Afternoon Times (2005/Boonsinsukh)

File 067/Afternoon Times (2005/Tossapol Boonsinsukh/Thailand)

Opening Sequence : The voice of the protagonist, Bo (Pijika Hanzedkarn), is heard without image talking on the phone (pitch black screen). The offscreen conversation carries on over a stationary frontal shot of a wall scattered with photographs of friends, in dim light. We understand that Bo is opening her new cafe soon and invites various long-forgotten acquaintances to the inauguration. The camera pans to reveal Bo through the kitchen door. The long take captures a mundane activity in real time, as she hangs up, looks for the next number, dials again, and repeats her attempt. The mood of the film is set with a simple shot which contains the heart of the drama. Solitude, estrangement, nonchalance and lack of attention.

Bo, in her early twenties, engages in a new life, by starting up her own business. It's the dreaded time when everyone we used to know follow their own path, travel, move abroad, work intensively or found a family. College friends lose touch and begin a solitary life on their own, building a new social network in a new social environment.
Her friends are all there with her on the wall, nostalgic memories, still fresh in her mind, with the frozen smiles and funny faces posed for the camera. But all belongs to a bygone era of carefree entertainment. Now she's alone, desperately seeking for available friends, like a market researcher, to share her joyful pride with. She would like them to launch the word-of-mouth and bring in many customers. Unfortunately the calls we overheard don't seem very successful. She's got more friends on photos than real people in her present life. A sentiment of profound abandonment sinks in, with remarkable restraint, as the shot keeps on running long after the phone calls are over, staring at her walking around in silence.

Afternoon Times is a beautiful little film made by students with the most basic production equipment to the greatest effects. The creativity of a sobre mise-en-scene, the daring transcendence of small moments, the mundane poetry... all make it an adorable, melancholic episode suspended in time. The very prototype of the Contemplative Cinema trend. Like a haunting memory revisited intact, stripped of superfluous details, these characters are caught in a strange whirlpool of redundant events. Repetition and variation.
The careful observation of minimal gestures throughout the day recalls Chantal Akerman's film which was one of the most important pioneer of "Contemplative Cinema" : Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976). Likewise emphasis is put on body language of non-speaking people. Stationary shots frame the situations in self-contained tableaux, that render the presence of a "surveillance camera" invisible while bringing attention to the private life happening in front of our voyeur eyes. We can see what people do when nobody is looking at them, when they don't have to play a social role in front of someone else. A perspective also featured in the segments of Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times (2005).

A brownish, darker evening light dominated the introductory shot, a feeling of anxiety and despair caused by the anticipation of her café grand opening. Later, a brighter sunny morning light shines on the film, tinted with a metallic blueish hue celebrating its fresh, acid, melancholic, surreal atmosphere. Congratulations to the cinematographer (Nalina Tungkanokvitaya) who does a wonderful job with natural lighting.

A delivery boy brings a baguette every morning. He's the only person Bo becomes familiar with along her redundant routine. Although their contact is strictly professional, regulated by a polite yet reserved, even timid, etiquette. Without a word he hands over the bread, she gives a banknote, he returns the change. A long trained composure. An automatized ceremonial.

The photographic memorization motif, which structures the entire film, will come as an ice-breaker for them. Upon one of his delivery he's asked to take a picture of her with her friends to immortalize the inauguration of the café. I love this type of microcosmic scenes encapsulating unspoken emotions into insignificant acts, which we find aplenty in Miranda July's Me And You And Everyone We Know (2005) for instance. In this world of lonely disconnected individuals, every little task is an opportunity to meet with somebody else's private sphere and hopefully to step in for an instant in their sealed bubble, if the situation is not too awkward of course. Here, the favor to take a group picture for her becomes a tacit connection. The Polaroid camera is used as a proxy device for interpersonal socialization with a total stranger, like with a lighter or a watch in the street. She asks "Can you take a picture for me?", but what she really means is "Hey, take a look at me please!"

This central theme of self-representation, announced in the opening shot, fully expresses the distanciation of human relationship in today's virtualized world. Without the Polaroid they are confused strangers looking at their feet ashamed of themselves. But hidden behind the camera viewfinder he could lay his gaze upon her. Conversely, under the excuse of posing with her friends, she can show off her largest smile without obviously seeming to seduce him. The self-esteem is preserved for both of them.
Even though they are not aware yet of this blooming romance, the film catches there the pre-historic, founding moment of their future bond. She puts up the Polaroid picture on the wall, with the other pictures. But what it stands for is less the friends we can see on the image than the invisible photographer who took it.

After this defining moment, that will only become meaningful to them and the audience later on, the daily routine and the recurring scenes will unfold according to the slow pace of time flowing by. Careful shots of dish washing, window cleaning, housekeeping in silence and solitude. Times of inner ruminations, patient wait and reverie accompanied by the absorbing melody on a diegetic cassette with classical music. A catchy repetitive soundtrack reminiscent of Kikujiro (1999). Meanwhile the short length of this one music track marks the passage of time, as she has to rewind the cassette manually to repeat the play. Another little task indicative of the actual duration of life moments. Another opportunity for him and her to connect through a common taste for this music.

The whole story is articulated in seasonal chapters entitled "Afternoon Times", "Summer", "Rain", "Winter", "Summer later"

In a funny scene, Bo dresses like a tourist, with sunglasses, backpack, camera, and pretends to visit this splendid café for the first time. She contemplates cautiously every little object decorating the place, with a self-satisfied admiration, projecting into this fictional character the ideal customer she'd like to serve if the turnout wasn't so poor. She then unpacks her sleeping bag on the floor and stares at the ceiling. It's nice to remember a similar scene in Me And You And Everyone We Know when the kids wondered what it would be like if the world was upside down.

