Revision 1: 14 February 2012
Revision 2: 28 February 2012

Introducing Alexander Sokurov

Alexander Sokurov is still alive and making films. 

I once impulsively wrote that Bela Tarr is unparalleled among living filmmakers; this is not the case because Alexander Sokurov is still alive and making films. Bela Tarr is something like the Samuel Beckett of contemporary cinema for me, but Alexander Sokurov has taken that place in my heart and imagination of the auteur for which I have long been searching. I didn't anticipate it; I was in ignorance of the range of his work until this past year (2011), though I knew his career had been given blessing and support by the immortal Andrei Tarkovsky himself. I shouldn't say that Sokurov is "still" alive, as though he were very old and miraculously still physically (and intellectually) capable of the rigors of making films - it's just that it took me by surprise that I could discover a body of work and love it as much as I do without its creator being dead. This is unusual for me, that's all. Particularly with the kinds of qualities that Sokurov has preserved in his work. 

I have seen: Alexandra, Russian Ark, A Simple Elegy, Madame Bovary (or, also, Save and Protect), Moscow Elegy, Soviet Elegy, Mournful Indifference, Father and Son, Mother and Son, Elegy of Life (Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya), Hubert Robert, Elegy of a Voyage, Stone, and Spiritual Voices, and possibly one or two others, the names of which aren't coming to mind at the moment. The breadth of his abilities is extraordinary, and he has been truly prolific. Each of his films is highly unique and presents moments that burn into the memory, yet I also feel that in my mind I could walk out of one of these films and straight into another, undergoing their haunting continuity and accepting their incredibly seductive invitation to wander: just as Custine travels between the rooms of the Hermitage and glides through epochs of Russian history in one of Sokurov's most celebrated films, 'Russian Ark'. When I go to see a Sokurov film in the filmhouse, the program notes are put away immediately, however valuable they are. You must experience these films without too much theoretical nonsense weighing down your mind prior to their initial impact. All of the theory and careful consideration can come later and is critical upon repeated, integrated viewings of the film - but I am very much in support of the idea that the first viewing should be unpolluted, even if this suspends the meaning of certain artistic disclosures within the work. It sounds a bit silly, yet it is what I really think. I do not like the idea that people are sitting in the filmhouse already attempting to decode the work. Moreover, I don't believe that art can improve life without some vast cultural changes taking place, and without the increased effort and heightened perception of both the public and their middlemen, the critics, who are purportedly around to make "real" the properties in an artwork (or so I was recently told, by a critic). I see faces in the street every day that indicate to me that art is not important to them, as outlandish as it may be to put it this way, and I tell myself, that isn't going to change - however, Sokurov is one of the rare directors whose work makes you feel that it could. That if more people could be made to sit through his films, new processes of thought and feeling would emerge. I say this because Sokurov's films are more than simply visually sexy, self-aware, aesthetically self-possessed (artistic/historical references are intricately embedded in his works, if not abundantly on display in a fully accessible sense, both in terms of cinematographic choices as well as in manipulation of themes) and intellectually probing. Sokurov's films most certainly possess these qualities, but once they are satisfied, the films continue to search for different qualities that are still harder to reach and cannot be approached determinately - they approach Tarkovskian territory but choose to communicate love more directly. 

This is the dominant quality of Sokurov's films for me - I have never seen so much love expressed in a unified cinematic oeuvre before now. The people in his films touch and speak with an openness that would probably be startling for someone experiencing Sokurov for the first time. I am not certain how to explain why this openness matters, not yet; it is not a representation of how people touch and speak to each other in reality, nor is it abstracted to the point of being otherworldly. It is grounded in the world and far beyond it at the same time without having itself written off as the ineffable; I am working towards translating my thoughts regarding this property of Sokurov's work, so there are likely to be some follow-up pieces soon regarding specific aspects of his body of work. I hope that the simplicity that I have aimed for in this essay does not trivialize what I believe Sokurov has done for us. However, it is important to me to prevent this blog from sounding too academic. Despite my admitted cynicism regarding an aesthetically anesthetized public, writing about Sokurov makes me take it all back. I would like these pieces to prompt more people in the direction of great films, films that have made it into my film diary, as well as into pieces of analysis that go beyond the parameters of the blog, and for you to perceive some of the elements that have motivated me to write about them in the first place. That is really my only intention. Hence the simplicity of what I say.

