Sidewalk - Exterior : Night (contemplative video)

Unheimlich (2015/Arthur CARIA/Brazil) 3'31"

One take, one point of view, one subject, one continuous temporality. 

It is difficult at first to figure out what is going on in this seemingly stolen shot from an overlooking window. A God's point of view. The  grainy light is gloomy and crepuscular. It is challenging to make out shapes from shadows, foreground from background, representations from reflections, impressions from illusions... 

The curious high slant at an almost perfect 45° angle composes an eerily deceptive axonometric projection, which can revert inside-out the perspective depending on the viewer's inclination.

Are we looking at a valley or a mountain fold? Is it a precipice or a wall? The shadows disappear on the edge, but is it because the shadows are projected down below at the bottom of the wall or is it a wall standing on the edge hiding the end of the shadows? Cars pass by furtively, with their headlights sweeping the scene from below. However this additional light doesn't help to reconstruct the volumes. And a puddle rests there between the road and the sidewalk like a fortunate mirror, which is completely black unless an automobile drives by reflecting its lights.

The flat night lighting doesn't help much... It takes time to accustom onelsef to the perspective and the geography of such a simple place. It is almost a theatre stage, with two animals.

But what are they? This is not evident at first sight to determine what we are dealing with. They must be dogs! One of those giant dogo Argentino. It is only on second viewing that I could be certain of them being horses, very calm horses, abandonned there for the night.

. 

Two horses on the sidewalk in the night. Why ? Why not ? Maybe these are the questions of this piece.

Are they Turin horses, escaped from a Béla Tarr and Agnès Hranitzky film or a Nietsche biopic. The two of them are standing in place like two statues. Parked there by their elusive owners like a car on a parking lot. Two stallions without their cowboys, outside the saloon. No saddle. No halter. No lead. Yet they await patiently. These lonely horses are incredible. The symbol of freedom they stand for is frustrated by this picture. The surrounding is not the wilderness, nontheless they are arrested (if not attached) in one place, between a road and a wall, as if their savage nature was robbed from them.

The title refers to a 1919 (a century ago!) Freudian concept Das Unheimlich or The Uncanny which describes an experience that is "strangely familiar". Indeed, everything in this picture seems familiar, but nothing falls in place just right. Something is strange about it, and keeps us from looking away. Is it because we imagine them on the verge of falling off a vertical drop to their instant death? Or is it because they seem abandonned by all humanity, left on their own in an indifferent world, for who knows how long more? Is it the perplexed human or the outraged animal in us watching this short scene?

Without a plot, without protagonist, this contemplative video clip, frozen in stasis, is packed with mystery, ambiguous environment, mude offscreen, slow mood and stranded alienation. The components of Contemporary Contemplative Cinema.

What a fluke to capture this instant! What an eye to frame this out of context! What a patience to film it entirely!

Part of a series of "One-Shot-Video-Poems" filmed in 2015 by Arthur Caria. See his website Cinemática Expositiva for more clipoems like this one. Or watch Building here.


See also :

• Stasis film 2 (landscape) 
• 10 min of life at the time
• Live in the moment : Make a 10min pause for a change
• Losing the ability to contemplate nature for itself 
• Oversparse 
• Observer l'animal (Ariane Michel)
• L'animal protagniste 

Matthew Barney's new film : REDOUBT (2019)

REDOUBT (2019/Matthew Barney/USA) YouTube trailer (5'29")

IT MUST BE HEAVEN (Elia Suleiman) - Press conference Cannes 2019

 Elia Suleiman admitted being a fan of Jacques Tati. But also a fan of Roy Andersson's films and Tsai Ming-liang's films. Really interesting words on silence in his films too.

It Must Be Heaven received a Special Mention at Cannes 2019.

Elia Suleiman hadn't make a new film for 10 years since The Time That Remains (2009)

A Press Review (An Elephant Sitting Still)

HU Bo (1988-2017)

[..] Despite the constant antagonism, the soundtrack is largely drained of ambient sounds. The resulting quiet combines with the predominance of facial close-ups and extensive use of shallow focus, which keeps the surroundings indistinct most of the time, to generate a heightened sense of intimacy that reflects the characters’ self-absorption and lack of perspective. [..]

An Elephant Sitting Still review: a shattering, soul-searching Chinese one-off (Giovanni Marchini Camia; 13 dec 2018; Sight & Sound)

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[..] but his [Jin's] most memorable episode in the story is his visit to the retirement home to check it out – a sequence as hellish as the tour of the hospital basement in the second part of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Syndromes and a Century (2006). Wang represents the film’s voice of age and experience. [..]
Elephant assuredly has death on its mind: four people die in the course of the story, only one of old age. The underlying vision is inescapably bleak. But the overall tone is far from pessimistic: the emphasis on stoic resistance, on inner fortitude, on faces grappling with moral doubts, makes the film much more engaging than, say, Peter Emmanuel Goldman’s profoundly depressing Echoes of Silence (1965). [..]