On a rainy day, he's soaked and she gives him a towel. Is it because the light is darker, because the rain pours outside, because the wet clothes wear out the usual respectful distances, or because of this tender gesture showing care? After so many meetings at regular hours for the bread, they seem to look at eachother with different eyes this time. No word spoken yet, no effusion of sentiments. Just a memorable moment shared intimately, the secret happiness of being together. An awkward silence extended indefinitely, planted face to face, which would normally make anybody uncomfortable. Though none of them seems in a hurry to break this tensed silence. They soon return to their lives without uttering a word.

The cassette jams in a bundle and so begins the time without music.

The next visit, surrealism creeps in for a moment of arrested poetry. Within the uncut course of a long take stretching over 6 minutes, they are mysteriously locked inside when he delivered the bread. The locksmith can't even rescue them because rains is still pouring outside. By a welcomed enchantment they are miraculously stuck together for a while. They resolve to wait, and she offers to cook a meal for him. The strange ways of fate has kept them close together for a longer time than their usual commercial transaction. As oddly as it occurred, the temporary spell is broken when he finished his food and the door now opens naturally. He wondered why the habitual music wasn't playing and promises to bring her a new tape. But he doesn't come back the next day, someone else's delivers bread.

She paints dozens of childish drawings representing a fish, a horse, a camera (again the motif of self-representation), countless rows of dashes... and a delivery boy with a baguette in a bag. She loses appetite. Her business is running down. She has to move out. The walls are covered with copies of the same drawing of the delivery boy, like the identical frames of a film strip, like a dismantled cartoon. The paintings have replaced and covered up the photos on her wall. A new medium of representation illustrates the memories of her second life, leaving the photos behind.

Another uncut long take runs for nearly 15 minutes for the second last scene. In one plan sequence the whole set is packed into boxes, just like if the shooting was over, she clears the borrowed premises, helped by a friend. All drawings are picked up one by one, all pictures, and decorative objects. When he asks why she paints, why she takes pictures, she replies "to kill time", "no particular reason" to futher burry her feelings and regrets...
We realize that life is like a movie production, good times are like afternoon times, they last only a while and then we have to move on and get over them. Memories fit in a little box.

The closing shot, brings back the music in the film, after a long silent shot onboard a taxi, showing a close up of her disillusioned face. Her music, their music, re-appear in non-diegetic form, as if the cassette was playing in her mind, and puts a gentle smile on her face. The film considers the archiving of vain memories, as well as the unconscious, intangible making of important ones. The smallest moments of life we never pay attention to, which slam back in our mind when the loss become more sensible. This is a delicate and touching expression of the construction of our sentimental personality.

(Cross-posted from Screenville)

Slow Film Festival

Recently on the Film-Philosophy salon (newsletter, subscription required), Alan Fair from the UK suggested a slow film festival which relates pretty well with the topic of our blog :

Hi all,
I wonder sometimes if Sokurov is trying this single shot in revolt against the fragmentation of time and space implicit in what Bordwell has called, if I remember rightly, intensified continuity. Bresson, Tarkovsky, Davies, Sokurov and maybe even Antonioni and Ozu might all be examples of what we might call slow cinema, although I imagine some would argue this point. I was suggestingto some students that we should stage a 'slow film festival' a bit like the Italian 'slow food' movement. They, of course, made the point that no one would turn up. Still it seems to me that this exploration of the cinematic image and the indexical, as mentioned by William, I think, is one that we should champion whenever possible.
peace
A. Fair
IDS

Follow up discussion (I hope it's ok to republish it here) :

