teta asustada” [the milk of sorrow] - as the folkway name it.

Fausta, the heroine is marked by fear, unable to speak, to be touched by anybody. “She is the metaphor of a torn country…which has known repression and can’t express itself only through which is hidden in the unconscious: the myths, terror, and its traumatisms.” – says the author. While the past events have been real, the myths that encompass them are floating between superstitions, deep anxieties and memories of brutal facts. It is the body which bleeds, which is sick in the literal sense bringing to life an existence between muteness and rare poetic manifestation: chanting, humming in their indigenous language: Quechua. Moreover: there is a potato hidden in Fausta’s vagina, in order to protect her from any violence. And this potato “grows roots and sends germs into the body”, it is a deadly dangerous harm.

This is the unusual, bold setup of this captivating, unclassifiable movie. Is its world real or a metaphor, half physical fact, half symbolic allusion? The decision to place a potato in her sex has been a mere nightmare, the imaginary continuation of a hereditary tradition, learned from her humiliated, raped mother? Or is it an absurd reality? The genre of the film doesn’t intend to clarify it; it is part of the movie’s almost unfathomable poetic aura.

We are in an eerie sandy desert in Peru, not far from the city of Lima, but the life in the emptiness and favellas are poor, miserable. Only exuberant wedding parties, full of music and food stir up the bleak routine. Heavy set young ladies and puny bridegrooms enjoy the extraordinary feasts, in which the whole small community participates with the many children in a boisterous festivity. The scenes are grotesque, funny and repetitive. Taking pictures before the huge “Niagara Falls” photo, dressed in the most beautiful white garbs, - these overly cheerful events are always identical, followed always by the same silly rituals… as they were parts of their everyday life and/or pleasure.

Fausta remains in the silent background, preoccupied with her obligation to bury her mother. There is no money to take her back to the native village, they have to embalm and hide her under the bed before an occasion comes about to arrange it. In this way again: imaginary dreams and physical deeds, life and death border on and her liberation will occur when she arrives with the mummified mom to the open sea…

All these actions take place in the deliberately indefinable border of allegoric and earthy moves. Since the real truth belongs to the painful memories, never fully taken into accepted and elaborate history of the country. Only songs, the traditional, forgotten language keep alive the traces, but once they have to be spoken out, freely in order to liberate the people from their long lasting, ill-fated past history.

Fausta’s story is the story of unresolved memory, savage, concealed, and very particular keys are needed to partially open it. When she is forced to come in touch with people, she is employed by a wealthy pianist woman who herself is in crisis of inspiration. Then, she is the one who will, surprisingly, offer new impulse, energy, for the artist, precisely with the genuine power of her authentic, poetic songs.

Fausta’s slow and dolorous development is at once symbolic, representing the wading out of a divided country from its dark history ravaged by wars, which has left terrible wounds. But it is personal, as well. She has to discover herself, her power and “beauty” (in all senses of the word) daring to have confidence in her.

Since Fausta, performed by the wonderful actress, Magaly Solier, is stunningly beautiful. Her eyes, pervasive gaze under the dark crown or tail of hair, the particular colour of her Aztec Indian skin, radiating from her so perfectly shaped face…her look is bewildering and awe-inspiring at once. She seems genuinely extraordinary, more than a simple individual. There is such an unusual intensity in her presence that one has to watch each moment, small gesture or just the lack of movements. She is truly mesmerizing, having the power to carry on the fascinating, though very simple story. She can sit immovably in an empty room, going through silently from the kitchen to the landlady’s place. And waiting, waiting motionless, yet full of sensible emotions. In her close ups only her eyes speak, in her very slow gestures in order to open timidly the door for the gardener she accumulates so much tension that we really identify with her unnamed anxiety. No wonder that when she faints, it seems to be inevitable, it could be expected, so much tenseness can be felt in her discipline.

She is strong, still frail, always subordinating herself to the exterior demands. Only the instinctive, scarcely audible chants show some more vivid expressions on her face, which usually maintains its steady countenance. Two occasions show important changes: one, when the landlady betrays her in a humiliating way, when she orders her to step out from the car, after she dared, for the first time! to comment – although in an appreciative way –the lady’s success; and by the very ending, which is the final liberation. Arriving at the sea, with the body of the mother she loudly cries out: “See, here is the sea!” and this sudden, happy encounter with the openness is her own deliverance, her discovery of the beauty, beyond offering it to her defunct mother.

This is a courageously uneventful, plain drama. The spectacle, beyond the central character’s interior torments is in total harmony with the exceptional marvel of the landscape. Large, open vistas of the greyish region, with the surprisingly fluctuating “mountains and valleys” of the sand. Huge, almost immeasurable space and the infinite steps leading to the top in order to rise above everything, - the images appear as visually summing up the whole tale.

