Review Of Landscape In The Mist

Copyright © by Dan Schneider

There is a superlative scene in Theo Angelopoulos’s 1988 film Landscape In The Mist (Τοπίο στην ομίχλη or Topio Stin Omichli) that is amongst the best filmic depictions of sexual abuse ever shown, and should be shown as a primer to Hollywood directors on how to be subtle and poetic, especially when dealing with such terminally PC topics. In it, the young ten or twelve year heroine of the film, Voula (Tania Palaiologou), who is on the run, in search of her nonexistent father (whom her never seen onscreen mother has told the children resides in Germany, even though she has no idea who their father/s is/are), with her five or six year old brother Alexandre (Michalis Zeke), has hitched a ride with a nameless truck driver (Vassilis Kolovos). After he tries to dump the kids off at a truck stop diner, but they follow him, he pulls over on the side of a road, as the boy sleeps. He tells her to get out of the truck, and then grabs her into the body of the truck, which is covered with a sheet, or tarp. Manifestly, he wants to sexually abuse her in some way. The camera never pans away from the back of the truck. We hear nothing, and after a minute or two, the young boy pops out of the truck cab and goes in search of his sister, calling her name. He runs out of frame, and a minute or two later the trucker gets out of the back of the truck. Now, the camera zooms in, slowly, to the truck, so that nothing but its back exists in the frame. Then, we see Voula slowly emerge from under the tarp. Her legs, then body. She looks shell-shocked, and her hands are bloodies. Whether this is from her hymen being broken, and feeling herself, or from an injury given to her by the trucker, or scratching him, we are not sure. The blood is not substantial, although likely too much for a broken hymen. Whether she was raped or merely fondled, we watch her face as she smears the blood on the side of the truck. This says far more than any graphic shot of the violence could, especially if quick cut in an MTV style. It also allows us to zoom in and feel her numbness and wonder at the blood.

Yet, this is merely one of many bravura shots in this great, great film, which opens with a shot at a train station, then hits the credits. Angelopoulos is a master of the picaresque, stringing together a brilliantly unobtrusive yet powerful narrative through a series of realistic, yet utterly poetic, moments. He also trusts his audience to watch and get the little moments of insight he slips in and never condescends to them. He leaves much in the film unexplained. But, we can fill in the blanks, and even if my answer is a bit different from yours, the overall arc coheres. This tack is brilliantly illustrated in yet another scene, where the kids encounter a twentysomething motorcyclist who drives the family bus for a troupe of entertainers, The Traveling Players (a group that is a direct nod to Fellini’s La Strada and Variety Lights, and was the titular subject of his 1975 film of that name). The way Angelopoulos films the group of old would be Vaudevilleans as they rehearse on a beach for a performance is a direct nod to Fellini in his 8½.

Yet another wonderful scene occurs when the youth, named Orestes (Stratos Tzortzoglou), finds a bit of film in a garbage can, and holds it up under a streetlamp, and against a white billboard, at night, and asks the kids if they see what is on it. The camera zooms in, but we see nothing but a gray mist. Orestes claims there is a tree in the mist, but the kids cannot see it. Then, Orestes admits he was putting them on. Not only does this scene illustrate how adult these children are, as they will not automatically say yes to an adult figure, to gain acceptance, but it also foreshadows the film’s end.

Another giveaway that these are not your average children comes early on, as the two children sleep in bed, and one of them asks for a story to be told, and the other replies with the making of the world, from Genesis: ‘In the beginning was the darkness. And then there was light.’ No Smurfs nor Disney cartoons, but deep mythos. Then, they go to the train station every day, to see the arriving trains from Germany, in case their father is coming home. They have done so for a long time, for a local vendor recognizes them. They also compose letters in their minds to their father, whom, after they run away, and arrive at the workplace of their uncle (Dimitris Kaberidis), we find out is an invention told by their mother to hide their illegitimacy. The kids are then taken into custody, but simply walk out of the station when a snowfall hits the town, and everyone is so rapt that they gawk motionless at the white. It is a typically Fellinian moment, and this is no surprise since the film’s screenplay was written by Angelopoulos, Thanassis Valtinos, and longtime Fellini screenwriter Tonino Guerra.