Film of the week: An Elephant Sitting Still is a howl of desperate defiance (Tony Rayns; 13 dec 2018; Sight & Sound)

* * *

[..] A voiceover opens the film with a parable about an elephant that sits motionless in the city of Manzhouli, closing its eyes to the chaos of its surroundings. Hu seems to suggest that ignorance is a means of survival or, for some, the humiliation of daily life is immobilising. [..]
Though he often uses long takes in the style of his mentor Tarr, this doesn’t feel like slow cinema. The camera is mesmerising and frequently in motion, Steadicam trailing and circling the characters closely, with them until the film’s bittersweet end.

An Elephant Sitting Still review – melancholic and mesmerising (Simran Hans; 15 dec 2018; The Guardian)

* * *

[..] If the characters seem desolate they also seem alienated in the full sense of the word. For much of the film the main characters are more introspective than social. When they do carry out actions involving other people it seems misdirected, illegal or just likely to go wrong. [..]
But Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies / Werckmeister harmóniák (2000) features a whale that seems to represent the alienation of the village setting; perhaps an influence. [..]

 An Elephant Sitting Still(Da xiang xi di er zuo, China 2018) (15 jan 2019; The Case for Global Film)

* * *

[..]The film is a masterwork of a rare sort, perhaps of a unique sort, among young directors: others, notably Orson Welles, Jean-Luc Godard, and Chantal Akerman, have transformed the cinema enduringly while in their twenties. But all three create aesthetic realms that fuse with personal experiences and philosophical ideas in a sort of preternaturally precocious leap of abstraction.
Hu, by contrast, is as much a documentarian as he is an aesthete; the emotional complexity of his observations are matched by his clear-eyed and uncompromising view of the locale and of his society at large.[..]
In depicting a society that inflicts cruelty and violence on a large scale and reflects it intimately, Hu has created a crucial modern work of political cinema.[..]
Street fighting, casual insults, easy rudeness, and brazen scams and frauds among the local citizenry are matched by cavalier political power. [..]
Hu’s method is no mere theatrical recording or efficient staging; he relies on the dashing, floating, pressing, retreating camera to construct the action and to analyze it dramatically. For Hu, the camera is as much a matter of exclusion from the frame as inclusion. The distance of characters from the camera—who’s facing and who’s not, who’s in and who’s out—is as crucial to the movie’s emotional power as is its action.[..]
Without a glimmer of mysticism or spirituality, “An Elephant Standing Still” is metaphysical.

A Young Chinese Filmmaker's Masterly Portrait of Political and Intimate Despair (Richard Brody; 6 march 2019; The New Yorker)

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[..] This is a film in which people tend not to take responsibility for their own actions. When he discovers that his relationship with Huang Ling is exposed, the vice-dean flips: his career is ruined, he says, and it’s all down to her. When Wang Jin confronts the owners of the dog that killed his beloved pet, they turn nasty, concerned only about their own precious Pipi. [..]
An Elephant Sitting Still is so artfully composed, narratively and visually, that you don’t always notice what’s going on or how cleverly it’s done, but it’s often done by emphasizing certain visual elements while downplaying others—a method that ensures that you’re paying attention. [..]
[..] This legendary creature [the titular elephant] is this film’s answer to the preserved whale around which the world’s chaos and violence revolve in Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies: like that fabulous giant, Hu’s elephant is a hazy nexus of unfixable, possibly terrifying meanings.[..]

Film of the week : An Elephant Sitting Still (Jonathan Romney; 8 march 2019; Film Comment)

* * *

[..]Unsparing as Hu’s anatomy of moral drift may be, there is something graceful in his sympathetic attention to lives defined almost entirely by disappointment and diminished hope. Unlike the titular elephant, the film never stops moving, and by the end, instead of feeling beaten down, the viewer is likely to feel moved as well.[..]

'An Elephant Sitting Still' Review : Bleak, Graceful Realism (A.O.Scott; 6 march 2019; NYT)

* * *

[..] Some of this is doubtless due to Hu’s follow-from-behind shooting style (shot by Fan Chao), which feels deliberately pitched between an RPG video game and Dardennes-style verité. [..]
The murky landscape, marked by the distant sound of industry, recalls Pedro Costa’s Fontainhas films and Michelangelo Antonioni’s Red Desert through a low-grade digital filter. [..]
The film’s gritty, mundane agonies come to feel like a series of moral tests with genuinely unpredictable outcomes. [..]

