The Aesthetic of the Meandering Camera

The Aesthetic of the Meandering Camera:
An Analysis of Three Filipino Independent Films

by Alvin B. Yapan

Paper read during the 5th Annual Southeast Asian Cinemas Conference
Ateneo de Manila University, 22 November 2008

Aesthetically, we could say that Philippine independent cinema positions itself, consciously and or unconsciously, in opposition to mainstream. Instead of staged mise-en-scene, we find a production set-up with the most minimal intervention. Whatever the location provides will do. Instead of well-known actors, we have locals acting in the film. Instead of polished lighting and audio design, we find available light and live sound. Dialogues are not dubbed. Instead of film negatives, there is digital filmmaking. These aesthetic choices seem to be more borne out of necessity rather than by any political stance. Independent would mean that filmmakers do not rely on the studio or network system to finance their production. But there is still a need on their part to earn a profit, if only to continue producing more films. This is the case for example of Jeffrey Jeturian’s producer Atty. Josabeth Alonso. The same could be said for ufo Pictures, which produced Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros [The Blossoming of Maximo Oliveros](2005) and Endo [Love on a Budget] (2007), and other independent production outfits. Furthermore, Philippine independent cinema could also not speak of a definite political movement comparable, for example to the Latin Americans who theorized what is now dubbed as Third Cinema.(1) The union of independent filmmakers here in the Philippines, for instance, only came after the marked proliferation of independent films rather than spurring the said phenomenon. However, the boundary between what is borne out of necessity and what is politically motivated is always contestable. What is certain is that the aesthetic of this independent cinema contrasts itself against the polish of mainstream cinema.

To say however that this aesthetic of independent cinema borrows largely from the documentary genre is misleading. Relating this aesthetic also to that of documentary drama (docu-drama) would need a lot of qualifications. It is safe to say that Philippine independent cinema created a peculiar and an entirely different species of film. Since the history of Philippine cinema is particular in its own, it is following a very different trajectory from other third world cinemas. Kubrador [The Bet Collector] (2006), Serbis (2008) and Ranchero (2008) are already showing us the aesthetic tendencies of this kind of cinema. These are just tendencies. There are always exceptions. Being produced several years apart however, by different directors of varying backgrounds, and produced by varying production outfits, these three films would show us how this aesthetic tendency has been a consistent choice among directors in giving their work filmic form. This is an aesthetic largely characterized by hand-held tracking shots almost always providing the audience with an over-the-shoulder perspective of a particular character as he/she explores a confined space. Sometimes, over-the-shoulder perspectives would be interrupted by zoom ins or outs to variations of close-up, medium or full body shots. Long takes are also usually employed. But always, in the three films chosen for this study, camera movement is constricted within a claustrophobic, labyrinthine space: the slums for Kubrador, the dilapidated cinemahouse for Serbis, and the prison for Ranchero.

These aesthetic choices are due to a confluence of a number of factors, not just production constraints, as has been mentioned earlier. Another is the venue and audience that film festivals and local universities provide, instead of the usual local popular audience. Being mainstream, the gloss is intended for the popular audience who buy tickets in commercial cinema houses. Independent cinema however has a different audience. It targets more the studentry being required by their professors to watch, therefore the academe, and also the art film enthusiasts. While mainstream cinema mainly functions as entertainment, independent cinema derives its function from being socially relevant. Thus the predilection of independent cinema for topics on poverty and social concerns not usually palatable to the popular audience. Topics that could spur debate in classes and other venues.

This move by independent cinema to develop its own aesthetic away from the mainstream, said to be enslaved by popular tastes, instead of shaping them, is no longer surprising or new to Philippine history. All we have to do is look at parallels in Philippine literary history and to the age-old debate between Salvador Lopez and Jose Garcia Villa, both of them condemning the popularization of literature during the American period. Salvador Lopez’s answer however was to go the way of social relevance, while Villa went for art for arts’ sake. Bienvenido Lumbera in his essay “Kasaysayan at Tunguhin ng Pelikulang Pilipino” [History and Prospects of Filipino Cinema] already recognized these two strands in Philippine cinematic history, citing Lino Brocka as an illustration of the first and Ishmael Bernal of the second, which focused more on formal experimentations.(2)

Between the two strands, social relevance seems to be the direction that a majority of independent filmmakers are taking. Here is where we find the motivations for the grants given by Cinemalaya, Cinema One Originals, Cinemanila, and others. These festivals still opt, for instance, for narrative features rather than experimental films. Not so much an experimentation on form but an adventurousness in terms of theme and topic. Narratives features would mean that the film should still be accessible to the general public and not just to arthouse enthusiasts. It is just that the narrative theme and topic of these features veer away from the staple genres of comedy, action, drama, bomba and horror of mainstream cinema.