1. Alan,
   I think the idea of a slow film festival is great, in militant revolt against short attention span cinema. It would start with Warhol's Sleep and Empire, go via Wavelength obviously, and there must be lots of other gems. I recall Larry Gottheim's Fogline and films by Peter Hutton, for example.
   It would take in Tarkovsky, especially his 360 degree pan from Stalker, and so on to Sokurov. Actually Russian Ark positively races along beside his Spiritual Voices films. Antonioni would be in if only because he makes (fairly) slow films about people with little to say for themselves. He could have been slower, I sometimes think.
   But not Bresson. No director packs more narrative into his shots. Pickpocket is an 80-minute version of Crime and Punishment which is over 600 pages long, but remains fair and honourable to it.
   Only Bresson could have managed it. Miss one shot from L'Argent and you risk losing the thread of the film. Compare Warhol who felt that you could always turn away from his films and they'd still be there when you turned back.
   When is Manchester going to host this?
   > Tim Cawkwell (Norwich, UK)
2. Way back, I think in the early 80s, Godard said in a tv interview that the cause for things speeding up was that fundamentally people were afraid of life. Hmmm...
   > Henry M. Taylor
3. To those interested in "slow films": The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati has devoted a year to an exhibition on "slow films" called "The Long View"
   > Kirk Boyle
4. Another master of 'slow cinema' and of the use of the sequence shot in particular is Theo Angelopolous. His 4 hour epic The Travelling Players contains only about 80 shots. The title of his 1998 film Eternity and Day was deemed somewhat appropriate by certain critics at the time, unaccustomed as they no doubt were to the typically rather slow pace of Angelopoulous' work...
   > Les Roberts
5. Slow compared to what? The overexcited unconsciousness of commodity cinema? A pretty pathetic comparison, it seems to me. Slow compared to the passing of the hours? Are surveillance videos slow (e.g., Michael Klier's Der Reise)?
   Clearly, slow/fast are observations about the subject, not the object. The undecideable enigma of time problematizes any such discussion from the beginning, and Bergson, among so many others, nuances the discourse. If we're into dualisms, I prefer open/closed rather than slow/fast.
   I would suggest that Warhol's Eat, Kiss, Sleep, Empire, etc. are not, and cannot be said to be, ontologically slow. Santantango, on the other hand, is very slow indeed if one privileges dominant cinema as the reference. Why do that? Time may or may not exist, but there is always choice. A Slow Film Festival, for what it would say not only about our acculturation but about our attention to experience, would inescapably be an embarrassment.
   > gyoungblood
6. "Time may or may not exist"
   I don't know if I'd go that far, but 'slowness' needs thinking out. What are we measuring 'over time', as it were -- not distance, but what?
   > Henry Miller
7. Probably the slowest film I've seen would have been something in a language I didn't really understand with no subtitles.
   > Jun-Dai Bates-Kobashigawa
8. A film that I find to be a perfect staging of slowness is Satyajit Raj's Jalshagar/Music Room from 1958. Celebrating a specific rasa between stubbornness and fidelity, this work brings about a very special slowness of decay.
   > Julian Rohrhuber
9. You can't NOT go that far, and of course we are measuring ourselves.
   "A measure measures measuring means." John Cage
   > gyoungblood
10. Slowness is obviously relative, but one needs to determine the objects of comparison, the elements measured and the means by which to achieve the effect. Cinema's objects are Life's practices, and its basic element is movement. A slowing-down of movement within this filmic context may be achieved in many ways and for different purposes. An Antonioni can present asituation where practice becomes impossible, or at least insignificant, so that time loses its rhythms of action and we achieve an infinite slowness (nothing really moves, but you cant say the image is frozen). A Fellini will present similar slowness, but only to gain astounding energies of acceleration towards some sort of festivity. A Rossellini on the other hand will present a slowness which is determined by its incessant regularity (here rhythm is present, but in such a slow way as to become ambient -"Francis, God's Jester", especially the leper scene). These are only Italian examples.Warhol's "sleep" is a whole other story. There, it is the machinic gaze of the camera which achieves a certain endurance that is nonhuman. There is no slowness since it is lifeless. a sleeping man, a dead camera, both operating. It is not interesting to call this film "slow" relative to mainstream cinema in general (why state the obvious?), but to examine how slowness is achieved relative to the whole of the film itself and its particular links to conventions of film. Now, sleep is usually depicted in transition to something else (the figure awakes..., the figure's dream...) or at least relative to something else (the sleeping figure is undisturbed by the racket outside...), but here it is cut off, shown in-itself. This absolute cut and elongation-of-description should not be measured in terms of slowness, since nothing is being slowed down (its not that the transition from sleep to wakefullness occurs slowly; it never occurs). The dynamics of this machinic typology of practices (sleep, kiss, [gazing at] the empire state building) is one of autonomous frames or categories which never achieve rhythm, and therefore are never "slow" or "fast".
    > Adam Aboulafia
11. Slowness is not just relative, it's entirely subjective unless you're going to define certain criteria weighted against each other for a specific definition of 'slowness' (e.g., length of takes, amount ofcamera movement, lines of dialogue, etc.). A large part of what makes it subjective is that a conception of slowness depends on weighing the significance of the types of events that you are measuring the rate of.
    Andy Warhol's 'Eat' might be considered very slow by most people, since very little happens that will register in most people's minds as events, but that definition of slowness depends on downplaying the significance of events that most people don't consider important (film grain, facial micromovements, etc.). If you decide to make a slow film festival based on a definition of 'slowness' relating to what most people consider slow, then the first task is to figure out what most people consider slow. One thing that seems to make a big difference is that an otherwise silent scene will appear much faster if appealing music is playing in the background, but that's just an observation on my part.
    Alternatively, it might be more interesting to come up with a few dozen ideas of what might constitute criteria for slowness and show films that represent extremes of those notions of slowness.
    > Jun-Dai
12. There is one general criterion for the experience of slowness that can be further analyzed and specified experimentally.
    E.g. the experience that an addition of music do 'quick up' a film sequence (there is a consensus on it by film composers, film directors and producers) can be explained by the fact that film music adds processing burden to the existing one offered by the film sequence without music, that it brings an additional information package to that offered
    by the film's diegetic world.
    Now, there is an accumulated filmmakers belief that our experience of the 'pace' of the shot depends on the 'information load' of the scene presented in a shot.
    E.g. if a shot presents a bare landscape with nothing in it to attract specified attention, with nothing worth exploring, it will be experienced as the very long (slow) shot, compared with a shot of the same length that presents crowded city street filled with different types of simultaneous events difficult to grasp in a glance - which can be experienced as very 'fast', even as to 'short' for satisfactory perceptual 'grasp'.
    These experiences with the 'optimal length' of a shot do offer a 'default' criterion for the experience of the 'pace' of a film segment: the comparatively less information load on processing the slower a segment of a film will appear to its perceiver, the greater the information load on processing of a segment the faster it will appear.
    Of course, some 'slow' films by this 'default criterion' can become quite informationally filled up (faster) if the attention is rearranged, specified differently then the 'default' one - that happens, say, in experimental, avant-garde filmmaking and videomaking (like Warhol's Sleep).
    When saying that a criterion is a 'default' one - it means that it is 'automatically' applied if no other criterion is offered of specified. One can think of a number of different criteria that will 'flout' this default one.
    E.g. if we are set to expect quite specific information in particular moment of a film discourse, and some distraction shot of a crowded city street is offered instead, this distraction shot may seem overlong to us because we are delayed in getting the wanted information. Etc.
    > Hrvoje
13. (in response to #11) Yes, and it very much depends on the individual spectator's involvement with the film in question. And on the venue in which it is seen. I once watched Tarkovsky's Stalker on video, on a smallish tv screen - it was almost unbearably slow. It's meant to be and has to be seen in a cinema, on a large screen.
    Speaking of viewer involvement, Sokurov's 5-hour video Spiritual Voices (1994) is probably one of the most intense film experiences I've ever had. I saw it towards the end of Locarno film festival, exhausted after having watched 40 or 50 films in ten days, and I'd anticipated falling asleep. The very oppositie was the case: I was completely enthralled, almost trance-like, in the mysticism of this wonderful documentary.
    Finally, take Rear Window: not suited for open air cinema, where it will seem remarkably slow. Again, you have to watch it in the cinema, or in a very controlled setting.
    > Henry M. Taylor
14. (in response to #11) Doesn't this mean precisely that it *is* just relative, ie a certain property measured against another? Unless you're going to go without a definition of 'slowness', which might make choosing films under this criterion an uphill struggle. Dare I introduce the use of narcotics and their effects on perception into this discussion?