Thinking of the power and fullness of minimalism, Claudia Llosa’s film joins the rich examples of many oriental films. Full of withheld emotions, finely chiselled small actions, rarely seen or discovered beauty offered for the eyes – the saturated experience and vision enchant the spectator. Fantastic and precise realism assure the particular flavour of its modest magic.

With this Peruvian film, Fausta, Latin America has deservedly entered the domain of the memorable, fortunate successes of our not so long discovered and appreciated films, coming from Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong. Moving bravely against the mainstream it strengthens the values of emotional identification, achieved without pathos, avoiding to describe sheer misery or solitude. Intensity and masterful composition complement each other. …. Sensibility, refined attention, slow and silent treatment of deep human and historical dramas have found their appropriate form and style in this orientation.

YVETTE BIRO

Jeanne Dielman

Chantal Akerman’s most famous film gives away all that is factual about it in its name itself. The rest of it follows what the titular Jeanne Dielman (Delphine Seyrig) does in this 23, Commerce Quay, 1080 Bruxelles house of hers, over a three day period in almost in its entirety. Using completely stationery cameras, Akerman creates a claustrophobic document of life in its most mundane form. Even with a screen time of over three hours, there isn’t much in the movie that could be fit into something called plot. That, precisely, is Akerman’s intention. Details are given with extreme reluctance and in exceedingly small measures (with hardly 10 minutes of spoken dialogue). On the first day, we witness Jeanne ritualistically moving about in her house, switching on and off the room lights, cooking potatoes for her obedient son, arranging tables, doing the dishes and making the bed. She earns by selling herself during the afternoons in her very house. All this is done by the book, if there ever was one.

It is precisely these systematic acts which become our reference for the next day. The next day follows almost the same pattern. Only that Jeanne drops a spoon and the polishing brush. Oh yes, she also goofs up the dinner! On the third day, the bank is closed, she reaches a shop before it opens, the coffee is spoilt and a button snaps off from her son’s blazer. This is all the change that Akerman allows Jeanne. What surfaces is a gradually progressive deviation from our “reference” and perhaps for the worse. Like the geometrically flawless décor and lighting of the film, which exude cheerfulness, contentment and sanity are only apparent. It is almost as if one can mathematically calculate, using these extremely small “mishaps”, when Jeanne will completely succumb to her condition. And this is the kind of gradual disintegration of sanity that many films fail to portray credibly (Revolutionary Road (2008) comes to mind first). What happens obscures how it all happens. Cinema becomes text. Although Jeanne Dielman is much more extreme in its form than the mainstream narrative cinema would require, it clearly shows that why a formal stance doesn’t merely justify the medium chosen but enhances its possibilities.

It wouldn’t be unfair to call Jeanne Dielman an experimental film. Where other films that deal with similar theme of urban alienation tend to bend towards the cerebral side, Jeanne Dielman is more experiential. At any point in the film, once the viewer gathers everything there is to an image, like Tarr’s movies, fatigue sets in. We start experiencing time as it is, undiluted. In other words, we begin taking part in Jeanne’s life by experiencing the savage inertia of time. The only difference is that she is oblivious to it while we, possessing knowledge of the artificial and transitory nature of cinema, are not. Jeanne doesn’t pass through life. She lets life pass through her. Not once does she show signs of emotional fatigue. She is insensitive to her condition much more than her cerebral counterparts. Except for one sequence at a button store, where she shows clear indications of mental derailment, there apparently is no outlet for her emotions at all. Apart from the perfunctory conversations with her son and the occasional visit by the neighbour, who asks Jeanne to take care of her baby (who could well be considered a miniature Jeanne) from time to time, Jeanne is completely cut off (at times literally, in the frame) from the world.

In his extraordinary article on Tarr, Kovács writes about the director’s style:

In Tarr’s world, deconstruction is slow but unstoppable and finds its way everywhere. The question, therefore, is not how to stop or avoid this process, but what we do in the meantime? Tarr asks this question of the audience, but if the audience wants to understand the question, it first has to understand the fatality of time. And in order to grasp that, it has to understand that there is no excuse in surviving the present moment: time is empty—an infinite and undivided dimension, in which everything repeats itself the same way.

Akerman’s own style does not seem far from this. Through repetitions, in gratuitous amounts, Akerman creates a film of high precision and low life quotient. In fact, everything in the film seems to exhaust itself the moment it takes birth. Akerman repeats every element of the film – time (Jeanne’s daily routine), space (the viewer is immediately acquainted with the couple of rooms that the almost the whole film takes place in), the actors’ movement and gestures (Jeanne act of switching off lights moves from interesting to an in-joke) and even camera angles (as if the actors are passing in front of stationery cameras installed at various locations in the house).