When independent cinema however derives its weight from being socially relevant, there appears the question of the aptness or effectivity of its chosen aesthetic. Perhaps this is why there is always the nagging question of whether this kind of aesthetic, instead of creating awareness, exoticizes the very condition it wishes to criticize. Dissecting the aesthetic of the three Filipino independent films chosen for this study, we find that it has three elements. First is the single location shooting. Of course production-wise, it is a matter of exigency. But aesthetic-wise however this single location shooting (wherein the camera meanders inside the slums for Kubrador, the dilapidated cinema house in Serbis and the prison in Ranchero), has but one option in relating to the space it utilizes. Since the camera does not leave the place, it dwells or lives in it. The space depicted would always come out as something habitable. It is not therefore surprising that in the three films we get to see all the characters residing in the places mentioned. In Kubrador, we see Amy (Gina Pareño) adeptly navigating the labyrinthine spaces of the slums. We see how the slums provide space for social interaction, to establish social relationships, despite being physically constricting. Life as it were persists. In Serbis, the dilapidated cinemahouse does not only provide business for the Pineda family but also a home, in its cavities, dark rooms and unused corners. Perhaps most striking of all is how Ranchero starts with Richard (Archie Adamos) lazily wakes up and goes about his daily routine of washing his face and brushing his teeth. But as the camera slowly zooms out, in one long take, we discover that Richard is inside a prison cell. The message is quite clear. These places, to the camera, become surprisingly habitable. Individuals do inhabit these spaces. In dwelling in these places, the camera seeks to make the slums, the cinema and prison familiar to the audience. They become just like any other regular home.

Aside from this revelation however this kind of treatment of space runs out of possibilities. It is therefore not surprising that the three films presented here all ended with their characters getting trapped in these spaces. Kubrador for example effectively renders on screen how Amy eerily gets lost in the slums despite its familiarity. In Ranchero, Richard’s hope of getting released from prison that day gets snuffed when violence erupts inside the prison he considers home. There is no salvation in these spaces. In Serbis, the only answer Alan (Coco Martin) finds is to abandon this space entirely. Its habitability is just an illusion the individual creates for himself to endure living in these spaces. This kind of insight has already been achieved in Lino Brocka’s films, for example in Maynila sa Kuko ng Liwanag [Manila in the Claws of Neon] (1975) where Julio Madiaga (Bembol Roco) literally gets cornered at the end of the film. And even then, this narrative sensibility has already been criticized, by Ricardo Lee no less, who at that time lamented about the inadequacy of stopping at social awareness in terms of social analysis. The title of his essay was “Ang Lipunan Bilang Isang Bilangguang Putik.” [The Society as a Mud-Prison] (3) This aesthetic does not present new insights in terms of treatment of space other than presenting the reality of this space as being shockingly habitable despite its poverty. In this sense, the three films are exoticizing poverty in their treatment of space. Exoticizing when we use the definition of Mikhail Bakhtin in his study of chronotopes (or time spaces) in narratives. He says: “Exoticism presupposes a deliberate opposition of what is alien to what is one’s own, the otherness of what is foreign is emphasized, savored, as it were, and elaborately depicted against an implied background of one’s own ordinary and familiar world.”(4)

What is new however in these three films and which are absent in the Brocka films are the singularity and presence of the involved camera. And this is the second element. We do not see panoramic establishing shots being done for their own sake. If ever there is a panoramic shot, it is always from a specific character’s point of view. When we explore the slums, cinemahouse and prison, it is through the eyes of their inhabitants. The camera participates in the subjectivity of the characters. The camera is not looking from the outside, or looking in at the lives of the characters. The camera is one with the characters. The camera is not presenting the characters to the audience. The camera shares in the experience of the characters. Viewing these three films then, there is a felt immediacy in watching the screen because of this camerawork.

The effect of this is first, the sympathy of the camera is almost always already biased for the character. The character’s integrity is no longer in question. The mere choice of the character is already a choice to side with him. The film then would unravel as an explanation of this choice. Why of all the many characters in the said space, the camera chose to follow this specific character. So that if the film fails, this choice becomes an apology for the shortcomings of the character. This is where perhaps this kind of aesthetic nears to that of the documentary, because the choice of topic in a documentary would already bias the camera to this character.

Serbis is not an exception to this even if the film follows multiple characters as they navigate the dark corridors of the cinemahouse. Serbis merely extends this aesthetic element to its limit. Despite the multiple characters, the camera treats them as one character living inside the cinemahouse. There is a singularity in the consciousness of the multiple characters. When Alan for example finally decides to abandon the place, it is telling that the camera does not follow him with a tracking shot. Instead the camera opts to stay with the perspective of the cinemahouse, looking at Alan from afar as he disappears in the crowd. Serbis in the end is not a story of multiple characters, but a story of place if we are to use the conventional categorizations of classical narrative. The character here is the cinemahouse. Thus when Nanay Flor (Gina Pareño) declares “Andaming dapat ayusin sa lugar na ito,” [There is a lot to fix in this place] this statement effectively sums up the entire film.