In fact, the scene with the snow is merely one of several which echo Fellini, another being an homage to La Dolce Vita, where Orestes is sitting on a pier, and watches a giant statue hand rise from the water, only to be carried away by a helicopter. That the hand seems to be made of stone, yet floats up out of the water is unexplained, and we do not see the helicopter wrap its ropes around it, yet it is a mesmeric moment in the film, for we know something wonderfully magical is going on. In the Fellini film, a helicopter is carrying a statue of Jesus Christ as that film opens. Yet, in the Fellini film, there is manifest symbolism afoot, as the statue is used as a bargaining chip for the main character, played by Marcello Mastroianni, to try to score points with women, thus subverting the holy essence of the figure. In Angelopoulos’s film, the symbolism of the hand is less obvious, and several interpretations can be made, including it just being an unexplained interlude to give the audience a chance to breathe with the characters. Also, the scene goes on far longer than the cut-happy sort of editing of Hollywood schlockmeistery would allow, with Orestes, then the kids, watching the hand shrink in size as it disappears toward the horizon, in yet another long and satisfying take. Thus, the scene transcends mere homage to the Fellini film, and crystallizes as an enigmatic and powerful statement in its own right, and a great moment in this magnificent film.

But, the earlier scene with the snow, and the escape leads into another outstanding moment, where the two children see something being dragged behind a car in the snow. The rope snaps and the car goes on. What they see is not a plow nor some mechanical vehicle in tow, but a dying horse that cannot get to its feet. Alexandre starts crying as Voula explains to him what is happening. Yet, as the snow falls, and the horse dies, and Alexandre cries, in the background, we see a bunch of revelers rejoicing in a marriage party that spills out of a restaurant and into the streets, oblivious to the dying animal and pained children. Is there human contact? No. The revelers carry on, without stopping for a moment, and looking at what is so near their lives. The horse soon dies, as Alexandre keeps crying till the scene fades to black. In a dumbed down Hollywood film the wedding party would have come over to comfort the children and attend to the horse. But, not in this poetic realism, which depicts not the overdone inhumanity of humans, but the even more real and far more recurrent obliviousness and inurement to any and all suffering not related to the self, especially when preoccupied with hedonistic pleasures. Again, a perfect melding of the realistic ways people act (how many times do we step over the itinerant, or ignore a wounded animal?) with the sublimely and subliminally poetic. In fact, Angelopoulos probably combines the two more effectively in this film than any other filmmaker I can recall.

Soon after that scene is when they come upon Orestes, then split up from him, which leads into the abuse scene. But, before that, there is a great scene where Voula sleeps on Orestes’ bus, and Alexandre goes off to a local café to do some menial work, to get food for him and his sister. While there, a vagabond with a violin comes in, plays a tune, then is chased off by the owner. Alexandre claps at the impromptu recital, until the owner glares at him, and he goes back to work. It’s a terrific scene, again a Fellinian moment, yet somehow even deeper, because it is not too over the top, like some of the best Fellini Absurdism. When the pair meet up again with Orestes, in perhaps the film’s only flawed moment (too contrived) Orestes makes a deal with them, that he will help them reach the border town of Thessaloniki by train before he joins the Greek Army.

He decides to sell his motorcycle, after leaving his family troupe, and taking the kids with him. But, after he conducts business at a nightclub, Voula and Alexandre take off. Orestes follows them, with her schoolbag in tow. Voula is jealous that she is not loved by Orestes, as much as she love shim. It is dark, on a deserted highway, and the scene then climaxes as he holds the sobbing girl- who earlier refused to touch him when he wanted to teach her to dance (still affected by her sexual violation), and tells her it is always like this the first time (meaning her falling in love with him). The camera pans around them, and then the children take off, and we linger on Orestes watching them disappear from his life.