    > Henry Miller
15. (in response to #12) It's a good point that our experience of pace is tied to information load, but there are two points that I see coming out of that:
    1) - What constitutes 'information load' and how heavily different types of information weigh upon us are quite subjective and are determined by things like our shared cultural assumptions, our personal experience, our mood, preoccupations, and attention span of the moment, as well as our level of understanding of the various types of cinematic language that are being used in the film. If information is missing from the film and we have to fill in the gaps, does that increase or decrease the information load? Which produces more information load, color or black-and-white film?
    Low-resolution video or fine-grain 70mm?
    2) - I think 'information load', insofar as it includes things like music, camera motion, edits, plot points, dialogue, etc., can be broken into at least two categories: foreground and background (ormaybe conscious and semi-conscious). In a scene where there is music that I am not really paying attention to, although I may be aware of it, the 'information load' increase from a silent version of the scene is primarily in the background. On the other hand, if I'm parsing dialogue, or trying to puzzle something together in the plot or simply follow a sequence of events, I'm more actively processing the information. In the example I mentioned earlier, if I'm watching a film in a language I don't understand, and I don't have subtitles, much of what is foreground information for most of the film's viewers becomes background and textural for me. On the other hand, if I'm trying to piece together what's going on, I may seize details about the way that the actors are speaking and try to process it consciously in a way that a native audience would not. Most likely, however, I will quickly tire from that task and the entire film will slip into the background for me until something jarring or some odd detail captures my attention. Either way, however, the experience will seem as though it must have been slower than it was for the other viewers.
    I think part of why slowness as we normally think of it is subjective is that so much of our perception of slowness has to do with our level of engagement with a film. If there is appealing music in thebackground of an otherwise silent scene, I will become substantially more engaged with the experience. Likewise if I find the acting to be compelling, and if the cuts don't distract me.
    Another piece of the puzzle for me is that I tend to feel things as being slow when they are new to me. I feel like the first week I spend in a new place goes by much slower than subsequent weeks. My first month at my last job went by very slowly in comparison to the last month there. It's as though my memory were skipping over things that it was already familiar with, perhaps reinforcing the existing memories rather than creating new and distinct ones. I feel the same way when I watch a film the second time, no matter how much I liked it or disliked it. It always go by faster the second time. At individual moments it may still seem as slow or slower, but the overall of the experience of the film _always_ leaves me with the feeling that it went by faster.
    > Jun-Dai
16. (in response to #13) Not quite what I meant. If you pick certain criteria and a way to weigh them against each other, then it becomes relative (and at that point you have created a specific definition of 'slowness', which may have a lot or a little to do with what most people perceive as slowness). Until then, it's purely subjective, because 'slow' as I normally see it used simply refers to a particular subjective experience of a film (or a collection of them), which may have a lot or a little to do with various qualities of the film itself. Much like 'good', or 'interesting', or 'witty', or 'important', etc. Choosing films under a subjective sense of 'slowness' doesn't have to be an uphill battle. You could simply take a poll, informal or otherwise, and pick those films that are frequently mentioned as being'slow'.On the other hand, trying to pick films under a particular set of criteria does raise the question of how those criteria relate to 'slowness' (and why other criteria have been excluded or given littleweight), and figuring those criteria in a satisfactory way sounds like an uphill battle, because then you have to figure in questions like "does the lack of music make this film a slower one, and if so, how does that weigh against the fact that this other film has lots of music but no dialogue?". Then there's also the question of why you are using the term 'slowness' for those criteria, rather than having 'The Musicless Long-Take and/or No Dialogue Film Festival'.
    And yes, I think narcotics bring in an excellent point. If you are able to amuse yourself during a film, then the experience will seem less slow (though the film may still seem slow when you reflect onit).As a side note, one of my professors once mentioned that when he was struggling with a film because it was slow, he would focus on the technique of the film, thinking about the angle of the light and where that indicates the light sources to be, the framing, etc., all in a conscious way. This worked for him (and sometimes it does for me as well), because as long as he was in an appropriate frame of mind, filmmaking was a fascinating topic to him that could give him something to think about when the content of the film failed to.
    > Jun-Dai
17. This is just to second Henry's admiration for Spiritual Voices. Not only is it Sokurov's most powerful work, it is surely one of the most intense and transcendent observational/meditative films ever made by anyone. Movies don't get much slower than this, but "slow" doesn't even enter one's mind while watching it. You think instead about presence and the present, about being there, which leads to the miraculous.
    > gyoungblood
18. Someone said "'slowness' needs thinking out." For a film festival, I'm not sure that it does. I think a whole range of films that may or may not be considered 'slow' should play at said festival - and the spectators can decide which is the 'best' slow film or the 'slowest' film - and participating debaters might use this variety of films to come up with a/several 'theory/ies of slow' - rather than having it determined in advance for them...
    > William Brown
19. 1) - the problem of slowness etc should also be viewed from a more concrete, industrial level of narrative rhythm. after all, the majority of films are written by writers/teams that are trained according to certain rules of narrative structure, scene length, etc. this ties the speed of gratified curiosity to the ideological base of the industry, as well as the conventionality of certain modes of expression...
    2) - there are also problems between the rhythm of montage and the speed of information/meaning in a conventional sense: watching "last year at marienbad" the actual sequences move extremely fast for the most part, but it seems as though it is moving increeedddddddibbbbbllllly slowly because there is no certainty of information, no sense of narrative progress, not even minor moments of closure (is closure required for the fixation of duration, and thus the analytic impression of speed?)...
    3) - an interesting application of problems raised thus far would be a look at Wong Kar wai's "In the mood for love" and "2046", made at the same time, expressing certain similar issues and even using overlapping characters, yet completely opposite in the conventional sense of speed and slowness just some quick ideas, not incredibly well formulated, but food for thought
    > hunter
20. Talking about speed, there is this (conceited) notion that films have increasingly become faster, leading Bordwell in his article on 'intensified continuity' to conclude that Alex Proyas' Dark City (1998) is, at 1.8 seconds per shot, the fastest edited film he came across. Sure, editing plays an important part in terms of speed. But the pace of dialogue delivery may be equally important: having recently seen again Cukor's The Women (1939), I couldn't help thinking that this has to be one the fastest movies ever made. One might also consider, in this context, Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961), which also builds on a machine-gun rhythm of dialogue.
    > Henry M. Taylor
21. (in response to #18) on the other side of town there could be a festival of 'thrillers' along the same lines, with spectators arguing the toss over what is and isn't 'thrilling'...
    > Henry Miller
22. Hi everyone,
    nice to see so many responses maybe I should think about a conference on the topic. Of course Gene Youngblood is right in pointing out the relation between duree and time, I think most people would see that as a starting point for any discussion of this topic. Nevertheless I still contend that some film makers are deliberately making films in response to the hegemonic form, isn't this part of the debate that produces the dynamic of film history. Angelopolous' 'Ulysses' Gaze' for instance unfolds at a particular pace in order for the viewer to contemplate space in the manner in which the protagonist experiences it, or at least this is how it works for me, similarly the opening of Herzog's 'Heart of Glass' which at one point (paradoxically) I think the actual film is speeded up, begins by insinuating the viewer into the shepherd's vision through the slow forward movement of the camera, and what about new film makers such as Reygadas, aren't all these people trying to induce a sense of the contemplative into the experience of cinema, something, judging by my experiences at local cinemas, that is a radical response to movies such as Die Hard 4.0, not that this type of film doesn't have its pleasures, clearly they do. Anyway, time waits for no one.
    peace
    > Alan Fair (IDS)
23. Les extremes se touchent? In Wong Kar Wai's strongest film (arguably), the miraculous Chungking Express (1994), there are scenes where extreme acceleration (time-lapse) is combined with extreme slow motion in the same shot. Maybe the cinematic sublime is possible at both ends of the spectrum, the extremely slow as well as the extremely fast?Any suggestions?
    > Henry M. Taylor
24. not only slow-motion. is variable obturation motor.
    > andre gil mata