The only hope for Jeanne to snap out of this vicious loop comes in the form of the final sequence in the film where she stabs to death an unsuspecting client of hers (Actually, it is never made clear if the scene takes place in Jeanne’s present or not. The man could well be her husband, whose death is talked about regularly in the film, thus, also, creating a narrative loop within the film. But considering the realities of the world, it is unlikely). This is where Akerman deviates from Tarr. Tarr seals his characters in their own existence until they fade into oblivion. His characters neither have history or hope. Akerman, on the other hand, gives her characters a past and a future. The circle in Jeanne’s life may just be a stray deadlock that had to be resolved by her action (rather, by ceasing her inaction). There is certainly a gaze at a different future throughout the film. Jeanne is expecting a gift from her aunt, which is revealed to be a dress later. She deposits money in the bank for future use. Her aunt even urges her to migrate to Canada. Even though, a large part of the movie is concerned with her empty life, it does offer a hope for renewal.

Obviously, Akerman is far from being a romantic. It is true that she does not choose to tread Tarr’s spiral, which seems to go in circles but ends only in decimation, and concocts an open ending, thus leaving margin for hope of escape. But why Akerman’s masterwork feels ultimately like an exercise in despair is that she generalizes Jeanne’s existence. As a matter of fact, we don’t even know if the lady we are watching is Jeanne or if the building is the one mentioned in the title. By not pinning down particulars, Akerman seems to speak for an entire generation and era. Of course, the whole film could be deconstructed to unveil political, social, sexual and cultural outlook of the age, but what makes Jeanne Dielman stand out from its contemporaries is not its keen study of lives in modern times, but its ability to make us experience what every Jeanne Dielman experiences and understand why we each of us, in a way, has become a Jeanne Dielman.

[Originally published at The Seventh Art]

Review Of Damnation

Copyright © by Dan Schneider

Bela Tarr became the most well known Hungarian director of films with the 1987 release of Damnation (Kárhozat). And, it’s no wonder. While not an inarguably great film, it is certainly close, and a good case for its greatness can be made. More cogently, the film showed Tarr as a filmmaker who is singular, despite some manifest parallels to the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos. This 117 minute long black and white film, shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio is similar, in structure, to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and in pacing to Angelopoulos’s films, although its visual imagery is straight out of the Italian Neo-Realism of the 1940s and 1950s.

The film opens with a long slow pullback from a hot of a tramway of mining buckets moving back and forth, suspended over a bleak landscape, part of a small mining town. The sounds of the mechanized drudgery set the tone for the film, and as the camera pulls back from the buckets we see that we are inside an apartment, looking out the window at them. The camera then pulls even further back and around the silhouetted of a man’s head. The slow reveal moves from almost a documentary-like feel to one of utter expressionism, as it finally ends, and we see a man shaving with a razor. This break, several minutes into the film, ends a shot that is almost a mirror image of the final shot of Michelangelo Antonioni’s The Passenger. Antonioni, of course, is another filmmaker that Tarr is often compared to, and without a doubt, there are also similarities. Like the Italian cinematic master, Tarr’s shot is, at once, the essence of simplicity, but also complexity and duplicity, for, while we start out with what seems an objective documentary shot of an industrial landscape, suspended in mid-air, it soon morphs into what seems to be a subjective shot of a character looking hopelessly out of a definite place. But, then, as the camera pulls back behind the putative eyeline of the silhouetted figure, the shot again becomes objective and omniscient, then switches to a more conventional shot of the main character, whom we learn is called Karrer (Miklós Székely), shaving. Then, we see, as the camera, again pans behind him, how his reflected image disappears behins the imposition of the darkness Karrer’s body casts, until his face is swallowed by his body’s darkness.

Within the first few minutes of the film, two themes emerge. The first is that Tarr is challenging concepts of the viewer’s perspectives and assumptions, and the second is that his main character is a man whose essence is slowly disappearing, even before we get into the main thrust of the film’s tale. Then we get shots of a car in front of a dilapidated apartment building, only to have it pull back and reveal Kerrer, again, spying on the car’s occupant. As the man leaves, Karrer goes into the building to see a woman (Vali Kerekes), an ex-lover (presumably) of his whom he is still obsessed with, and wife of the man with the car, feeling only her love can save him from a life of seeming unemployment (we never see Karrer do anything of a positive note- work nor otherwise), staring at the buckets that pass by his apartment window. She sings at the town’s grimy bar, the Titanik, and dreams of making it to the big cities, so she can have comforts, with or without her husband (György Cserhalmi), or Karrer, whom she treats like a pathetic insect. Instantly, we know what the relationship between these two is. By visually presenting Karrer’s seamier insecure side with visuals, and seeing the faux confident posturing of the slatternly singer, with almost no words, Tarr has set up a universal situation, familiar to lonely men and manipulative women worldwide.

