CCC gimmick exceptions

Edwin Mak : "Continuing on the theme of the negative, and objectionable ethics, may I ask you and anyone else for your examples and why? What is it about your examples, delimited by your own tastes, indicate an objectionable usage of minimalism/contemplative technique?"

Let's open a new discussion here for a question asked by Edwin Mak in a recent post (Atkinson on minimalism) about the pros and cons of stylistics techniques and mise-en-scene characteristic or not of the CCC trend. (My apologize for taking so long to put up this new post)


We seem to disagree on whether a particular film is part of CCC or not. We don't consider the same elements of film language as being "disqualifying", or as an evidence of a true/strict "contemplative" film. So let's see what everyone think are the cardinal sins found in a film that you consider "exploitation" or "over-the-top" or "betraying" or "objectionable" or simply "anti-contemplation".

Atkinson doesn't like Colossal Youth and thinks it's a hack job that discredits the purity of "Minimalism". And I disagree of course because I admire this film. So is it just a matter of taste difference that move us to approve or reject such or such film, whether we call them "Minimalist" or "Contemplative"?
Well taste aside, We can break down the mise-en-scene in technical terms and assess the whole intention of the auteur. In other words, does Costa seeks "minimalism" (or Brechtian?) or does he go for "contemplation" (whatever that means to him)?

Unlike neorealism or La Nouvelle Vague, CCC is not a conscious trend where like-minded auteurs gather around the same idea, mutually influenced by a common style. CCC auteurs come from all over the world and from different cultural background, but there is definitely some shared identity in their filmmaking language. And these new traits are all the more distinct and unique when compared to traditional filmmaking (which is still the overwhelming norm in mainstream cinema, and has always been). So I'm taking this into account to figure what are the "unspoken rules" of this emerging trend. When films look similar they "work" almost the same way (which serves as a tentative definition on the blog description) and when they do "contemplation" differently it highlights their exceptions (for instance the usage of speech, music, professional actors, CGI or classical narrative device).

That's how I define a "strict model" of hardcore CCC auteurs (Tsai, Bartas, Weerasethakul, Reygadas, Alonso, Tarr, Dumont...) with a nebula around them gradually less and less "contemplative" because they take more and more exceptions to the original purity of this self-defined trend, by slightly adding more narrative music (Kaurismaki, Wong Kar-wai, Lynch), more narrative editing (Wong Kar-wai, Gus Van Sant, Lynch, Martel), more plot-driven dialogue (Jia, Wong Kar-wai, HHH, Ceylan, Hong Sang-soo, Angelopoulos, Dardennes, Lynch), more stylized performance (Kaurismaki, Andersson, Barney), more special effects (Suleiman, Andersson, Lynch)... while remaining a lot more "contemplative" than the mainstream fare.

To me a true CCC film doesn't require any of this. It could be as bare as a single shot with non-actors filmed running errands without beginning nor end, without even a proper "message" or a point to the storytelling, without complicated staging, . They don't have to be all as ascetic as that. But it all comes down to the amount of narrative construction they add and how "distracting" it gets from a "contemplative perspective".

The state of contemplation (which is the focal point of this trend by definition) implies a liberty of the viewer to witness events taking place before his/her eyes, without being spoon-fed digested hints and codes, without attention-grabber framing, without walk-through montage. the contemplative viewer is sitting at the window, looking out into the world, a world offered for contemplation, for consideration, for reflection. And even if the meanings in CCC are implicit nonetheless (because the auteur meant to make THIS film and not ANY film), the range of interpretation and the level of participation is left at the viewer's discretion. Inasmuch as every viewer may watch a different film, project their own interpretation, imagine their own untold backstory to the characters. that's what make CCC films original.

Of course, the point is not to strive toward an alleged "purity" of this trend. But I can see how certain gimmicks can become distraction, interferences, perversions (Atkinson calls that exploitation) of how this new family of films tends to mark its difference. If a device tends to decrease the difference with the mainstream norm, then it does become "objectionable" (to use Edwin's word) in my book. Not objectionable in the sense that they are "excommunicated" (because auteurs never pledged to be part of this unspoken trend!) but objectionable to the meaning we give to the stricter model of CCC (which is what I defined above, and also evoked by these notions: wordlessness, plotlessness, slowness, alienation).

So when I see a film using reaction shots and narrative cues, or flashback techniques, I know that it is still operating within the known territory of mainstream cinema to some extent. Therefore it is a weaker representative of a stand alone trend (since true CCC doesn't require the usual narrative conventions to tell a story through atmosphere and visuals). It's as simple as that, either they resort to devices familiar to the audience, or they venture in uncharted territory, where narration doesn't earn its credibility from overstated cues and plot set up.