Review: An Elephant Sitting Still Is a Mournful Vision of a World Abandoned (Christopher Gray; 3 march 2019; Slant)

* * *

A mournful, magisterial, and often moving debut feature, Hu Bo’s An Elephant Sitting Still might best be described as a contemplation of despair—or, more specifically, as an incremental, painful probing of how much a single person can bear before they're driven to tragic release. [..]
The opening passage, which cuts between its four principals and a snowy void, immediately locates An Elephant Sitting Still in a pensive, liminal space far afield from kitchen-sink realism.[..]
At the same time, the film's numerous fractious relationships, often defined by a generational divide, are so drained of the usual markers of tenderness and warmth that they register as affected, recalling, through notably different stylistic means, the stark, "model"-like interactions in the films of Robert Bresson, whose The Devil, Probably (1977) serves as a useful model for Hu's feature.[..]
As shot by cinematographer Fan Chau, the film is almost perversely drained of color, composed largely of stark whites and ash-gray tones—and yet it’s part of Hu’s methodology that we find infinite variation within this narrow register, that this spatiotemporal slice should feel boundless the more we look at it. [..]

Review: They Live By Night—Hu Bo’s “An Elephant Sitting Still” (Lawrence Garcia; 7 march 2019; Mubi)

Read also :
• Contrechamp interdit (An Elephant Sitting Still) First part
• Spoiler Territory (An Elephant Sitting Still) Second part
• An Elephant Sitting Still (2018/HU Bo/China) a few links and a trailer

Spoiler Territory (An Elephant Sitting Still)

SPOILER TERRITORY

WEI Bu

A 16 years-old student at the worst high-school in town, wakes up to a salvo of insults from his abusive father because he opened a window when stray garbage stinks outside, because he supposedly stole her mom’s coupon… Bu joins his best-friend, LI Kai, who is accused by YU Shuai, the school bully, of stealing his smart phone to confront him. At recess he’s rejected by his crush Ling. After a vehement argument and a violent push from Bu, the bully falls down a flight of stairs and is evacuated to the hospital. Bu is on the run, to escape the authorities and the angry family. He looks for money at his grandma only to find her dead in her sleep. He goes straight to his big borther’s who lives nearby to announce the bad news and gets insulted. Desperate for cash, he fetches his cherished billiard cue at the club, where he almost meet Cheng who’s on the lookout for him. He resorts to sell his cue to his neighbour Jin, after assisting him with the harassment of the owner of his dog’s killer. At the familiar monkeys pavilion of the local zoo, he meets in secret Ling, who refuses to go to Manhzouli with him. Following Ling to a restaurant outside of which he meets Cheng who doesn’t recognize him. Encouraged by Cheng, he writes down a threat letter to his rival : « You’re screwed » and sticks it on the restaurant window. Betrayed and deceived by his best-friend, he roams alone in the city, en route for Manhzouli. At Shuai’s hospital he sees Shuai’s big brother, Cheng. In the street he steals the Jianzi shuttlecock off of a group of elderly he insults copiously, losing all respects for the ancients and the paternal figure, which puts a momentary smile on his face. The sacred taboo is broken because he’s now a criminal. At a deserted riverbank dumpster, he yells his lungs out that this world is full of shit. Unfortunately he buys a fake train ticket to a street dealer who happens to work for Cheng. But Cheng pities him and let him go to Manzhouli.

YU Cheng

A local thug, wakes up in bed next to his best-friend’s wife. His best friend shows up at the door of this apartment he couldn’t afford, to find Cheng hidden in the bedroom. After a long pause in silence, losing both his wife and best friend at once, he’s had enough of this world and proceeds to jump out of the window to his death. Cheng barely budges or flinches. Though he rushes downstairs to witness the dead body laying at the bottom of the building. He blames the wife for the incident in a one-sided argument. He’s then on the phone with his best friend’s mother who is flying over immediately. But he could not pick her up at the airport. The mother is now at her son’s apartment where he committed suicide, and sits a lingering moment with Cheng who puts on a straight face. Cheng meets Bu outside a restaurant without recognizing him, and encourages him to do something about his girlfriend going out with an older man. Cheng meets his ex-girlfriend in a tunnel, where she lets him know that he should give up, because they’re no match. But before that, he took her to a restaurant where the kitchen caught fire. And Cheng took it on himself to save the burnt cook, for the first time caring for somebody else’s life. Cheng catches up with Bu, who bought a fake train ticket from one of his henchmen. Cheng pities him and buys him a ticket to Manzhouli. But Bu’s best friend shows up with his dad’s gun and hurts Cheng in the leg.