Throughout the rest of the film, a simple tale plays out. Karrer is given an opportunity to earn money smuggling things for the local bar owner (Gyula Pauer), but instead pawns off the opportunity on the singer’s husband, so he can be out of town more, and he try to restart their romance. The husband warns Karrer away from his wife, even though he views him as no threat, and takes the smuggling gig. Numerous scenes depict the suffocating life the people in this town lead, at the end of the Communist era. Karrer eventually gets the singer back in to bed, after a physical fight (although both what we see of their lovemaking, and the way it is presente4d- via peepholes and mirrors, makes it one of the least erotic sex scenes ever filmed- despite its nudity), but loses her affection soon afterwards, even as he ignores the potential of a deeper relationship with another woman (Hédi Temessy) who seems to have feelings for him, and always has a kind word for Karrer, and a spiteful, if accurate, opinion of the self-centered and vain singer. When the husband returns, things sour between Karrer and the singer, and when she ends things, after some well composed and choreographed shots, he eventually finks on the singer and her husband, telling the authorities of the husband’s role as a smuggler, and gets his revenge that way. He also turns in the bar owner, for his part in the scheme, and the fact that the singer let him do her while Karrer and the husband fought about the wife. In a sense, if one understands what the system was in Communists states of the last century, the ending may have been predictable. But, the results of how it affects Karrer are not. He seems to slowly lose a grip on reality, and in the final scenes of the film, in a hellish junkyard, he ends up on all fours, barking and driving away a stray dog that, along with some others, has spent the film scavenging through the wasteland looking for scraps of food in the gloomy rain that pervades almost every scene. Karrer is not only still a loser, and a bigger one than at the film’s start, but he has set up people and ruined their lives, not content to be alone in his own misery, but needing to have company in his swill.

The film is, despite its black and white, dark and sodden landscapes, amazingly beautiful. Rarely has the geography of the human mien been captured so wrenchingly, whether in the faces of the main characters, or in shots that seem to be social commentaries that underscore and play out against the main narrative, and featuring people who are never seen again. There is almost a clinical aspect to the way that Tarr pores over not only the human aspect but also the ruins of a small town. Yet, never is it technically clinical. The slow motion of camera movements away from the seeming center of the story is something that few filmmakers do, Yet Tarr does so, not only with ease, but a purposiveness that hints at the fact that the putative focus of that is just that, putative, and of no more genuine interest than a small portion of a derelicted building he turns his camera on.

The DVD, put out by Facets Video, has a good transfer, although, here and there, there are some flaws and splotches. The film’s subtitles are in white, but unlike the often unreadable subtitles The Criterion Collection uses on black and white films, Facets uses a black outline around the white lettering so that the words stand out very well. There are no features to speak of, and the only ‘extra’ is a small booklet that features some pretty good essays on Tarr and his canon. The film’s screenplay, by Tarr, adapted along with László Krasznahorkai, from Krasznahorkai’s novel, is the sort that most critics would not rave over, because it is not larded with dialogue that sets the mind ablaze, nor is its pacing something that most video game addicted Americans will find stimulating. But, like Last Year In Marienbad or 2001: A Space Odyssey, the film’s screenplay is key to its greatness, for its holds together the often conflicting images, which would fall to anomy without the script. The pair, Tarr and Krasznahorkai, have become Europe’s latter day film-novelist equivalent to the 1960s pairing of filmmaker Hiroshi Teshigahara and novelist Kōbō Abe. The cinematography, by Gábor Medvigy, is suoperb. Often in black and white films, especially those of recent decades, the use of that palette has no real significance, for all it does is present a blanched world. Tarr and Medvigy, however, make full use of total blackness, and its interruptions, as well as the plenum of grays that run between it and its antipodes, showing the superfluity of color in many films, and just how effective black and white cinema can reflect dreams, their lack, and the horror that fact can present. In this sense, Damnation truly is a horror film, with its desolated urban landscapes (which were a set, not real), often shown at odd angles, often reminding a well rounded cineaste of earlier horror films like Vampyr, Frankenstein, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, or many other German Expressionist films from the silent era.