Well that's just to introduce the topic, you may add your own take in the comments below.

“RR” (Benning, USA)

As with Ten Skies and 13 Lakes before it, James Benning’s new film RR forms great ideas and unexpectedly voluptuous beauty out of modest and strict means, content, and style. Composed entirely of 16mm still shots of train tracks, each shot roughly beginning a beat or two before a train enters the frame and lasting until roughly a beat or two after after the train has left, RR is both more rigid and concrete than the undulating abstraction of Ten Skies, as well as more directly grounded in reality and the cinema.

Benning uses his landscapes, trains, and railroads as intrinsically American elements, from a visual standpoint. Calling to mind the romanticization of the West, the colonizing and expanding force of the railroads, Benning encourages a recognition of the historical might, impact, and influence of these engines across (and connecting) these spaces. At the same time, the film comes with a clear admission not only to the sheer breadth and size of the American landscape (and the nation itself), but also the tremendous amount of goods that these trains are hauling from one side to the other. What goods they contain, where they are going, and why, are all questions that are asked but unanswered by RR, and this evokes a kind of abstract bounty of consumption and material wealth that remains unrooted by any real production, desire, or consumption itself.

Benning’s soundtrack is a mixture of direct sound and additions, ranging from the chopper blades of a Huey helicopter over a shot Benning thought reminded him of Vietnam to far more direct references, such as a clip from Eisenhower’s famed speech referencing the military industrial complex and a reading from the Book of Revelations. Thus the film takes on explicitly political dimensions not to be found in something like Ten Skies, connecting the suggestions of the landscape and the movement of the trains and overtly linking them to their national, historical, and religious connotations.

RR is not just a work about trains (or their politics), and is as much a comment on the pleasures and form of cinema. This meta-cinematic aspect comes into play directly in the factor determining the length of each shot: the duration of the train’s movement, or sometimes the duration of the sound of the train’s movement. (As dry as the film may sound through my description, it is not without its humor, which comes most directly from two shots of particularly long trains that move so terribly slowly that when one eventually realizes after a number of minutes that the goliaths are slowing down and about to stop, one cannot help but laugh at the lumbering absurdity and our investment in watched that movement.) RR therefore indicates movement—activity—as the most interesting facet of each shot.

Yet, somewhat paradoxically, while movement determines duration, it does not justify the shot itself. This is an important distinction, as it shifts a great deal of each composition’s focus to the landscape itself, and the play of the train through that landscape. The landscape prefigures the train traveling through it, and thus while that journey is the temporal element in each shot (among other elements of interest: the texture, color, speed, and vector of each train), it is the relationship of that journey to the singular composition of land, rail, and frame that, in a sense, “determines” the content of the shot itself.

One of the many rich ways of looking at a film as deceptively simple as RR, then, is to see its actual subject—the trains—only as an abstract element that temporally structures our gaze at the shot, and due to its on-screen motion gives a temporal rhythm to this landscape, to the duration of the shot, to the rhythm of the film as a whole. Looked at this way, one could even see RR strictly as a landscape film, whose rhythm, length, and beauty Benning to a large degree gives up to the power and movement of American railroads.

***

Cross-posted at The Auteurs.

Atkinson on minimalism

Michael Atkinson's introduction to his piece on The Forsaken Land (2005/Vimukthi Jayasundara) DVD, on the IFC blog (9-16-2008) :

Ah, minimalism, the miserable hairshirt pajamas so many critics still love to put on in the semi-privacy of their vocations, ostensibly separating them from the herd of passive filmgoers like enlightened monks separated from the peasantry -- or, at least, so it may seem to the mainstream, who have been trained from the cradle to desire only distraction, and for whom a movie that deliberately fails to deliver narrative excitement is akin to water torture. Honestly, both are fair and comprehensible positions, and if you can decry the ignorant impatience of the many viewers intolerant of the new movie by Jia Zhangke or Pedro Costa or Tsai Ming-liang, you could also legitimately wonder when and where art film asecticism steps over the border into pretentious tedium. (Just because it's not a terribly commercial gambit doesn't mean it can't be overexploited by filmmakers -- take Costa's "Colossal Youth," please.)

Everyone has to draw their own line, naturally, even if, let's face it, minimalist art film, done insightfully, rewards attentive viewing with transformative experience in ways cluttered, noisy, manipulative narrative films can't.

Dardenne on non-pro filmmaking

Interview de Laure Adler with Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne on France Culture (en écoute jusqu'à mercredi 3 septembre), retour sur les films de leur carrière et leur style de réalisation.