Many have foolishly read a homoeroticism into 'Father and Son', but the openness is a manifestation, an externalization of the intimate, uncontaminated yet spiritually contorted materials that thread a father and a son together, sinew and spirit enmeshed; it is past theoretical explication of what fortifies or decays such a relationship, as most of the film takes place on a plane of existence that we shouldn't be able to recognize, certainly not as plain-faced reality alone. 'Father and Son' pushes this plane of existence to an extreme, and so does 'Save and Protect' (Madame Bovary) in a rather different and sexually explicit way. (This shows that when Sokurov intends for there to be explicitly sexual themes and relationships, he reveals them in their fullest glory. If it sounds a bit odd to say this, all the better - I enjoy and respect Sokurov's treatment of sexuality.) On the other hand, many of Sokurov's documentaries/film portraits utilize reality - real people, historical and political figures that we recognize - and pull as much of "the spiritual" out of them as can be experienced in a film (e.g., when Yeltsin speaks about his mother in 'Soviet Elegy', and Rostropovich and Vishnevskaya who, as true musicians of the old world, perhaps the only world that matters, you think to yourself, are always poised to exhibit their souls). The existential hysteria in 'Mournful Indifference' is impressive, 'Stone' is like breathing under water, and the inhabiting of art and time in 'Russian Ark' is some of the most majestic, complete filmmaking I have ever seen, all shot (composed) in one take, famously (the high-wire act of his technique shouldn't put you off, or steal too much of your admiration to the point of neglecting the manifold beauty and meaning of the work, either)..... Though we start by not recognizing the plane of existence we are on, by watching more and more of Sokurov's films we do finally see what this plane of existence is, what it is perhaps meant to be like, and a certain utopia of feeling unmarred by transcendent value unfolds without compromise. Sokurov's work expresses nothing short of how it feels and what it means to be human; it can be overwhelming to try to find a place to start with a director as powerful and prolific as Sokurov. So, if I may conclude this piece with a suggestion along these lines, I would not start with 'Russian Ark', though it represents a kind of pinnacle of virtuosity, nor would I investigate the film portraits and elegies right away, the subtlety of which might be just as difficult to handle as the grandeur of 'Russian Ark'. I make the suggestion that you see 'Alexandra' - the themes of which can be further explored in 'Mother and Son' and 'Father and Son' - and 'Save and Protect', through which you may begin to absorb and outline some of his most radical visual ideas, as it looks like one of Brandt's most extreme nude portraits (of the late forties period), in motion. Astonishing.



**Clarification: When I state that "You must experience these films without too much theoretical nonsense weighing down your mind prior to their initial impact", I don't mean to suggest that a work of art is entirely self-sufficient and immediately, transparently discloses its meanings, or that we don't need to apply to it our intellect, very best aesthetic theories, relevant information, etc. Rather, I am against the typical (arrogant) notion that this is *all* there is to art. It would be equally unfortunate, though, if the audience felt that there was no intellectual challenge to meet, in absorbing a film/artwork over repeated viewings.

A Note on Frank Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life"

Merry Christmas! Christmas is incomplete, soulless without Frank Capra. I have written about "It's a Wonderful Life" before (see "Who is Frank Capra?", Dec. 2010), and I might start my own tradition of writing a few words about it every year. I love the man's work. I love this film and it has gradually embodied the Christmas message for me. I noticed different things about it on this viewing. Part of this is due to the fact that I introduced the film to my housemate who is from Lithuania and I was given the unique opportunity to see how well Capra's film could carry its story for her. As I wrote last year, "If it isn’t unusual, it’s at least uncanny when a very sweet message is delivered very thoughtfully, with such determination, in the form of a razor-sharp technique." I would like to add that it is uncanny when a sweet message can work beyond considerable generational, linguistic and cultural barriers. This draws attention to the holistic character and value of the film: though I wouldn't state that it is universal in its ability to reach out to people, since in real life Christmas doesn't mean anything to a whole lot of people in the world, I'm confident in saying that I haven't seen it fail yet for people who care about Christmas in, yes, the typical sorts of ways and find that their Christmas somehow isn't set in the most ideal conditions on a given year. "It's a Wonderful Life" is compelling, and healing. Jimmy Stewart is still a godsend. The formula came across as very bare bones to me this time - my brain kept an amused tab on that fact - but it just didn't matter because the story, the heart of it, always comes across as very full and richly rendered. Capra understands details. There's that crow that wanders around at those bad little moments. And let's not forget that Ernie the taxi driver parachuted into France. A Good Throwaway Sentence. It's full of America, and love, and a working man's paranoia, and it works. Does it have scenes! George and Mary's first dance, their rendition of the Charleston that takes them straight into a massive swimming pool, that really got me this year; it's got that extravagant buzz like Gene Kelly's roller-skate tap-dance scene to "I Like Myself". Of course, some scenes are constants for me. A fact: I always cry when Mr. Gower embraces the young George Bailey (the undelivered poison-capsule scene). Well, every time I step away from the film I could swear that I felt its magic for the first time; I can't understand how Capra managed to do this. I know technique has something to do with it, but the story does more than technique normally allows you to do. I also know that "Kind Hearts and Coronets" is a flawless film, a film that's executed flawlessly, and when I first saw it I thought it was one of the funniest and most wonderful films I had ever seen. On a second viewing, expecting that I would experience the same sublime level of hysterical laughter, I was surprised when I couldn't feel the same feelings as I did before, or any importantly new ones. Although I still hold it up as a fine example of cinema, its perfection makes it, in an oddly sacrilegious way I have to confess this, a little boring on subsequent viewings, much like "Dial M for Murder". Stale, even. You get most of the emotive/experiential value on a first viewing. It doesn't affect my praise and admiration for these two films (Kind Hearts is a favorite, and oh so English!), but I'm not going to say I am charmed and fascinated by them every time I watch them. However, every year I am charmed and fascinated by "It's a Wonderful Life", blindsighted with love for the damned film. I just want to thank Mr. Capra for making this film and for making us feel something good every time. It's a lasting American achievement, and you can't buy them kind of kicks.