As wonderful as the cinematography is, I must, however, return to the screenplay, and compare this film with another film about a near-sociopathic loner, filmed a dozen years before this one, in color, but mostly at night, so that the color was minimized. I refer to Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, for like Damnation, much of the film follows the singular lead character, who is rapt by his reflection in mirrors and windows, who is obsessed with a woman who disdains him for dreams that she will never achieve. While Taxi Driver is, for most of its length, a film that deals with the impotence of the modern man, at least Travis Bickle (portrayed by Robert De Niro) eventually shoots his load. Karrer does not. In fact, he is so impotent that he is reduced to arguing with a feral dog, one who, when we see them muzzle to muzzle, we are not quite sure if Karrer may even attempt to sexually mount. This is another way in which Damnation can make its claim to being a ‘realistic’ horror film.

Yet, Taxi Driver provides another ‘in’ to how Damnation works, the cinema of misdirection. There is a scene in the Scorsese film where, after Bickle has taken Betsy (Cybill Shepherd) to a porno flick, he tries to apologize and call her from a payphone in a shitty hallway of a tenement. As we hear only his end of the conversation, the audience can tell that Betsy is brushing him off, and the camera ‘looks away’ from the internal angst of Bickle, and down the corridor, out into the bright daylight. We hear Bickle deal with his rejection, but we do not see it. Similarly, Damnation uses the same technique, although it is used repeatedly, and not with such dramatic emphasis as Scorsese used it. In a number of scenes, characters walk in to and out of frame, and the camera lingers on a structure of building, and even looks in a direction away from it, to see dogs, or insects, or the beading of rain on a window, as if to subtly suggest that the ‘story’ we feel the film is about is not necessarily the only thing of concern to the film. The most damning shot in Damnation, of this sort, is at film’s end, after Karrer has scared off the wild dog, and walks off, leaving the film to end pondering the rain, mud, and destruction, in a scene that reminded me of the end of Ursula LeGuin’s The Lathe Of Heaven. In an earlier shot, the camera slowly pans through the local bar, from Karrer, and the husband and singer conversing, to follow the husband as he speaks to the bar owner in back, and then around the pool room, past Karrer and the singer, and back to the husband’s return. This plays out over several minutes, even as we hear Karrer and the singer speak. Yet, the most interesting things in the shot are nor what is said, but the little and manifestly predictable habits we see totally minor characters engage in, even over such a brief time. After all, it’s a pool bar, and whether in Hungary, Chicago or Singapore, they have their own rules of etiquette, so to speak.

Naturally, most critics, even those who praised the film, barely got what the film is about, and often imbued blatantly wrong ideas from the barest of threads. Instead, they digressed on to treatises about Tarr’s conflicted take on existence, his being an anti-Communist zealot, or his merely being derivative of earlier directors, especially the nominally similar Tarkovsky. Where Tarkovsky is explicitly spiritual, Tarr is overtly materialist. His characters not only reject inner lives, but they are seemingly incapable of understanding what they are. Karrer, as example, reiterates his desires for a ‘life’ with the singer, unawares that what he has, pathetic as it is, is still better than nothing, and that if he ever got his wish, it would likely only hasten the end of that relationship. The singer cares nothing of anyone but herself, and her husband veers between testosteronic threats and an impotence of mind that equals Karrer’s. Only the woman played by Hédi Temessy shows any depth, yet she is not only marginalized by Karrer’s lack of attention to her feelings and entreaties, but by her own inability to see that she is as rote a creature as the others are, despite her ability to see the Möbius Strip life she, and the others, inhabit. In this way, Orson Welles’ The Trial is the most direct antecedent for Damnation. The Kafka tale is as circular, if a bit grander, but nonetheless fatal.

Too many critics and filmgoers (even twenty years ago) have too delimited an idea of narrative, and what it is and can do, to appreciate an artist like Tarr, who exploits those very conventions, but not in radical antitheses, but in sly digressions to the next door, so that what the viewer is left with is not a conventional tale, but a story that almost ghosts its essence upon the expected. Dourness becomes a thing to marvel, and beauty becomes a thing tossed aside, and the camera often makes the viewer question their import, something few works of art do, taking too much for granted. When the camera focuses on something, therefore, it is not the thing in front of the eyes that is the subject, but the watcher behind. This subtle displacement of the everyday is a thing that adds psychological heft to the film, even though not in a manner discernible to most arts lovers. Often, silly appellations like a ‘noir Angelopoulos’ are used, even though their utterers have not a clue what such a claim means.

Damnation is a film that achieves greatness in many moments, but sometimes does not know when its points have all been made. The slight excesses of lingerance are the only down sides to a film that is a terrific document of the human creature; one that still has relevance to its viewers, as well as its viewed.