There is one final great scene before the ending of the film. The kids are looking for money to get the final train out of Greece, to cross the border to Germany (unaware that the two countries are not bordering, and that they will need passports, as well), when Voula up and asks a soldier for 385 drachmas. The man knows not what to do. He thinks she is a child prostitute, and ponders whether or not to accept his idea of her proposition. He wanders in and out of frame several times, over a few minutes, then walks toward the train tracks. Voula follows, and it seems like he is ready to accept her proposal- possibly for sex or fellatio. Then, he abruptly leaves her money and walks away. He has decency and compassion, unlike the truck driver.

The pair board a train, then decamp, when they overhear the need for passports. they try to sneak across the border to Germany (claimed to be at a river). They get into a boat, and take off. Just as they disappear out of view, shots ring out from the border guard tower. The next we see it is morning, misty, and the kids land at what seems to be the other side of the shore. There, Alexandre sees a tree in the distance, says, ‘In the beginning there was the dark, and the light was divided from the darkness,’ and the two run toward it, hug it, and from a distance seem to blend within its trunk. They have obviously transcended. Their trek to the North, in Germany, for their father, has likely led to their death. The final shot can be taken several ways, but that is what makes it so great.

Seen as the tree of life, the pair has been reborn in death. Or, if seen as the tree of knowledge, the pair has come upon a truth that yet eludes the viewer. Or, they have crossed Styx into an underworld every bit as brutal as the real world they left. Or, there are a handful of other explanations. Yet, they all have some validity, and that Angelopouos trusts the audience to take what they need, rather than ram it down our throats Hollywood style, is why this is a masterpiece of a film, just as the DVD cover blurb insists. That it won the top prize, the Silver Lion, at the 1988 Venice Film Festival, and the Best Directing nod at the Chicago Film Festival is the least of its claims to greatness. It is lyrical, realistic, poetic, brutal, and delicately tender. Just look at the scene where Alexandre, once found by Voula and Orestes, after working at the café to eat, hands his sister a sandwich, or the scene where Orestes says goodbye to them. Any Hollywood film would have had Orestes give up his dream of the Army and care for the children. But, in this world- the realistic one Angelopoulos limns, he acts in a real way, and lets them go.

The performance by Tzortzoglou is the film’s best. But the children are terrific, too. They both have a detached air that a lonely life would inflict. They are likely latchkey children, and despite their traumas, carry on as such weatherbeaten kids would. One can only guess at what sort of mother their mother is. At one point, Voula- in an internal letter to her father, claims that Alexandre has chided her for betraying him- a claim that seems remarkable for a kindergartener, when she thinks they should turn back. Yet, this does not seem forced, as the boy seems, in some ways, even more mature and capable than his sister. And, after all, we see that neither their mother nor the authorities seem too intent on finding the duo, so the boy may sense something about their situation that Voula has missed.

The musical score by Eleni Karaindrou is perfectly balanced between the wistful and pathetic, while the cinematography of Giorgos Arvanitis is stunning, even if not in the claimed original widescreen, but a 1.33:1 aspect ratio that some critics have decried. Others have stated that the 1.33:1 aspect ratio is the original ratio for the film. The DVD by New Yorker Video has absolutely no extras, and is not dubbed into English. It only has English subtitles, although the film transfer is sterling. Some DVD critics have declaimed the colors as bleached or faded, but not in my copy of the film. Yes, there are few sunlit shots, but this is in keeping with the not too high nor low gauziness of this whole personal yet mythical children’s journey. The constant overcast skies remind me of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, and also many episodes of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s The Decalogue, while the long and penetrating takes are influenced by Andrei Tarkovsky.

This film has long been grouped with two other of Angelopoulos’s films (Voyage To Cythera and Ulysses’ Gaze) as a voyage trilogy, but it certainly stands alone, self-contained, as a great work of art. If the other two films are as powerful, Angelopoulos will have authored a trilogy that stands with the best that Bergman, Antonioni, Ozu, or Kieslowski have offered. Of course, detractors have claimed what they usually do about great films that depend upon a penetrating beyond the ordinary- that this and other films by Angelopoulos are slow and boring. But, given the depth this film covers, it is a film that could have gone on another hour and remained fascinating. Also, the film is filled with movement- emotional, material, or narrative, even if the frame stands still. Then, there is the mixture of the personal, political, mythic and sexual, so no critic worth their salt can claim the films are boring, unless they are simply wishing for Orestes to have crashed and burnet on his motorcycle.

