Tsai's Visages: When Salome faced the Dharma

Today in Paris, Taiwan director Tsai Ming-Liang described his new film Face [Visages, 臉] commissioned by France’s Louvre Museum, as one that is going to be crazy. This is because Tsai wants to take notions of Buddhism into, and clash them, with the free-spiritedness of Western art as exemplified by those exhibited in the Louvre.

Tsai Ming-liang stressed that the film will be very special, "because there is such a strange combination: the refreshingly beautiful Laetitia [Casta], * French Nouvelle Vague director Truffaut’s leading actor [Jean-Pierre] Léaud, as well as his last actress Fanny Ardent, a non-French speaking director, and my own alter ego ‘little-Kang’ (Lee Kang-sheng); all wrapped by the Louvre, the film shall be a gift. "

Tsai Ming-liang’s own Buddhist beliefs have a special importance on the film’s theme, particularly the notion of Three Dharma Seals [三法印] “impermanence [諸行無常], impersonality [諸法無我] and unsatisfactoriness [涅盤寂靜],” states of which the film shall attempt to portray. These concepts came to Tsai after three years of visiting the Louvre. He hopes to show “how everything is illusory, just as cinema is illusory, but what is important is how the face of illusions exist, and must be endured.”

In casting Laetitia therefore, Tsai Ming-liang was most interested in her unique face, "I can feel intimate, as the audience can feel intimate with the face". But also, due to the language barrier, Laetitia has spoken of how she viewed Tsai Ming-Liang’s appearance "one looking like a Buddha, but a Buddha that is a bit crazy."

After Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung declined the original offer to star, Tsai Ming-liang immediately began looking for a replacement, maintaining the requirement of creating a film around its starring role; which would make it easier to market, the most part of his struggle until the emergence of Laetitia. So much that Tsai excitedly remarked “because of her, she entirely changed my traditionalist conception of Salome.”

As a former model, Laetitia brings to cinema the aura gained from her previous casting as the prestigious Marianne bust. Tsai gets very excited when reflecting on the relationship between films, models and the way people generally think of actors; citing the French director [Robert] Bresson’s meditations on film actors as models.

Tsai is also aware that Laetitia’s own background in fashion, will affect his take on Salome, becoming almost a Salome of fashion. Laetitia’s background will seem like a previous life, an echo from a lifestyle of fashion and designers that Tsai is willing to welcome to the film, “that world is too big, but it does stimulate in me many new ideas, I think it will be fun.”

Laetitia recognised in Tsai Ming-liang's film the hallmarks of a true auteurist, including so much of that which is free and poetic, "I am not afraid of his past but instead find it useful," but unlike other directors sharing in the hope that their roles be taken to like good students, “we worked together on my performance in order to enhance the narrative”, adding further that “he is a foreign director without biases, I really began to feel like a true actress.”

Laetitia is also very excited to be performing with Lee Kang-sheng, "because they do not know what might happen”. In reply, Lee Kang-sheng spoke of Laetitia as refreshing and distinct, seemingly both intimate and accessible as well as aloof like a noble; providing the role with an abundant potential for subtlety, "we believe that the it will be a very happy collaboration.”

Tsai Ming-liang also spoke about his casting of Léaud; since Léaud offered himself as a solid and ever-present face of Truffaut’s films from the age of fourteen, the impact of this method then, influenced Tsai to choose the same film-making path, “to me, he has my total respect, he is like an idol, a god.”

"Through my contact with him however, he became human, he would age; even in facing the myriad harshness of reality, for example, becoming obsolete, finding little work and experiencing ill health, Truffaut would, if he was still alive, certainly agree with how I shot him today, he would shoot him just as he is now.” Tsai reassured Léaud that their collaboration as director and actor “will be planting the seeds of the fruit of eternal love.”

Original Chinese text at UDN.com, posted by Tsai Ming-Liang at his blog: Director Tsai's Diary, this translation by Edwin Mak. Image: Tsai Ming-Liang.

* The author uses the first name of Laetitia rather than her surname, my translation keeps to that usage henceforth.

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