This aesthetic element however has its limitation. And this limitation resides in this very same strength of showing with an immediacy the subjectivity of a character. The fact that it shows the subjective world of the character, it presents the character’s predicament of being trapped in his/ her own world. When before, in the detached, observing, objective camera, we observe the characters as being beset from outside by different forces they are however helpless to fend off; now we see the characters as too self-contained in their own subjectivity. In Kubrador for example, Amy has no sense of the illegality of her work as a bet collector. To her, and we are forced to share this view by the aesthetic stance of the involved camera, she has to go through the motion of bet collecting to survive. The need for survival justifies her participation in the illegal numbers game. In Ranchero, the violence of prison life remains hidden only to reveal itself in the end with a violent riot among the inmates. There is an absoluteness in the rendition of a consciousness that is almost stifling. This would explain why there is a different take that is gaining currency now among films tackling poverty. Instead of picturing poverty as stifling, the characters are presented as happy and contented with their predicament. They do not problematize their predicament. They share the same problems as those of other social classes. It just so happens that they belong to a different social class. They also have their childhood. They also love. They also have dreams. There are no outside forces impinging on this absolute consciousness.

We then go back to the inadequacy of the first aesthetic element discussed earlier: that of ending with the sense of being trapped, which is always the endpoint of realistic or naturalist narratives. It is telling therefore why in Kubrador, the periodic relief of Amy’s character comes from a ghost, an absent unreal entity. At this point, what we are already looking for is the sense of agency that these aesthetic choices would withhold or provide us, the audience. It would appear that the singularity of the involved camera does not provide the audience with agency in the viewing experience. Because whatever insight this aesthetic element could provide would always be in accordance to a specific character’s interpretation of reality, which is almost always just a perpetuation of the same oppressive conditions.

With the detached objective camera, the audience is provided sufficient distance from the character to arrive at his own conclusions. The audience could have an entirely different insight from the character’s realization at the end of the film. But with the singular involved camera, the audience is forced to empathize with the character however delusional he or she may be.

The third element of this aesthetic of the meandering camera is time. The films under study are all set not only in the present, but in the quotidian. Both Serbis and Ranchero happened only in one day. Kubrador’s timeline spans only two days. Since this kind of aesthetic for the most part employs real time, it presents the conditions as they happen. Again the strength of this element lies in its capacity to bring the audience to participate in the day-in-a-life activity of the character. Its limitation however resides in the very nature of the present as something unstable and provisional. It is not surprising that all three films ended abruptly, with no neat conclusions. Just like all real life experiences at the end of the day. Neat conclusions for this aesthetic element would result in propaganda or proselytizing, since it would betray the fictitiousness of an orderly narrative. Perhaps this is the reason why, documentaries would always end with caveats on how or where their subjects ended up. Are they still alive or are they already dead? Because these would reveal in a non-categorical manner the point of the documentary. Independent film however could not afford this without breaking the illusion of its being fictional.

In conclusion, the aesthetic of the meandering camera has its strengths and limitations. But, so is any other aesthetic. What this paper has explored are the implications that these aesthetic choices would bear on the capacity of film to function in whatever manner, be it for entertainment or for social analysis. Kubrador, Serbis and Ranchero have already shown us the limits and full potential of this kind of aesthetic I dubbed as the meandering camera. I am not advocating that we abandon this aesthetic for a more objective and detached camera to provide the audience some distance from the subject. What I’m trying to say is that if this asthetic is already becoming a tendency among filmmakers positioning themselves against mainstream aesthetic, these are the limitations that they have to contend with which have deep ethical implications, as discussed. These are the dangers they will be falling into especially if this aesthetic would become a major factor, and I believe it is becoming one now, in negotiating a space for contemporary Philippine cinema in the local and international scene.

Alvin B. Yapan

References:

• Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
• Lee, Ricardo. “Ang Lipunan Bilang Isang Bilangguang Putik.” Katipunan: Dyurnal ng Panlipunang Sining at Agham Blg. 3 & 4 (Hulyo & Oktubre 1971): 96-106.
• Lumbera, Bienvenido. “Kasaysayan at Tunguhin ng Pelikulang Pilipino/ The History and Prospects of the Filipino Film.” In The Urian Anthology, 1970-1979. Ed. Nicanor Tiongson. Manila: Manuel L. Morato, 1983.
• Stam, Robert. Film Theory: An Introduction. United Kingdon: Blackwell Publishing, 2000.

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notes

1. Robert Stam, Film Theory: An Introduction (United Kingdon: Blackwell Publishing, 2000), 94-5.
2. Bienvenido Lumbera, “Kasaysayan at Tunguhin ng Pelikulang Pilipino/ The History and Prospects of the Filipino Film,” in The Urian Anthology, 1970-1979 , ed. Nicanor Tiongson (Manila: Manuel L. Morato, 1983), 22-47.
3. Ricardo Lee, “Ang Lipunan Bilang Isang Bilangguang Putik,” Katipunan: Dyurnal ng Panlipunang Sining at Agham Blg. 3 & 4 (Hulyo & Oktubre 1971): 96-106. [Society as a Prison of Mud, Katipunan: Journal of Social Arts and Science #3&4]
4. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 101.