Landscape In The Mist is a truly great film and work of art, loaded with little moments (a cock that struts into a train station and is caught before the camera pans to the sleeping children) and those grand (as mentioned). It strives for a sort of an implicate order even as it specifies its claims to two individual children, and it is in the fluid melding of such high aims in such an easily achieved manner that Angelopoulos’s greatness in this film is achieved. It is one of those films where, even without thinking, the perfection of its image and message succeeds in moving the viewer. Sit still, be moved, and watch. Landscape In The Mist is that great.

[Originally posted at Blogcritics]

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

The story is always a part of the image

In an interview with Bela Tarr (unknown date) :

"STEVE ERICKSON : It seems to me that there are certain sections of SATANTANGO which emphasize the image far more than the story, and vice versa. Do you see a tension between image and narrative?

BELA TARR : I don't think they are detached, because the story is always a part of the image. In my vocabulary, story doesn't mean the same thing it means in American film language. There are human stories, natural stories, all kinds of stories. The question lies in where you put the emphasis on what's most important. There are everyday titbits that are very important. For instance, in DAMNATION, we leave the story and look at a close-up of beer mugs. But for me, that's also an important story. This is what I mean when I say that I'm trying to look at things from a cosmic dimension. If I could describe a film fully by telling you the narrative, I wouldn't want to make the film. It's time that film frees itself from the shackles of linearity. It drives me crazy that everyone thinks film must equal linear narrative."

And in Jonathan Rosenbaum's review of Satantango (Chicago Reader, October
14, 1994, also in Essential Cinema) :

"If great films invent their own rules, reinventing some of the standards of film criticism in the process, Béla Tarr's Satantango surely belongs in their company. (...)
Satantango is a movie calculated to hit you where you live and to change how you think and feel about it. If all your life has been spent in front of television and movie screens, the movie may not register, because this is one of those rare films that address not "the media" but everything the media leave out."

Both Bela Tarr and Rosenbaum spell out right there what separates the "Contemplative Cinema" trend from the traditional way to make movies. They point out that the film is not about a story, that we can't appropriately describe its narration, that the story is in the images, the importance of mundanity at the same level as other characters, that the narration doesn't function like in the traditional media. That's what we are looking in on this blog, and we need to analyze these aspects in particular, not just with Tarr films, but with other C.C. auteurs who seem to agree about this dissident stance.


P.S. Anybody would like to scan through the wealth of reviews and interviews about Tarr's latest film, The Man From London? I haven't seen it yet, so I can't fully appreciate what is said nor figure what really deals with C.C.
I'll try to make a links resource page special for Bela Tarr.

Yvette Biro on Bela Tarr

notes on Yvette Biro's book "Le Temps au Cinéma / Turbulence and Flow" (2007), Chapter 7 : Odysseus.

Atemporal Time

About Satantango (1994)

"Nothing happens, but we feel that everything is determined from above or from away : human distress, petty hatred and suspicion dominate the rituals of fear, lie and vague attempt to escape."

She uses an interesting term : the intertwined fabric of this human "vegetation".

"Everyone is overwhelmed by the weight of an existence drowned in mud and destined to a hopeless wait, as if they were devoured by the village itself. (...) Each gesture takes an infinite time to be accomplished. (...) Tarr's characters are never conscious of their conditions they drag themselves blindly to the next move, then fall down again suddenly and lose themselves in their quagmire."
"Where nothing moves, reign deafness. (...) In fact, only the vegetative daily life and the lancinate desire to run far away exist. Slowness is a mark of a dead ended stillness for such underground existences. (...) Everything seems to have to last eternally, until exhaustion, without any pleasure. Will is not at fault, it's the repressed instincts, the unconscious to be blamed."
"The strength of their destiny lies in fine inescapable fatality : downfall. (...) Long time ago did they quit this ordinary world, living now in a God forsaken no man's land. Even the awareness of a possible ending to all this is helpless, because the Present doesn't exist, only exists the unbearable infinity of existence."