[Originally posted at Blogcritics]

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Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension

Ana Balona de Oliveira on Colossal Youth

Rooms of Colossal Bones – Pedro Costa’s Trilogy
(26 June, 2008) By Ana Balona de Oliveira (full article at Mute)

excerpts:

"It is not surprising James Quandt titled an essay on the director’s work ‘Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa’ [at Artforum]. Some of the shots of Bones, In Vanda’s Room and Colossal Youth, most frequently those of poorly lit and impoverished interiors, resemble painterly still lives: dark shacks into which scarce rays of sunlight enter just to illuminate a half empty bottle of wine, a smashed piece of old furniture, unexpected red flowers, but also the back of a neck, an old, beaten up hand, the longing of an immigrant labourer’s eye for his Cape Verdean forgotten youth and lost love. The phrase ‘still lives’ gains here, therefore, a double meaning – not only does it refer to the painterly, shadowy objects that accompany the quietly empty despair of Fontaínhas’ inhabitants, but also to these ghostly characters’ lives themselves, filmed in the resistant stillness of their hopeless bodies."

"Showing an understanding of the Portuguese lineage of film-makers to which Costa very independently pertains (albeit limited to no more than two of its most notorious names), Quandt correctly approximates the director to Manoel de Oliveira and João César Monteiro’s ‘propensity for the long take and tableaux structure, a fondness for haunted, life-battered faces and desolate landscapes, and a Dostoyevskian sense of life as hell’ (Quandt, ‘Still Lives’, in Cinematheque Ontario). Here one could surely add the films of Paulo Rocha, José Álvaro Morais and Teresa Vilaverde."

She equates the formal contemplation of the filming style to the contemplative lives of its subjects. There is an intent to depict people's genuine life at the pace of real life events.
I don't know the films of Morais, anybody has an idea? I've seen Villaverde's Transe, which is definitely CCC, in my mind. Rocha seems a bit surrealist or burlesque, which uses a paced rhythm and wordlessness for a parabolic message rather than going for actual naturalism. [Sorry I thought of Glauber Rocha, I don't know Paulo's films]

"Costa’s films are not documentaries, except for Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?, despite the fact that the director has increasingly chosen to work with non-professional actors, available light and an ever less intrusive occupation of the filming location by an ever more reduced crew and inconspicuous recording device. The films are long and composed of densely concentrated, non-moving shots which do not connect within a structure of linear narrative fluidity. The viewer of Bones, In Vanda’s Room and Colossal Youth is challenged by this choice of intermingling past and present moments that are susceptible to being narratively perceived only by means of a very close attention to details, such as Ventura wearing builders’ clothes and a head bandage in some of the scenes, and a retiree’s black suit in others. These details might guide the viewer along a non-linear path of extremely long, steady shoots, where only the textures of an immutable present seem to matter and no obvious explanations about before and after are given. This inevitably creates the ‘vertical’ tension inherent to the almost total absence of ‘horizontal’ tracking shots.

Focussing on Bones, Shigehiko Hasumi discusses the notion of ‘a vertical power that breaks the viewer free from the story’s linear cause and effect’. He continues, ‘the present moment is made visually absolute. While not abandoning the time flow of the film, this “absolutification” of the present moment is a bare, unadorned directorial technique that creates a raw filmic continuity for fiction, which otherwise would be subordinated to narrative flow and human psychology. Only rarely in film is the ultimate state of fiction thus so simply integrated with the ultimate state of documentary’, Shigehiko Hasumi, ‘Adventure: An Essay on Pedro Costa’ (2005), in Rouge Pedro Costa, Collosal Youth, 2004"

At a screening in Paris, Jean-Marie Straub was there with his friend Costa and said there was no flashback, that we had to read the film in a linear way (Costa didn't confirm this though).
I like how Ana Balona explains how CCC narrative works through attention to visual details rather than relying on plot cues.
I'm not sure I understand the horizontal/vertical dialectic there. No horizontal tracking shots, OK, most are static shots. But how does it make it a "vertical" film? I can't put my finger on the meaning of this "vertical tension", however I wholeheartedly agree with this "absolutification of the present moment", "raw filmic continuity" !

"Besides the paused rhythm, there is an excruciating silence, cut only by the characters’ words and the apparently unpremeditated mechanical and human sounds penetrating the neighbourhoods and rooms where action slowly unfolds. No other soundtrack is heard. Furthermore, actors spend many hours rehearsing each scene and line with the director to reach an outcome of nude simplicity and precision with an almost emotionally inexpressive declamatory effect.