Kent Jones on Omirbaev

"Gaston Bachelard would have been excited by Omirbaev's allegiance to the grain of lived experience, his devotion to a precise accounting of the machinery of perception, his insistence on a film form that actually does achieve vertically without lapsing into strict ordinary time. [..]

Omirbaev does not appear to "arrive" at any moment with ease : each one of his films feels worked, brooded upon, every choice and move endlessly mulled over, albeit with the purpose of staying here to the instant, the sensation of being awake to the life of the world while the humdrum continuum of linear time plods on and on and on around you. Nonetheless, Bachelard could be describing almost any given film or scene by this artist of intensified quietude." [..]

"The tension between inner and outer experience, between their distance on the one hand and their intimate proximity on the other, is painfully felt throughout every Omirbaev film. He is constantly exposing the gulf between expectation and reality, the positive and negative disruption of mental scenarios by aurally experience."

excerpt from : Kent Jones, "The Art of Seeing with One's Own Eyes. Darezhan Omirbaev, a world-class cinematic poet from, that's right, Kazakhstan" (Film Comment, Vol 44, #3, May-June 2008)

Inexhaustible variety of emotions against a void (imagined) screen

Faces, faces of beautiful, sensible, excitedly moved women fill the film of Kiarostami, unveiling their deepest sensations, exposing unabashedly their compassion with the heroes, under their veiled head. They are living through the love story of an ancient-classical epic, a melodrama, written by the Iranian poet, Nezami, 800 years ago, in which passion, desire, divorce and death occur to the bitter end. And they follow these trials with total empathy, identifying with the protagonists’ suffering and joy – without ever seeing a moment of the events.

If there exists radical, defying, yet mostly efficient evocation of nude human emotions on the screen, Kiarostami dared to venture into this extreme simplicity. He deliberately omitted everything that could be considered as “illustration” or plain visible explanation. Instead we have allusion, fine signals through the sound and spoken text in order to justify the impact, the events that call for reactions.

"The actresses were looking at a white sheet of paper next to my camera. – He said. - I asked them to think of a person or relationship in the past or present, something strongly emotional about love, then to freely imagine their own story and show the expression it would provoke. What was striking for me was the unity and coherence of their reactions, which were artificial but also true. That truth in feelings is very difficult to reach in any other kind of acting, because it relates to personal memories. There is a poem by [the 14th-century Persian poet] Hafez which says that the pain of love is constant, whoever has it, but it is also unique to each person."

How many uniqueness do we actually meet ? More than a hundred ! Who would imagine that they could be so infinitely different? similar in authenticity but never precisely the same. Pain and pleasure are, of course, universal human experiences, but the mode in which they can be revealed, finding their most personal, individual expression, will be always particular. The feelings are coming viscerally from the specific body and soul, - no one can be identical, no real presentation can be repetitive. In Kiarostami’s predilection it is exactly the gaze that is the most telling. Aren’t eyes “the mirror of the soul ?”

Gestures, small movements, the closing of the eyes or a tiny trembling of the hands add a further meaning creating a whole “orchestra” in which all the instruments begin to speak. And they address us like a great, rich musical ensemble, resonating in our mind for long.

It is interesting how empathy brings about bodily responses, not just psychologically but maybe directly as well : an immediate empathy. Tears and laughter entail almost inevitably tears and laughter, we are, apparently so forcefully and physically touched that there is no way to avoid the reaction.

In order to reinforce the power of the method Kiarostami further limited the field of vision: he decidedly works with close ups, and with a fixed camera. Even if sometimes one can perceive a fine and tiny lateral movement, since long shots prevail, our experience is truly being fixed on the faces, on their most subtle changes. In this way the time for observation and identification gets more substantial. “One can see the mentality of individuals in close ups.” - he remarks.

Kiarostami’s other striking choice is the exclusively female presence. He doesn’t recoil from saying that for him women “are more beautiful, complicated and sensational”. They are passionate and love, the passion of love, is part of their natural, instinctive existence. Far from any kind of sentimentality, he evaluates their force, self reliance and therefore the drama, the love triangle takes place among people on the same level; two men and one woman, all strong, condemned to life and suffering. And the woman for the invincible power of survival.

Watching, almost mesmerized the recurring faces and similar camera positions, the repetitive close ups and points of view, the spectator has to feel from the first moment that there is something unusual, very special in this experience. The gesture of denuding, - the deviation from the familiar movie-spectacle is nearly upsetting. But Kiarostami is fully aware of the impact of his enterprise. He has a very profound remark about the regular way of average films, as they never mind to go on the same track. He dares to call it pornographic, the uninhibited certainty of popular movies to show again and again the overly customary arrangements and situations. ”Watching things which are not supposed to be watched amounts to the experience of pornography”- he suggests, I guess – that there is no reason to resort to common places and offering self-confidently the overused clichés. To show things is not so special, much more is to think about the consequences, the impact of something other than the thing itself.