Passage du documentaire à la fiction :

"Je crois qu'à un moment donné le documentaire était assez particulier. Ils étaient fort mis en scène nos documentaires. Et on sentait peut-être une difficulté dans le fait que nous devions manipuler les gens pour arriver à les construire comme on voulait les construire. C'est à dire qu'on disait aux personnes "Dites plutôt ça que ça si vous le voulez bien", dans la mesure où ça correspondait à ce qu'ils avaient vécu et ce qu'ils avaient à dire. Aussi on ne manipulait pas leur paroles. Mais on demandait quand même qu'ils fassent certaines choses et parfois ils disaient "Oui, mais non, pourquoi?" Et on s'est dit tout compte fait on atteint une certaine limite. Puisque nous on aimerait faire ça, il nous semble que ce serait bien, et ils refusent les gens. Nous ne les payons pas pour qu'ils acceptent. Donc on s'est dit peut-être qu'il faudrait qu'on raconte nos propres histoires. Mais on a pas osé le faire tout de suite."

Passage du tournage pro au travail avec les acteurs non-professionnels :

"Je Pense A Vous" était le film CONTRE lequel on a construit La Promesse. Et c'est pour ça qu'on a travaillé avec des comédiens non-professionnels, qu'on a repris les choses en mains. On était un peu comme des éléphants dans un magasin de porcelaine. On nous a dit "attention les gars là vous allez faire du Cinéma!" On se l'est dit aussi. c'est un peu le complexe de l'autodidacte qui dit attention là j'entre dans la bibliothèque, il faut être sérieux. On déconne plus. Et on a pris ça un peut trop au sérieux. La peur au lieu de vous aider à avancer, elle vous tétanise. Peur du cinéma, peur de la machinerie, peur des spécialistes. Et l'affaire vous échappe un peu. Bon le bateau avance, mais cahin caha. Et La Promesse c'était pour nous une manière de dire on va encore en essayer un (parce qu'on est pas obligé de faire du cinéma), et on va essayer qu'il nous ressemble. Et de toute façon pour le rôle d'Igor, c'est un jeune garçon, donc ça pouvait pas être un comédien qui avait déjà une expérience. On va faire un casting nous-même. [...] La manière de travailler n'a plus été la même. c'est comme si le film s'était construit à partir du corps des comédiens. Et c'était plus un espace vide dans lequel venait les corps. Et à partir de La Promesse, on a commencer à travailler et à filmer à partir du corps des comédiens, mais aussi en éliminant tout ce qu'on ne voulait pas filmer. On a commencé à inscrire des tensions entre ce qu'on montrait et ce qu'on cachait. Pour que le spectateur soit aussi, avec nous, dans ce qu'on ne montre pas. Et qu'on sent qu'il y a une volonté de ne pas le montrer. Il y a toujours des choses cachées que l'on découvre au fur et à mesure et on est rarement en avance sur nos personnages.

Filmer les personnages de dos :

Le gros plan n'est pas nécessairement un gros plan de visage. Filmer la nuque d'Olivier Gourmet, ou filmer l'épaule de Rosetta, ou sa main, c'est un "visage" aussi. On ne disait pas "attention il faut que tu sois de face". On voudrait partir de là et arriver là, puisque c'est généralement des plans séquences. On s'est rendu compte que quelque chose se passait, qu'on avait pas imaginé au départ, dans ce dos d'Olivier, on était en retard, parce qu'on ne pouvait pas cadrer ce qu'il voyait, et que l'on découvrait après. Ne pas voir son visage permettait sans doute au spectateur de projeter, d'imaginer plus ce qu'il va découvrir après. Qu'est-ce qu'il cherche cet Olivier? On le suit.

Drame psychologique, existentiel :

La psychologie d'explication des personnage ne nous intéresse pas. Rosetta avait un père absent. Et comme tout le monde explique tout le présent à partir du passé, de l'histoire du père, le spectateur va avoir l'explication psychique de Rosetta aujourd'hui. Et on ne voulait pas que le spectateur puisse s'installer dans la position d'un spectateur qui a compris : "C'était donc ça!". On ne veut pas qu'il puisse penser ça à aucun moment du film. Comme les plans psychologiques sur les visages, les yeux, les regards... comment essayer d'échapper à ça? Pour emmener le spectateur vers quelque chose qui lui échappe mais où il va lui-même essayer de construire et être plus dans la question morale que dans la question du pourquoi psychologique.

Et aussi:

• Interview radio de Michel Ciment avec Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne sur France Culture (en écoute jusqu'à Samedi 6 Septembre) sur leur nouveau film, Le Silence de Lorna
  

Nina Menkes interview

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

Marina Shoif as Lulu in Phantom love

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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