Dennis Lim wrote that ‘[In Vanda’s Room] feels at times like a documentary but is actually the result of long conversations and multiple takes. Ms. Duarte [Vanda] and her friends, who sit around, talk, prepare heroin fixes, smoke and shoot up, are not documentary subjects so much as actors playing themselves’ (Dennis Lim, ‘Director’s Quest for Truth Among the Downtrodden’, in NYT). In this context, Straub, who also works with non-professional actors, said what Costa could perhaps have said about his own work: ‘some people have the impression – because we reject verisimilitude and TV-style cinema … – that there is no psychology in our films. But that’s not true. All this is psychology. There is no psychology in terms of the performance of the actor because there is a dramatic abstraction that goes deeper than so-called verisimilitude. But it’s there, in between the shots, in the very montage and in the way the shots are linked to each other, it is extremely subtle psychology’ (Jean-Marie Straub, in Pedro Costa, Où gît votre sourire enfoui?/ Onde jaz o teu sorriso? / Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?, 2001)."

What Costa says about the presence of an underlying/implicit subtle psychology within the characters is very interesting. He admits not to go for the versimilitude of a documentary, so the essence of CCC is not necessarily "absolute realism", but an asymptotic approach to the Real. And unlike TV or melodrama, this tentative mimetism of reality is not obtained through dramatisation (synthetic caricature of emotions) but by decomposition of life-like moments, in their context, with awkward timing, uncomfortable silences... instead of a perfect theatrical timing that pumps up the audience on cue.

"In Colossal Youth, some of this vertically mute tension is slightly released only when Ventura plays a Cape Verdean record and we listen in to its warmly melancholic musical murmur. As Straub put it, there is no ‘musical soup’ to help sustain the lack of idea and form."

Absence of soundtrack, emphasis on real-life ambient sounds, of course.

Nina Menkes interview

Nina Menkes is an independent American filmmaker making experimental films since 1981, such as Queen of Diamonds (1991) or Massaker (2005). Her official website can be found here. She kindly visited our blog recently and agreed to answer to the questions of Jit Phokaew (Limitless Cinema) and Filmsick, who reviewed her latest film Phantom Love (2007) at the 2008 blogathon. The interview was held by email on August 5th 2008.
Note: A great interview by David E. James is available at Senses of Cinema, as well as a detailed article, Nina Menkes: The Warrior and her Jiang Hu, by Bérénice Reynaud.

Marina Shoif as Lulu in Phantom love

• UNSPOKEN CINEMA : Thank you, Nina, for agreeing to talk to us. Let me tell you I've enjoyed your latest film very much. In PHANTOM LOVE, there are very few dialogues, especially in the casino scenes. What do you think about the role of dialogue in films? Do you always use little dialogue in all your films? Would you say that this small dialogue in PHANTOM LOVE corresponds to the journey of a woman into her own self? Or maybe is it related to the alienation portrayed in your film(s)?

NINA MENKES : Yes, there is very little dialogue in all my films. Some films have a bit more than others, but in general, I stay away from dialogue, because I feel that the most powerful energies in our lives, and in fact, the way we actually pick up information and feelings about ourselves and other people is not through words, but through energy and other levels of connection. Words can be powerful and meaningful, like poetry, for example, can be so moving, but just talking,chatting “dialogue”-- usually, its waste of time, in my opinion, and also, it covers up deeper levels of reality.

• Why did you choose the heroine of PHANTOM LOVE to be an employee at a casino? Could you tell us about the inspiration that motivated this choice? I find the boring life of a casino job very interesting for at least two reasons: firstly because the casino is usually a place of excitement in most films, but in this film it is a place of extreme boredom; secondly because most filmmakers seem to portray the boredom of modern life via stereotypical characters (like for example corporate office employees), but it is different in your film. Was this contrast intentional?

For me, the casino is an intense symbol of extreme alienation for a few reasons.

It is labor with no product. Basically in a casino, people are losing money as entertainment. The worker, just takes your money and you don’t get anything at all. I guess you get a thrill. But actually, this thrill will pass and what did you get? Even if you buy a cheap sweater at K-mart, you got a sweater. You can wear it in case you are cold. At the casino, the money drains into the pocket of someone else and there is no return. And the casino is so outside time. In Vegas there is no natural light and no clocks inside the casinos which are open 24/7. So its hell.

To me, it’s a perfect picture of hell. Visually, I like it too, because of the numbers.