This creative and bold gesture pays off. Restriction can bring about deep novelty, a greater value. The new approach illuminates the emotional realm from an unexpected position; its naked focusing compels the spectator to pay attention to the many times overlooked, neglected, substantial aspects.

It is not the first time in the director’s œuvre that the cinematic experience and means are the major carriers of his vision. Already in his former films: in Close Up and The Taste of Cherry the true ”message” and discovery were connected with the demonstration of the cinematic expression. Without the “talent” of film the whole richness of his original insight couldn’t come across, apparently it is but a simple decisive choice, an “omission”; notwithstanding it defines the whole concept.

The concept becomes even more fortuitous because the texture of the film seems so extremely simple, unadorned. We follow real life manifestations of real people’s feelings, yet in the way of the accented presence, of the specific nature of the film form, the correlation is never negligible. As if true existence could only be seized through this “artificial” intervention. As if the richness of life could be the best addressed via the specific talent (and usage) of the camera.

There is always a kind of abstraction in Kiarostami’s movies, a strong philosophical ground of the untouched, ”eternal” human, we can name it pristine - and then, here suddenly, the power of the most contemporary invention, the emblem of our century’s new form of communication emerges and is lifted to the “essence” of the elementary existence.

Lively and artificial, true and real meet in this marriage, revealing at once the archaic and the most up-to-date, accepting their alliance as the utmost natural. With this daring gesture Kiarostami flashes up and/or he advances the complex reality of our turn of century. A strange phenomenon, a particular synthesis comes to life between ancient and new, as, at many places nowadays, within the most unmovable circumstances and traditional customs, inherited morale encounter and absorb the innovation of modern technology. Let’s think again of the veiled women’ head and the ancient story displayed in super close ups.

The art of Kiarostami conveys the startling experience of this exceptional state of existence, with such a warm intimacy, which can only born from the imperishable values of natural life. Because for him, cinema is the organic part of our life, since it is the undisturbed recording of it, the memory of it, or ”life and nothing else”, to quote the beautiful telling title of one of his best films.

Yvette Biro

Shirin (2008/Kiarostami/Iran) excerpt

The Limits Of Control

If I had to resort to one of those crude movie equations to describe Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control (2009), it would have to be “Quentin Tarantino minus the hyperkinetics”. Studded with a plethora of movie references, Jarmusch’s movie is a film buff’s dream, literally. In some ways, Jarmusch is like Pedro Almodóvar, who has been consistently accused of being apolitical in his movies (Is it a mere coincidence that The Limits of Control is based and shot in Spain?). But a little investigation shows that the very nature of Almodóvar’s films – with their explicitness of ideas and visuals – reinforces the difference between contemporary Spain and Francoist Spain and, in the process, draws a portrait of a country that has come a long way since those oppressive years. Jarmusch’s cinema, too, does not exist in vacuum. With their plotless scripts and unhurried pacing, his movies are the perfect antidote to the summer blockbuster of Hollywood. These films have been relentlessly repudiating Hollywood’s ideas of filmmaking and its mantras for success through the years. However, with this movie, Jarmusch establishes himself as the absolute antithesis of the industry-driven cinema of America. It is almost as if Jarmusch believes that he exists only because an entity called Hollywood exists – a kinship like the one between The Joker and Batman. Hollywood and Jarmusch, it seems, complete each other. In that sense, not only is The Limits of Control Jarmusch’s most political movie, it is also his most personal and most complete film.

The Lone Man (Isaach De Bankolé) dresses in snazzy formal clothing and meets up with two men at an airport, one of whom speaks Spanish and the other translates. The conversation is completely tangential to the mission briefing, which seems like some illegal job, possibly an assassination. He listens to them keenly, gets up and leaves. Cut to Madrid. In the city, he visits art galleries daily before retiring for the day at the local restaurant, where he orders two espressos in separate cups. He is, of course, waiting for Violin (Luis Tosar), who, like all the other agents in the film, exchanges matchboxes with him. The Lone Man draws out a piece of paper from his matchbox, which has some kind of codes written on it. He memorizes them and eats the paper. A day or few later, he has a rendezvous with a blonde woman (Tilda Swinton). The matchbox routine is followed. This time the matchbox contains a bunch of diamonds, which the Lone Man hands over to the woman (Paz De La Huerta) who has been staying with him in his hotel room. He leaves Madrid and on the next train meets up with an oriental woman, Molecules (Youki Kudoh), who has her own scientific, religious and philosophical theories to tell him. After the matchbox ritual, he checks into the hotel at Seville. There, he attends a dance rehearsal and meets Guitar (John Hurt) who tries to derive the etymology of the word “Bohemian” and hands him over a priceless guitar. Lone Man leaves the town. On the way to his next destination, where he would meet a Mexican (Gael García Bernal), he snips off one of the guitar strings that he will soon use to assassinate an important man. Make what you will of this weird plot, but you can’t blame the film for what it does not have. Jarmusch has written and directed the movie exactly the way he wants it to be.