Review Of L’Avventura

Copyright © by Dan Schneider

Some films that are labeled classics, or great films, are not even good films. Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless immediately comes to mind. Others, like Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura, whose title literally means The Adventure, as well as Italian slang for a one night stand, are not necessarily bad, but still only interesting failures, and not worthy of their reputation. L’Avventura was the first in a trilogy of black and white widescreen films Antonioni would make about alienation and personal anomy. The making of such trilogies was the rage at the time in European cinema, and, to an extent, still is. The trilogy was rounded out by La Notte and L'Eclisse in the two following years. When L’Avventura was released in 1960, it was greeted with catcalls at its world premiere, but won a Special Jury Prize at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival, and film critics championed it around the world. A few years later, one poll of critics listed it as the third greatest film of all time, after Citizen Kane and Battleship Potemkin. It now comes nowhere near Top Twenty lists. Both L’Avventura and Breathless were part of a claimed European revolution in film, where symbolism came to its apogee, and also included Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries, Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and 8½, and the rest of the French New Wave. The reality of the film lies somewhere between the extremes. L’Avventura is a film that attempts much, but, after its interesting first third, it totally unravels with bad characterization, and narrative anomy, which is the fault of its three screenwriters, Antonioni, Elio Bartolini, and Tonino Guerra.

It follows a group of rich hedonists who are frolicking in the Mediterranean, off of Sicily, in the Aeolian Sea. The three main characters are Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti), a playboy architect, his frigid and scheming fiancée Anna (Lea Massari), and Anna’s best friend Claudia (Monica Vitti), the archetypal gorgeous brunet and gorgeous blond. They sail to a deserted island, Lisca Bianca, and during the course of their adventure, Anna simply disappears. Before she does, we have seen that she does not love Sandro, is passive-aggressive towards Claudia, and generally disdainful of her life and all others in it. She solicits sex to fill her inner emptiness, and gets her jollies by playing her friends with false claims of a shark in the waters. Before the other characters realize Anna has disappeared, we see a small boast speed away from the island.