She talks about the metaphor contained in Satantango's opening sequence. Nothing seems to be happening as the camera circles around the cattle, yet menace is palpable, solely underlined by the monotony and silence.

"Tarr's characters live in a prison without walls, in an opened cage sitting in a perfectly uniform space, overwhelmed by the weight of an immobile time. This neverending rain is time itself (homogeneous texture). This pouring weather is not a punishment of Nature, it's as indifferent as vegetation. The location is nowhere and elsewhere. Time is heavy and atemporal.
It's not Hell, because the great suffering is missing. It's only a vegetative life where people get lost, emptied, shrunk and drowned in the void left out by life."

Here I would like to quote a Charles Baudelaire's poem from Les Fleurs du Mal / Flowers of Evil (1857), entitled Spleen (LXXVIII) :

Spleen

Quand le ciel bas et lourd pèse comme un couvercle
Sur l'esprit gémissant en proie aux longs ennuis,
Et que de l'horizon embrassant tout le cercle
Il nous verse un jour noir plus triste que les nuits;

Quand la terre est changée en un cachot humide,
Où l'Espérance, comme une chauve-souris,
S'en va battant les murs de son aile timide
Et se cognant la tête à des plafonds pourris;

Quand la pluie étalant ses immenses traînées
D'une vaste prison imite les barreaux,
Et qu'un peuple muet d'infâmes araignées
Vient tendre ses filets au fond de nos cerveaux,

Des cloches tout à coup sautent avec furie
Et lancent vers le ciel un affreux hurlement,
Ainsi que des esprits errants et sans patrie
Qui se mettent à geindre opiniâtrement.

- Et de longs corbillards, sans tambours ni musique,
Défilent lentement dans mon âme; l'Espoir,
Vaincu, pleure, et l'Angoisse atroce, despotique,
Sur mon crâne incliné plante son drapeau noir.

I wonder if anybody asked Bela Tarr if he has read this poem, which seems to be a perfect encapsulation of his 7h15' long film.

Yvette Biro also mentions that Tarr only uses two lenses, two frame scales, either the extreme close up on faces, and the wide shot, contextualizing the environment and distancing the characters. Both associated with long takes.
"This device allows the elimination of all concrete and realistic descriptions"

"Tarkovsky is solemn, Tarr is the exact opposite : viscerally natural and voluntarily close to matter. (...) Minimalism leads to eternal recommencement, back to the origins, grounded to something concrete, earthly, without direct metaphysical perspective. (...) when conscience dies, there is neither memory nor effort possible. Intention is replaced by a distentio, dilatation and an extension inexorable of time."

About Werckmeister Harmonies (2001)

"Werckmeister Harmonies creates a unique atmosphere, which thus repeated will attain an ever growning degree of intensity through accumulation. the rhythm, although monotonous, produces an impression of crescendo. Time only moves vertically, downward, with an always greater tension."
"The rhythm is constructed based on restraint. Everything has its proper rhythm, nothing can be hurried nor slowed down. When violence or an action stops it out of exhaustion or the consequence of a natural phenomenon."

Bela Tarr about Werckmeister Harmonies :

"To me, making films essentially consists in dealing with time and with space, and to install some human figures in there. (...) I reason based on mathematical coordinates. Something happens on the vertical axis and something on the horizontal axis. Thus, space and time end up intersecting (...) What's important is what is going on with the framework of this defined temporal unity. (...)
It's not real time, even if I want to give this impression. To us, real time doesn't equate to simple reality, one that simply passes by."

Béla Tarr by David Bordwell

The recent films of Bela Tarr constitute a referential archetype of what we call here "Contemplative Cinema", for lack of a better terminology (I don't know how to call it anymore), as they embody every aspect of this marginal trend of contemporary art cinema. The characteristics detailed in a previous post are Plotlessness, Slowness, Wordlessness, Alienation.