The Limits of Control continues to explore one of the director’s favorite questions – How aloof can a man be from his surroundings? Till this film, this idea was most manifest in Ghost Dog (1999) (which clearly takes off from Jean-Pierre Melville’ austere Le Samourai (1967)), wherein a Black American lone ranger living in Jersey City follows the code of the Samurai and, in effect, constructs his own moral and psychological world. In The Limits of Control, the Lone Man – an American who performs Tai Chi in dressing rooms, hotels and train compartments in Spain – is a blue whale in a baby carriage. The film opens with a quote by Arthur Rimbaud: “As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen”, recalling the final scene of Dead Man (1995). This “impassable river” soon goes on to take multiple meanings in the film as Lone Man commutes from the labyrinthine western structures of Madrid to sparse and open locales of the Spanish countryside. This fitting quote is followed by the bizarre opening shot whose camera angle presents us the Lone Man in a seemingly reclining position, like that of William Blake (Johnny Depp) in Dead Man. The Lone Man has already entered the mystic river. Production Designer Eugenio Cabarello’s fabulous work gives us ominous vertical, horizontal, diagonal and spiral structures that attempt to devour the Lone Man. Christopher Doyle’s camera arcs and glides to trap the Lone Man within the convoluted architectures of the film, in vain. Evidently, the Lone Man is Jim Jarmusch himself, like a monk, relentlessly wading through from the corrupt, impassable and savage rapids of Hollywood.

The Limits of Control is an unabashed celebration of art, of its eccentricities and of losing oneself in it. The film is loaded with conversations about paintings, music, dance, films and books. In fact, Jarmusch’s film is closer to Last Year at Marienbad (1961) than any other. “It’s just a matter of perception”, says one of the characters in this movie. The world in The Limits of Control is one that exists solely in the mind of its protagonist. Like in Marienbad, Jarmusch uses parallel structures – hedgerows, pillars and hallways – to underscore the idea that what we see is not a physical world built out of concrete and cement but the labyrinths of the mind – memories and experiences, particularly, of art. If the surroundings, at times, seem highly artificial, it’s because that is how the Lone Man perceives it to be. It’s a world that is completely parallel to the real one, like Jarmusch’s cinema. It’s a world which is far more valid, uncorrupt, honest and truer than the real world for the Lone Man, very much like Jarmusch himself. One character quotes that “For me, sometimes the reflection is far more present than the thing being reflected” and that “La Vida No Vale Nada” (Life is worthless), as if believing that if at all there is some meaning to be found anywhere, it is in this world of art – the one which they live in. It is this alternate world that interests Jarmusch more than the real one. The film is parenthesized between shots of the Lone Man entering and leaving his dressing room –the portal to the film’s world. The first cut in to the movie signals, through the skewed camera angle, the other worldliness to come and the final cut out of the film, an unmistakable Jarmusch signature, segregates the film from squalor of the real world (This cut recalls the final one in Broken Flowers (2005), where the director nudges the hitherto Jarmuschian protagonist into the melodramatic clockwork of the pop cinema and cuts away to indicate the end point of his world).

Throughout The Limits of Control, there is the notion of interchangeability of art and life – of reality and memory. Representation becomes perception and vice versa. One character even believes that violins have a memory and can remember every note that is ever played on them. The Lone Man watches the paining of a nude woman, only to find a nude woman lying on his bed, in a similar position, a few minutes later. His point-of-view shot of the vast expanses of the city of Madrid is intercut with a similar paining of the city. Life becomes images and images come to life. The Limits of Control reinforces George Steiner’s theory that “it’s not the literal past that rules us, but the images of the past”, through works of art and through one’s own memory – the two carriers of history – that have preserved them from being destroyed completely. Jarmusch’s movie reflects on how these images of the past – our masters – are being rapidly corrupted and replaced by the ones from popular media in an attempt to forge false histories, destroy critical mythologies and homogenize world culture by influencing their past (art) and present (life), through endless stereotyping and manipulation of truth, to reflect kindred iconographies and system of beliefs (One can sense seething anger beneath the cool exterior of the film). The climax of the movie (that I, first, felt was crude and which, now, I feel is deliciously Lynchian) depicts the Lone Man in a remote region in Spain getting ready for a face off with his adversary, a typical Conservative, American executive (Bill Murray, top class), who does not understand or give a damn about these “bohemian” ideas of art and who has infiltrated the deepest of foreign regions on a mission, perhaps, to establish the biggest studios, worldwide.