Over the next few days, ostensibly in search of Anna, Sandro and Claudia go off on an inexplicable jaunt across the Sicilian countryside, fall in love, and plan to meet up with the hedonists at assorted places, but the disappearance of Anna is just a red herring. The real tale is about Sandro and Claudia. Many things happen that turn this film away from a potentially great mystery thriller, along the lines of the far superior Diabolique, by Henry-Georges Clouzot, when the action is on the island, to a mere pointlessly smug existential wannabe story that drags on far too long, for almost two and a half hours. The first mistake and red herring is the boat that speeds away from the island. Then there is an interrogation of smugglers, a fling between a teen painter, Gofreddo (Giovanni Petrucci), and a disenchanted lover, Giulia (Dominique Blanchar), of a wealthy, older sugar daddy, Corrado (James Addams), then Sandro’s planting of a false lead on Anna in a newspaper, the appearance of a flamboyant prostitute, Gloria Perkins (Dorothy de Poliolo), and a few others. By film’s end, Claudia has forgotten all about Anna, totally fallen for the shallow Sandro, in only a few days, but, predictably, she soon catches him with the prostitute Gloria. She runs away, he follows, and she forgives him. For such a supposedly revolutionary film, L’Avventura ends in a very weak and predictable way, with the none too bright, gullible, and weak-willed Claudia ready to take more.

The flaws of the script are so manifest that even this film’s champions do not really use it as a booster for the film. There are some startlingly good visuals, filmed by cinematographer Aldo Scavarda, and some nice scenes where the deep focus allows a subliminal ‘man on the shoulder’ sort of imagery. But, there are far more visually arresting films than this, especially given its reputation for visual bedazzlement. Where the film succeeds most is in the tension that it builds leading up to Anna’s disappearance. When Antonioni tries to be self-consciously deep, the film flails, for it has absolutely nothing new to say on film nor feminism. The characters are not deep, and no more than stereotypes, but nothing is done with them, despite that. Even worse, nothing happens for the bulk of the film. Apologists try to point to small things in the corner of a frame, and try to say they are symbolic, but nothing ever comes of any of it. Simply nothing happens. Nothing really happens, and I say that as not one of those video game weaned modern filmgoers who needs things to happen onscreen all the time, to stay interested. The film is simply a chronicle of dull people doing very little. To say the plot is threadbare is an overstatement. And the dialogue between these emotional idiots is not exactly Bergmanian in its depth, consisting of such bon mots as, ‘I love you, let’s go away,’ ‘Please, leave me alone,’ or, ‘I’m bored.’

Being ‘existential’ is simply not an excuse for dullness, and even trimming the film by a good hour, could only do so much to help. One can argue that little happens in many a Bergman film, such as his Spider Trilogy, but that’s only on an exterior level. Inside and out, in L’Avventura, nothing is going on. Yes, we know that Anna the socialite disappears, and we feel we’re about to embark on a mystery, and then the film shifts to Sandro’s and Claudia’s affair, but the shift is so banal, and so without ant real sparks and chemistry- what draws these two ciphers together?- that compared to, say, the narrative shift in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (also released in 1960), we can see how little this film involves its viewers. This vacancy, paradoxically, is what gives the film’s apologists their opening for shifting the critical focus of how well or not the film works to asking what is it about. This is a standard dialectical method that apologists use when a film lacks substance. In L’Avventura’s case, viewers are told by the apologists that they need to fill in what the film leaves out, which is not unreasonable if the film actually gives other things, enough to draw a viewer in to care about the characters. This film does not, and its greatest flaw is the wholly contrived and unconvincing romance of Sandro and Claudia, especially considering that Claudia seems the more balanced of the two main female characters. She even brags in the film that she’s got sensible tastes, from having grown up poor. She should be able to see right through a shallow cad like Sandro, and her forgiving him, at film’s end, is really a copout. Not that this film is anywhere near as good a film as Akira Kurosawa’s film Rashomon, but its ending is still a big disappointment, as is that superior film’s.

The two disk DVD by The Criterion Collection comes with an hour long 1966 documentary from Quebec, called Antonioni: Documents and Testimonials. It was directed by Gianfranco Mingozzi. There are also writings by Antonioni, read by Jack Nicholson, who also provides some anecdotes of the director, a trailer, other written essays, and a DVD restoration demonstration. There is also an audio commentary on the film by film historian Gene Youngblood, recorded in 1989. It’s one of those really atrocious commentaries, not because it’s filled with fellatio, nor because it’s simply being read from a script, but because Youngblood clearly has no idea what is going on in the film, and acts simply as an apologist.

For example, Youngblood confuses such terms as metonymy, metaphor, and symbolism. Metonymy is simply one thing meaning another, such as stating The White House, when really what is meant is The President of the United States. Yet, Youngblood confuses this with metaphor, when he states that when Antonioni shows something, like a deep focus shot of someone in the far background seeming to stand on another character’s shoulder, like the proverbial angel and devil, this is metonymy, and not a metaphor, nor symbolism. Clearly it is symbolism, good or bad, and Youngblood cannot explain why it is not, nor does he explain its metonymic essence. He simply states it is metonymy, and you should accept it, presumably because he’s the expert providing commentary, not you. A later example, he claims, comes when Sandro and Claudia make out on a grassy knoll. Below them we see a train head into a tunnel, yet we are not to take this as clumsy symbolism for the obvious sex act to come, but merely as metonymy, meaning the train and tunnel represent something else than themselves, literally, but not the symbolic lovers’ passion. He also states that the seeming symbolism of both Anna and Claudia passing through arches is metonymy, not symbolism, and at film’s end, when Sandro passes through an arch, it is not only not symbolic, as perhaps his empathizing with the female, but also non-metonymic, for one character cannot appropriate another’s metonymy….or symbolism. Got that? I didn’t think so. For what reason is this injunction given and supported by Youngblood? He does not explicate. He also, inexplicably, tosses about the idea of T.S. Eliot’s objective correlative, but then drops it, perhaps because he simply wanted to state the term in public, to seem smart, and having done so, felt no need to prove he was clueless as to its meaning.