The numbers are connected with Death. “His number was Up” in slang English can mean-- he was killed. Money is counted. Counting in general is from the devil…it’s a known fact, that counting is connected to death. People sometimes like to know how old I am, but I don’t like to count, how many days have I been on planet earth? How many days are left? This is not for us to know. The Bedouins in Sinai, where I lived for some months, years ago—they don’t know when they were born, so they don’t know their age. Its very liberating. The numbers constrain you, they tie you down, they limit perception. God is infinite and cannot be counted.

• The editing in your films is most peculiar : discontinuity between places, backgrounds or positions. What is your intention? Why are the narratives in your films so fragmented in such a way?

My editing is based on psychic continuity, not material or physical continuity. All the connections in terms of editing are in terms of the flow of feelings and psychic energy. I purposely dislocate the viewer in terms of physical or geographic material space and so called normal counting of minutes and time. Instead all the connections are on the psychic level.

• I am very interested in the temporal dimension of your films, and in the universe portrayed in your film. Could you tell us about the perception of time by your characters?

This connects to the above questions, in terms of counting, and time is normally “counted” in a very specific and linear way. This way of counting time and arranging time and space, which is the conventional way, is 1) not interesting to me , but more than that—I think its also not True. When I was in India some years ago, I had a dream that I was wearing two wrist watches. One on each hand. And each watch had two hands, and both of the hands, in both of watches were spinning wildly counter-clockwise. When I woke up, I told a swami, whom I met on the road, about my dream, he said :

- “Oh…sure…you have contacted the reality that is outside time and space.”

So, anyway, we have our way of organizing time for “normal life” and we need it, if we have to meet someone at 3 o’clock, okay we both have to know what is 3 o’clock, but the part of ourselves where things are happening most powerfully is not associated with these numbers. Psychoanalysts know that our adult sexual relationships are probably almost always driven by what happened when we were, say, 5 years old right? And that is alive and vibrating inside us, the Buddhists always say that past present and future are all co-existent, its obviously true.

Recently I came to Israel and one of my friends from long ago found me, we had not seen each nor talked or written each other for 20 years. This is a very special friend, but anyway, we found each other and it was as if less than 20 minutes had passed, since our last meeting. Twenty years was nothing. Zero.

My characters are located on the level of time and space where intense emotions are existing in an unadulterated state, a state not compressed by ordinary social reality.

• In PHANTOM LOVE, it seems the spirits of different human characters are connected to different kinds of animals. What is your concept behind this?

I feel very connected to the animal world. The different animals have different energies and powers. I know the Native American Indians in North America were very tuned into this aspect of life, but in our modern life we don’t have so much connection to the animal world, but to me, animals are somehow sacred, they are closer to God than we are, although a friend recently told me “I am God too”, not only this bird, or this tiger, but me, a man. Yes, that’s true too, but somehow we are corrupted by our loss of connection to the sacred. In fact, my films are essentially and ultimately about precisely this loss of connection.

• I feel there is something spiritual about PHANTOM LOVE. Could you tell us your personal thoughts on spirituality or about the spirituality you've put in this film?

Yes, its what I was trying to say just now. There is a connection, its not feelings or intellect. There is a sacred whirlpool in the area right below or around the heart chakra, between the breasts, at least, a close friend was speaking of this whirlpool this morning and I burst into tears, I felt it was so small in me, and I pray it can become from a tiny little bud stronger and more open. My films are about loss of connection to the spiritual. And the pain that comes from that loss. The alienation in my films is ultimately about that. The spiritual alienation then vibrates on all levels. But that is the root alienation.

• The mother-daughter relationship in PHANTOM LOVE is quite shocking for me. What inspired you this particular relation?

Its an image of an incestuous relation. But it’s a dream. Lulu has a dream that shows her what has happened to her on an energetic level…. that all her boundaries, her most private and the most intimate areas of herself, have been invaded and violated in a terrible way. She has to refuse this invasion.

• Why filming PHANTOM LOVE in black-and-white rather than in color?

I don’t have an answer, it was an intuition, it felt right to me. Color would have been too much. The film is so rich, it could not have in addition to the rich content, also COLOR, that would have been too much.

• Could you tell us about your next project? What are you working on currently?

I have a script called HEATSTROKE, and I hope to find the right actresses for it...

It is about two sisters, like PHANTOM LOVE, but it is in color. I am looking for a producer for this film at this time, and I welcome any help or suggestions you might have.

Here is an official little “blurb” about my new film:

HEATSTROKE is a mirage-like mystery set in Los Angeles, California and Cairo, Egypt during the feverish heat of a contemporary summer.The film's root is a violent -- possibly sexual -- early trauma that sits in the psychic closet of two sisters .The film sets the psychic split of the sisters and the violence within their family against the violent split between the Arab world and the West.

I thank you deeply for your understanding and appreciation of my work.