The Limits of Control seals Jarmusch’s position as a reactive filmmaker. Each facet of the film seems like a move against the “industry norm”. The cast consists almost entirely of non-Hollywood actors. The film is shot on location in Spain, a world away from the cluttered studios of Fox or Universal. The average shot length is way too high compared to that of the blockbusters. The colour palette isn’t at all like anything we see on TV every day. On the surface, Jarmusch’s is the typical man-on-a-mission movie. His script, however, is made up entirely of in-between events that are taken for granted in such movies. There is a Bourne movie, a Bond movie and a McClane movie unfolding somewhere in the background. But that is not Jarmusch’s world. What Jarmusch did with cinematic time in his movies, so far, is applied to cinematic space in The Limits of Control. Jarmusch’s “dead time” has always complemented Hollywood’s “show time”. In The Limits of Control, he goes to the extent of dividing his protagonist’s world into Hollywood zones and non-Hollywood zones. The moment our man enters a “Hollywood infested zone”, the camera goes crazy, the editing becomes rapid and the soundtrack starts blaring, while at other times they remains sober. None of the “actions” of the mission are shown on screen. Like Le Samourai, which opens with an photograph-like shot of the protagonist, Jef Costello (Alain Delon), on his bed and goes on to show us a zombie-like detached figure walking through familiar checkpoints in a genre movie as if performing a ritual, Jarmusch’s Lone Man is seen, for most part, lying down on bed and walking towards his next strategic position. We come to know neither of the meaning of the codes that he gathers, not of his business with diamonds and matchboxes. Heck, we don’t even get to know his name.

Quentin Tarantino said about The Bride in Kill Bill (2003-04) that she was, in fact, fighting through all the exploitative cinemas from around the world. Tarantino’s movie both paid homage to and incriminated all the exploitative movies that the director had grown up on. Likewise, within his world of art, Jarmusch integrates cinemas from around the world in an attempt to illustrate that all art is one (Molecules tells us that Hindus believe the whole world to be one and that she thinks people are nothing but molecules rearranging themselves regularly). There are actors from almost every continent in the film. Like The Bride, the Lone Man wanders these empty corridors on a mission to keep art untainted. His arch nemesis seems to be the “art industry” that tries to infiltrate his perception (of the world, of art and of this art-world) and impose its own dynamics in it. The Limits of Control is a clash of these two perceptions where the title of the film refers to the ability of one to “think the right thing”, free from TV-driven emotional response systems. During the final scene, upon being inquired, not so politely, how he got into the heavily guarded building, the Lone Man says “I used my imagination” as if pointing out that one’s acceptance of rejection of popular beliefs is purely a question of the psychology. So the film also unfolds as one man’s journey into his own subconscious, to free himself from the chains that bind him to predictable ways of acting and thinking. It’s an odyssey to rid art of capitalistic models based on consumerism and marketability (The post credits sequence flashes a huge marquee that reads: “No Limits No Control”). The film is counteractive to every “formula” that pop cinema sticks to for keeping its “products” of art saleable (“No guns, no cell phone, no sex” quips someone in the film). Again, Resnais’ and Marker’s Statues Also Die (1953), an overt, one-sided but well-crafted bashing of the western world’s fetish for exotic art and its detrimental effects on lifestyles and cultures, comes to mind.

But, by no means is Jarmusch’s film a propagandist assault on this conveyor-belt mindset of ours. It is far too assured and composed for that kind of conversation. “I’m among no one”, claims the Lone Man. Jarmusch makes it clear that he does not have an agenda here. He just wants no other agenda to be made with respect to art. He is not against any particular system or a film industry, he is against the very notion of industries that try to regulate and quantize the quality of art. And justifiably, his movie is a celebration of all such films that have survived the concentration camps of major studios. Jarmusch adorns the movie with references to iconoclastic movies that have raised their voice against the oppressive, money-driven tendency of the studio systems. Early in the film, the Lone Man returns to his hotel room in Madrid to find a nude woman named, well, Nude on his bed. She asks him if he likes her posterior. This, of course, is the hyperlink to Godard’s polemical Contempt (1963), where the director bit not only the hand that fed him, but all such hands which feed only conditionally (Jarmusch even recreates the shots of Brigitte Bardot swimming). Later, Blonde, a film buff, talks about The Lady from Shanghai (1947), where Welles had to put up with a lot of meddling by the execs at Columbia Pictures. Jarmusch even sneaks in pointers to his own movies, effectively categorizing his movies under this kind of cinema of resistance, although he never takes sides. There are broken flowers, there are coffees and cigarettes everywhere in the film and the Lone Man, whose cousin lived by the Samurai code, travels in a mysterious train with that Japanese girl who we saw in Memphis a few years ago. There are also movies that Jarmusch loves and pays tribute to. There is Jean-Pierre Melville, there is Aki Kaurismaki and there is Andrei Tarkovsky, packed somewhere into this seemingly sparse and empty film.