His comments get even more strained and silly when, at the film’s much overinterpreted end, after Claudia has caught Sandro with Gloria, that she is somehow empowered when, as he weeps on a bench, and she strokes his head. It is clearly an act of forgiveness on her part. But, putting aside the fact that, by then, an audience does not care for either of these vapid characters, Youngblood again gives no support for why her clearly conciliatory gesture is not conciliatory, but, as he claims, merely pitying. Then, as if giving unsupported evidence was not bad enough, Youngblood tries to interpret the film’s final shot as not symbolic, but metonymic, as we see from behind the bench where Sandro sits, and Claudia stands behind him, on the right, a stone wall, and on the left an open sky, with Mount Aetna in the background. Youngblood says that this is symbolic (let’s be real now) of the fact that Sandro’s life has no future, he’s run into a stone wall, while Claudia, who pities him, has a life of latent possibilities waiting to erupt. How does he support this? Well, this is so because Sandro is on the right of the bench, while Claudia is on the left, behind it. Well, that may be how a metonymist interprets symbolism, but let’s take a more traditionally symbolic interpretation.

Clearly, Claudia is forgiving Sandro. She has spent the whole film under his sexual spell- the only possible reason she’d fall for her missing friend’s contemptible fiancée in only a few days- after all, he kisses Claudia the first time only a few hours after Anna has disappeared. What Youngblood obviously does not see is that the bench, with Sandro and Claudia, is in the middle of the left half of the film frame, and if we accept that Aetna represents latent possibilities, it is clearly for the two, as a couple, as Claudia has forgiven Sandro, as the film ends with a classically Romantic final shot. Further proof comes from some penultimate shots to the last one, where we see Claudia and Sandro, below her on the bench, and there is an obelisk above Sandro’s head, and next to Claudia’s. Youngblood interprets this as ironic metonymy, for Sandro is a shamed little boy, and Claudia, according to Youngblood only, wants nothing more to do with him. But, the manifest symbolism is that Claudia has sex on her mind, and that clouds any sense she may have. She forgives Sandro, basically, because he’s a great lover, faithless or not, and she is a slave to their sex. This is not particularly deep symbolism, and hardly a payoff of worth for a film that bores a viewer for its last hour and a half. But, this film clearly is not a story of Claudia’s deep existential search for herself, and she certainly is not asserting herself at film’s end, but again playing into the hands of little more than a gigolo. Youngblood also claims that Antonioni is somehow pro-female, and that there may be an erotic lesbian attraction between Anna and Claudia, but the former claim is certainly not evident in this film, and the latter is so silly and, likewise, unsupported that I will not even bother to debunk it.

When it comes to more basic filmic stuff, like character development and poor narratives, Youngblood dares not broach the subject matter, and shows his lack of understanding of the film by reading far too much into scenes, and the switched points of view that Antonioni employs when he shifts from shot to shot. He does make a good point by calling the film’s start a ‘surprise beginning’, but, as stated, Hitchcock did it much better in Psycho.

L’Avventura, despite its reputation for being innovative, fails for the exact same reasons that most less supposedly innovative films do- it has cardboard characters, does not follow through on an intriguing premise, throws in an unneeded romance that never convinces a viewer of its participants’ sparks, goes on far too long, and is far too pretentious. On a more mundane level, I wish some of the money spent on the restoration could have been used to hire competent actors to dub the film into English. No DVD of quality should lack this feature. Film is a visual medium, and for a film which is supposedly so visual, this should be a must. If only this film’s fans and apologists would actually take only what is seen onscreen, and not imbue the film with what they think is there, or feel was intended, then a more just and objective evaluation of this film as an interesting, but ultimately failed, attempt at something different, could be agreed upon.

In short, in art, intent is meaningless, because if not, we’d have to believe that very recognition of Antonioni’s intent to bore the viewer somehow obviates the natural reaction of boredom, and thus all dull films could claim that boredom was their actual intent, thus leaving them not open to criticism on those grounds. Fortunately, intent is meaningless, and in that way one can say that L’Avventura misses the mark as a work of art, and is nowhere near as good as its vast reputation. Whether or not it’s an actually bad film may depend only upon how much you value style over content, or gorgeous Italian babes in bathing suits. There are worse things to have to ponder, eh?

[Originally posted at They Shoot Pictures, Don't They?]

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Dan Schneider
www.Cosmoetica.com
Cosmoetica: The Best In Poetica
www.Cosmoetica.com/Cinemension.htm
Cinemension: Film's Extra Dimension

Focus on China Doc

In February, I presented a special programme in Berlin at Directors Lounge, I thought I could post also the presentation text I wrote for the brochure and which is now available on the fragments' blog. presentation of films on pdf files can be downloaded here.

This special focus presented at Directors Lounge 2007 in Berlin (08-18 February 2007) comprises of several long and short videos and illustrates the singularity and the richness of independent Chinese documentary in a concise manner taking from an artistic and cinematic point of view.

For a certain time now, Chinese independent documentary has been noticeably flourishing. It is even interesting to observe how fast and how much it has produced and how it will evolve. With the self-development of alternative structures, festivals and platforms in Mainland China, it surely presents a potential to expand and at least to alter the cinematic landscape and the film industry in general.