WANG Jin

A 60-year-old retiree, wakes up with his small faithful white dog, on the balcony of his own apartment, utilized by his daughter and family, who desperately try to convince him to move to a nursing home. He’s Bu’s neighbour. After an altercation with his daughter, he exits to walk his dog in the streets. There he faces a stray dog, recently lost by its owner. A big white dog who attacks his little dog and kills it. Fortunately the owners posted lost dog notices on the street so he could track them down. At the door of the owner’s apartment he asks for excuses and compensation but he’s received by arrogance and insults. Bu meets him on the river bank where Jin disposed of his dog’s dead body. Bu begs him to buy his cue in order for him to buy himself a ticket to Manzhouli. Down in the street Jin is followed and harassed by the owner in his car. Bu stands his ground and threatens to scratch his car. Jin finally accepts to buy his cue. Former military, he’s not afraid of Cheng henchmen who hold him captive because he now owns Bu’s recognizable cue. With his new cue, he visits the nursing home with all the sickly elderly in a long and sad corridor. He follows his grand-daughter in the street and « kidnap » her to take her to Manzhouli.

HUANG Ling

A lovely 16 years-old teenager (today is her birthday), Bu’s schoolmate, wakes up alone, as her mom passed out on the couch, and there is a leak in the bathroom again. She yells at her derisive mother who yells at her.

Ling turns down a date with Bu in the afternoon because she’s busy. Indeed she is having an affair in secret with the vice principal of her school. But after the incident between Bu and Shuai, she joins him, on the loose, at the monkeys pavilion where he often goes. There she refuses to go to Manzhouli with him where he envisioned to live with her, earning money with his foot juggling skills (Jianzi shuttlecock). She laughs at him and leaves. At the restaurant she meets her adultery lover who bought her a yellow rose and a birthday cake. Bu shows up and disturbs their date with a threat note on the restaurant window. Back at home, she talks to her mother who begs her not to become pregnant. At the hotel, she believes to be happy, treated right by an older man, possibly a father figure missing in her life. Up to the point when her affair becomes a viral Internet scandal. Then, he becomes aggressive and insulting because they’ve been spotted together at a karaoke, thus ruining his school career for ever…

She returns back home where her mom is confronted by the vice principal and his wife. She sneaks out, but soon comes back with a baseball bat to hit the two intruders in front of her mom.

Now she’s on the run as well and joins Bu at the station to reach Manzhouli eventually...

Unrequited love

Love is hard to get. Not to mention tough love from their parents (or son for Jin), the main characters experience unrequited love (except for Jin who is loved to bits by his granddaughter). Cheng is dumped by his girlfriend, and rebounds right away with the wife of his best friend. Bu has a crush on his classmate Ling who disregards him because she has an affair with the school vice principal. But soon she learns that love isn't eternal, especially with an older man who is fine to take her to the karaoke, restaurant and hotel until he's caught red handed. Then love turns sour and he insults her as if she brought that onto him. And Jin is all alone (possibly widower), only living for the attention he gets from his granddaughter who is caught between her parents and her favourite grandpa.

Losing face and honor

The tables turned when Cheng faces his mom and dad, at the door of the hospital room where his baby brother is dying. The thug becomes bullied by his parents who he pays respect to even while being yelled at and insulted. They reproach him not doing enough to avenge the honor of his brother who was defeated, injured and ultimately killed by his schoolmate Bu. Losing face is the ultimate humiliation in China. But respecting elders (especially the family elders) is utmost important. Cheng dislikes his brother, a nobody, and lacks the motivation to pursue his killer as well as he should.

One person though is not ready to lose face, and fights back. It’s the owner of the killer dog. When confronted with the remains of a beloved pet in a plastic bag, he starts off by denying any implication of his dog. Then he blames Jin for hiding his missing dog. Finally he follows Jin down the street in his car to insult him. Bu who wants to obtain money from him, stands as an eye witness of the earlier carnage and confronts the owner. He threatens to scratch his car with a rock three times, and three times the owner dares him before pushing him on the floor with his foot. Three times Bu rises again and fails to touch the car. This small incident is enough to earn him the heart of Jin, who finally accepts the deposit of his pool cue. By being humiliated by the owner, he somehow avenged the honor of Jin.

Death

The certitude of mortality menaces throughout the film. Its apprehension overshadows the mundane lives of brave personalities.The film begins with a traumatic error causing the precipitous suicide, out of passion, of a novel cuckold. Bu’s best friend pretends to put his dad’s stolen gun to his temple, before, by the end of the film, pulls the trigger with the same gun and take his own life off screen as a train sounds off in an epic 20 min plan séquence. Shuai falls down the stairs to his death, turning a heroic act of self defense into a murder Bu will have to live with for the rest of his life. Casual accident turning into a life sentence. Jin’s little dog is killed rabidly by an enormous stray dog for no apparent reason. Bu’s grandmother is found on her deathbed, who died of her natural death, leaving Bu alone, depriving him of a precious ally in the family that hates him.

Follow up : A press review (An Elephant Sitting Still) Third part


Read also :

• Contrechamp interdit (An Elephant Sitting Still) first part
• An Elephant Sitting Still (2018/HU Bo/China) a few links and a trailer