• Bela Tarr eschews plot and storytelling, even refuses to answer questions dealing with that matter. He feels strongly about this choice to shift the focus of a film away from the narrative tradition, which is determinant for this "contemplative" generation of filmmakers.
• Bela Tarr is famous for his monumental long takes, the absence of onscreen action and the slowness of his characters.
• As far as dialogue, Bela Tarr is one of the most verbal of this trend, according to me), because he likes to give importance, at times, to a long piece of text (usually monologues), while other filmmakers avoid altogether grandiloquent discourse, either recording small talks without any immediate significance to the narration, or keeping their characters silent for the most part (Bartas, Weerasethakul, Alonso, Sokurov, Kitano). Although Tarr's characters are usually at least laconical, the intellectual speech plays an important role. The political theory of the Prince, or the speech about the Werckmeister Harmonies in the eponymous film. The motivational speech of Irimiás or the police interrogatory in Satantango.
• Alienation is also a major trait of his films, where characters suffer from social isolation and navigate aimlessly in a world where connection is impossible or at least unreliable.

DAVID BORDWELL ON BELA TARR

David Bordwell explains in a recent post, The sarcastic laments of Béla Tarr, various characteristics of Bela Tarr's style that could inform on a more general scope our understanding of what makes "contemplative cinema" different. In particular, he speaks of "Block construction" to define a non-narrative approach to film exposition.
There is no narrative beginning-middle-end structure to the shots, no dramatic cues to drive the plot and no cross-cutting. Thus the action focuses on the hic-et-nunc of a slice of life which only importance lies in the intrinsic mundane activity taking place. A vision of cinema content he calls "Behavioral cinema" (that would be interesting to compare it to what we know of C.C.).

BEHAVIORAL CINEMA & CONVERSATIONAL BLOCKS

"Tarr builds these films out of conversational blocks, punctuated by undramatic routines. The result is that often major plot actions take place offscreen, or rather in between the dialogues. Exposition that other filmmakers would give us up front is long delayed, with bits of information sprinkled through the entire film. (...) Further, by skipping over the most obviously dramatic incidents, Tarr’s storytelling joins that tradition of ellipsis celebrated by André Bazin in his essays on neorealism. No longer does the filmmaker have to show us every link in the causal chain, and no longer are some scenes peaks and others valleys. By deleting the obviously dramatic moments, the filmmaker forces us to concentrate on more mundane preambles and consequences. (...) This block construction yields an unusually objective narration. These films lack voice-overs, subjective flashbacks, dreams, and other tactics of psychological penetration. We have to watch the people from the outside, appraising them by what they say and do. It is a behavioral cinema."
"Tarr refuses as well to use crosscutting, which would show us various characters pursuing their activities at roughly the same time—another strategy that keeps us fastened to one relentlessly unfolding chain of actions and, usually, one character’s range of knowledge. The avoidance of crosscutting will have major structural implications in Sátántangó, which overlaps characters’ individual points of view by replaying certain events and stretches of time."
"Similarly, many long takes in the later films don’t present a beginning-middle-end structure. We simply follow a character walking toward or away from us, pushing into a stretch of time whose end isn’t signalled in any way. This becomes especially clear in those extended long shots in which a character walks away toward the horizon and the camera stays put. Traditionally, that signals an end to the scene, but Tarr holds the image, forcing us to watch the character shrink in the distance, until you think that you’ll be waiting forever. Likewise, the diabolical dance shots of Sátántangó, built on a wheezing accordion melody that seems to loop endlessly, are exhausting because no visual rhetoric, such as a track in or out, signals how and when they might conclude. Early and late, Tarr won’t hold out the promise of a visual climax to the shot, as Angelopoulos does; time need not have a stop."