The rise of new technologies and the use of the DV format has enabled directors to make and show works much more easily. This has favoured the expansion of the documentary genre. DV has also generated a closer and more direct relationship with the real. Exploration of the urban environment and the city activity, depiction of daily life and observation of the consequences of the rapid changes in China, but also the affirmation of people living on the fringes of mainstream society, the common people, the individual, the personal and subjective are some of the topics that can be found in those films and generally in independent productions from China today.

However this selection of films does not represent all the variety of what it is being produced nor all the possibilities that documentary genre can offer. Not only do these films share a common spirit of independence and the will of self-engagement, they also assert a personal view and a self-implication in their own work and a strong complicity with the characters being filmed. More than just using documentary genre as a simple record of a documentation for purely anthropological, social, political, ethnological purposes, they affirm a certain way of filmmaking, loose, improvised or on the contrary structured, planned, sometimes even a combination of both and propose through an artistic vision an observation of the world around them, another look.The camera immerses us in a particular atmosphere and a well-defined environment, captures the flowing of the movements, follows some singular characters in their intimacy or personal living without necessarily interfering and suggests various sentiments and considerations towards what is being filmed.

Anecdotic, descriptive, poetic, allegorical or symbolic, the image delivers a powerful visual significance by substituting the narration by autonomous image sequences in order to allow the image to speak for itself. Thus, in Outside, the succession of different anecdotic and suggestive images, taken from close-ups or from far away, which moreover makes a distortion of perspective, reveals their full significance with the preceding and the following image but also within the image itself. The juxtaposition of little incidents, of dailylife events gives away a subjective approach as well as an accurate and perceptive look on the surroundings, on the world passing by. Rather similar in the contemplative manner, but more picturesque, is The People of Yangtze River. Its composition of the image, its plays of light and shade, its vivid colours offer a poetic study of the association of people and its environment, of human activities and the calmness of the natural space, sketching with a particular emotion a portrait of the daily life of the common people in a timeless landscape. Using the camera as a portrayal of a defined social group of people, the migratory workers, but without adding any interviews, is an approach that Carriage adopted. Its realistic black and white cinematography and hand-held camera seem to be rather related in somehow to realist photography and direct cinema and reflect the will to record images. On the other hand, Paigu centers on an individual and rather touching portrayal of a single man and describes endearingly his personal and private life. Divulging his intimate feelings and affairs, the film brings out a narrative structure close to a fiction’s. The complicity between the filmmaker and his character is discernible. This strong connivance and familiar relationship between the filmmaker and his characters are also perceptible in Dream Walking. Blurring the line between documentary, experimental, improvised film and performance, and yet, the film is very well-framed, most of the time composed by static shots and close-ups. This makes a balance between the chaotic movements and actions of what it is being filmed and the static images of the steady camera which does not impose itself. Entirely dedicated to the artistic achievement, the assertion of the body and of the nudity expresses the questionnings and the derision of a society in full upheaval. Unifying image and ideology, Beyond Sound proceeds the image in its visual and allegorical language in order to provide sharp points and a relevant position regarding to the current state of China.

Marina Foxley.

This special programme was made by the collaboration of Marina Foxley and Zhu Rikun (Fanhall Studio, Beijing) and was made possible thanks to the great support of Fragments (Nantes) and Directors Lounge (Berlin).

Exit Poll

This is the last day of this exceptionaly long blogathon. Not quite an entire month, but 3 good weeks. I'm happily surprised by the success of the event and overwhelmed by the enthousiastic response! Thank you very much to all contributors, readers and bloggers who relayed the information with a friendly link. Also special thanks to the Cahiers forum readers who discussed the subject in French over there.

I apologize to the contributors I haven't had the time to comment on their post yet, I will soon I promise. I tried to keep up with the flow until it was faster than me. But the Unspoken Cinema blog is still alive here and I hope this fascinating collegial discussion will keep going past the blogathon. I know the topic was a little confusing but it didn't prevent fruitful conversations to happen. The question of an alleged "Contemplative Cinema", which has raised a lot of controversy, hasn't been sorted or completely ruled out yet.

Everyone is welcome to revisit the blogs and continue to engage on the ideas developped here (general table of content). I didn't find the time to post all I had planned either, so I will add other posts later. It would be great if this place could be a watchcenter for this type of films where we can find links to articles on the subject. So don't stop adding more informations and links to our resources. You may ask to join the team blog if you haven't yet, to be able to post here with us in the future (drop a comment anywhere so you can be sent an invitation to your email address).

25 members joined this team-blog, 25 different authors participated, 45 contributions (to this minute [EDITED], you can still enter last minute posts) since the official start and a dozen before that, some participants came back to contribute two or more times.
This is amazing, and the discussions in the comments section of each blogger or at the roundtables here have been as thought-provoking as the posts themselves.

EXPERIMENTAL FORMAT POLL

I'm very satisfied by the activity fostered on this team-blog, which was designed to experiment a new collective-interactive way to take part in a blogathon. And this despite the NEWBlogger bug that paralized the blog during the first week! Really the worst time imaginable to open a team-blog effort. Thank you all for keeping up and sticking around. So all in all I hope the inconvenience didn't spoil the fun of the group. Sorry about the troubles.

Now what is your level of satisfaction? I'd like to have the feedback of the readers as well as the contributors about this experimental blogathon format. Notably about the 3 week length, the team-blog, the roundtables, and all the features available on this blog. Was it too long? Should it be repeated? What should be improved?

You may post your comment below anonymously. It's not a call for congratulations but to know what didn't work and what were the user's expectations and problems. So really I won't take the negative remarcks personaly ;)