Because of all this and more, watching The Limits of Control is like having a déjà vu marathon. Notwithstanding the fact that many lines in the movie, as is the case in other Jarmusch films, are recited over and over throughout, one gets the feeling of having seen these people, these objects and these setups somewhere, sometime ago – another Resnaisian trait of the film (specifically redolent of one of Marienbad’s powerful, enigmatic quotes “Conversation flowed in a void, apparently meaningless or, at any rate, not meant to mean anything. A phrase hung in midair, as though frozen, though doubtless taken up again later. No matter. The same conversations were always repeated, by the same colorless voices.”). It is the kind of experience some people have watching Vertigo (1958). “The best films are like dreams, you’re never sure you really had.” tells Blonde. Indeed. Like Allen’s Shadows and Fog (1992), The Limits of Control blossoms out as a dream in which you meet the most unexpected of movie stars in the most trivial of roles. Jarmusch’s self-referential tricks only add to this strange familiarity that we feel with the movie. Blonde likes movies where people just sit there, doing nothing. Ring a bell? She tells the Lone Man that Suspicion (1941) was the only film in which Rita Hayworth played a blonde. The Limits of Control must be the only film in which Swinton plays a blonde. Seemingly pointless lines such as “You don’t speak Spanish, right?”, “Life is a handful of dirt” and “The universe has no center and no edges” go on to become central to the ideas of the film (there is a strange little prank involving subtitles in the all important opening conversation of the film). The major attack against The Limits of Control, I imagine, would be regarding the self-indulgent nature of the film. Sure the film is self-indulgent, but it is also more than that. It is a self-indulgent movie that promotes self-indulgence. It is a movie that dares to almost profess that art can exist for only its own sake (what else can it exist for? World peace?). That there is nothing called “progress” or “superiority” in art. That all art is one and, to kill the most frequently uttered maxim in this movie and elsewhere, everything is subjective.

Bruno Dumont on Mysticism

Interview de Bruno Dumont sur France Culture (25 Nov 2009) à propos d' Hadewijch (2009):

"Moi je comprends le cinéma quand je lis les Mystiques. C'est à dire quand je lis les visions, quand je lis les ravissements, quand je vis l'entretien des images, quand je vis la coïncidence des contraires, quand je vis les échelles mystiques. Ce degré de coupe, d'association d'images, des plans, c'est véritablement la matière même du plan. C'est à dire que les mystiques nous disent que c'est par l'apparence, c'est par la comparaison de l'extériorité des choses que le divin se manifeste.
Saint Thomas D'Aquin a parlé de la pluie par exemple, de la puissance de l'eau comme évocation justement de la présence de Dieu. Moi la présence de Dieu je ne peux pas la filmer. Je ne la filme pas. Je m'en garderais bien. Mais la pluie je peux la filmer. Et je sens bien quand je filme la pluie, je filme autre chose. Dans le cinéma il y a la présence et l'absence. C'est à dire que l'image évoque quelque chose d'autre que ce qu'elle montre.

Nous on est des mécaniciens. C'est une mécanicienne Julie [Sokolowski]. Elle fabrique, je fabrique de la maladresse, et vous voyez la fragilité. Mais nous on ne peut que travailler la maladresse. Je ne peux pas travailler la fragilité, ça me tombe des mains. Je ne peux pas faire ce travail-là. Il faut que je reste mécanicien.
Il faut que je brasse mes images. Il faut que je fasse mes plans, que je tourne ma caméra vers un saule pleureur et que j'espère que ce saule pleureur va transcender. Et cette transcendance c'est le regard qui va la faire. J'en suis persuadé. Moi je fixe le temps, le temps d'exposition de votre corps devant cette image et je fais le son, etc, mais si vous voulez, le miracle c'est le regard.
Et l'invisible c'est la contradiction quand vous dites que vous aimez, vous nous aimez pas... je suis persuadé de ça aussi. C'est à dire qu'on peut voir le contraire. Et c'est le contraire en fait, sa chasteté, qui évoque son érotisme. C'est la privation de son corps qui la rend plus désirable. Donc moi je ne peux pas filmer le désir. Je supprime son corps, je l'empêche, etc. Et vous voyez le contraire.

C'est ça qui est beau chez le spectateur, il est récalcitrant. Il est contradictoire et en filmant quelque chose il peut voir autre chose. C'est ça la mystique : ce lien entre les images et les corps. Vous avez un corps; j'ai un corps. Et l'image c'est aussi des corps filmés. Et ça brasse le secret, l'unité. C'est ça en fait la mystique, c'est l'Un.

Il y a une unité dans cette pâture. Et cette pâture est en moi. Quand je filme la pâture, je me filme à l'intérieur de moi, je ne peux pas faire autrement. Je ne peux pas m'atteindre sans ce champs. Et c'est ce champs qui m'amène à mon âme. Et si je peux pas faire autrement, je ne peux pas filmer mon âme. Ce serait idiot de ma part."