TRACES OF LEGACY

"As I indicated at the end of Figures Traced in Light, he stands out as a distinctive creator in a contemporary tradition of ensemble staging. Like Tarkovsky, he shifts our attention from human action toward the touch and smells of the physical world. Like Antonioni and Angelopoulos, he employs “dead time” and landscapes to create a palpable sense of duration and distance. Like Sokurov in Whispering Pages (1993), he takes us into an eerie, Dostoevskian realm where characters are cruel, possessed, mesmerized, humiliated, and prey to false prophets. (...) Whether or not Tarr consciously joined a tradition, his practices do link him to several trends. Tarr has rejected the idea, floated by Jonathan, that his early films are indebted to Cassavetes, but there seems little doubt that by 1979, when Family Nest was released, it contributed to the fictional-vérité tradition, regardless of his intent. Likewise, his late films’ reliance on long takes is part of a broader tendency in European cinema after World War II. The neorealists taught us that you could make a film about a character walking through a city (The Bicycle Thieves, Germany Year Zero), and other directors, such as Resnais in the second half of Hiroshima mon Amour, developed this device. With Antonioni, Dwight Macdonald noted, “the talkies became the walkies.” Jancsó took Antonioni further (acknowledging the influence) in the endless striding and circling figures of The Round-Up, Silence and Cry, and The Red and the White. So even if there wasn’t any direct influence, Antonioni and Jancsó paved the way for Tarr; they made such walkathons as Sátántangó and Werckmeister thinkable as legitimate cinema."

I'm wondering about this "tradition of ensemble staging", it seems to suit better Tarr, than other contemplative filmmakers who prefer to isolate a couple of protagonists only. So we can't generalize this trait to the whole trend.
The attention to the corporality/physicality of the world, "dead time" and landscapes are however something we could observe across this trend.
As far as I am concerned, I don't care to figure out who came first, who influenced who, and if there is a legit lineage within this name-dropping. What's interesting here is to comfirm the plausible similitude, be it purely formal, between these auteurs, as to form a coherent set of thinkalike minds. It's obvious they didn't jump on the latest bandwagon or followed the steps of a mentor (except maybe a few exceptions like Gus Van Sant who admits to his influences). But it's interesting to witness several auteurs push toward the same direction at the same time, even without knowing the similar activity of their peers. It's the collective unconscious that is at work there, an expression of our time and space, a reaction to the state of our culture which affects us the same way anywhere in the world at this point.

"Visit any festival today, as Scott mentioned in our panel, and you’ll see plenty of films with long takes and fairly static staging. I criticize this fashion a bit in Figures, but it’s undeniably a major option on today’s menu. It’s even been picked up in contemporary American indies, with Gus Van Sant’s work from Elephant on offering prominent examples. He, of course, has been crucially influenced by Tarr, but Hou, Tsai Ming-liang, Sokurov, and other directors haven’t. We seem to have a case of stylistic convergence, with Tarr choosing to explore the long take at the same time others were doing so."

It's interesting for us that Bordwell acknowledges the existence of a trend in contemporary cinema with some of the auteurs we highlight in Contemplative Cinema (Tarr, HHH, Tsai, Sokurov, Gus Van Sant, and before that their likeminded precursors : Tarkovsky, Antonioni, Jancso, as well as other Hungarian filmmakers I've never heard of) who show a (coincidental) convergence of style (the long take). Personally I believe there is more than just camerawork, and that's what we are trying to demonstrate on this blog.
And the question he suggests is also one we should ask ourselves, about the reason why this convergence took place at this time in cinema history, whether it is a stylistic maturation, a logical continuation/mutation of the preceding movements of Neo-realism and Modernism, or if there is a cultural/political motive to confront the mainstream realm of Image and Spectacle.

"Tarr’s severe parables, grotesque and sarcastic in the manner of Kafka, don’t exude the religiosity we can find in some of this music or filmmaking, but, at least for me, they share the impulse to lament humans’ inability to transcend their brutish ways. “I just think about the quality of human life,” he remarks, “and when I say ‘shit’ I think I’m very close to it.”"

Tarr admits to an assertive misanthropy (which certain critics seem to feel uncomfortable about), or at least to be overtly pessimistic about today's human condition. If it's not man's nature that is responsible, it's the epoch of our society. And this is still a fairly minoritary concern within contemporean cinema. "Contemplative" filmmakers aren't necessarily gloomy or sadistic, but the absence of immediate reward, the hopeless pursuit of happiness, the conscious realisation of human lowest instincts make this perspective a more realistic view of the world than whatever simmering in the fantasy-deluded minds of mainstream screenwriters.

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)