I am delving into the world of Sokurov. Here, Sokurov delves into the world of Tarkovsky; it is magnificent.

IV. (excerpt)

III

"When you get an idea like that [referring to the masterpiece Blue Velvet], it's like you're goin' down the road and you find a really beautiful rock. That's great that you've found a beautiful rock - and you can polish it up and put it in a window - but the rock isn't yours. Really, a lot of this has nothing to do with me. The most I think we are is translators."

--David Lynch

An Excerpt from 'It's Only A Film', on Jane Eyre

We must be careful to recognize reality when it presents itself to us, parsimoniously rejecting anything else. This is a sound guiding principle. It is such a powerful principle that it tells us not to pay any mind to dreams and films. 

Much is made about the film, in its innumerable adaptations, being both "timeless" and "feminist". But I think that perhaps it fails on these two counts as they are commonly (mis)understood. First, I don't know about this film being "timeless". Does timeless mean that you can imagine these feelings and characters being recreated in other settings? That you are upset when, towards the end of the rolling credits, you see "Costume Truck"? Or that you can concoct a modern come-on for every "You transfix me, quite"? This word, this conclusion, "timeless", only makes sense in reference to an experience, an experience that you have gone through as a result of the film - the experience of being moved by the film, or as I said in the previous paragraph, of being "spoken directly to". That manner of being spoken directly to requires that you pay attention to something that is greater than reality. You also have to meet the film halfway by searching for something that is greater than reality in it. But for all of that, there is so much of reality in "Jane Eyre" that impresses me. I don't really watch films that have petticoats and bodice-ripping in them; I'm quite certain that films like these are catering to modern themes of consumerist titillation. I'm not even sure I watch films with too many English people in them, actually, unless they are murdering each other artfully with their kind hearts and coronets through open pastures or in ceilinged claustrophobia. "Jane Eyre" promises something that modernity has all but lost, without feeling the slightest bit stilted, and without making me feel stilted for saying that. I reckon that what is "timeless" is found in Jane's sweet little lace gloves, her fingers encased so beautifully in them, fingers interwoven delicately and recklessly with the newness of her love for Mr. Rochester. That lace is an explosion of the heart.

Second, I don't know about "feminist", either. Mr. Rochester is insanely hot, as he should be and which is very important. Out of all the men in this film, Mr. Rochester is certainly the most compelling - he looks good when he smokes and he has the requisite moral compass, as evidenced by his treatment of "the demon" (I won't elaborate on this if any of you are new to either the book or the film), and though he is disfigured in his take on life he hasn't lost the ability to spot a path towards salvation. What has Jane really done to be "feminist"? Is it not a miracle that someone like Mr. Rochester should provide fulfillment for her as well? At the beginning of their as yet undeclared love, the asymmetry between the two could hardly be greater. What could the solidarity between them possibly be based upon? We are left with spiritual answers, which get their validity in the scenes of opposition, in the scenes of love, and in increasingly metaphysical scenes such as when Jane hears Mr. Rochester's voice in the wind and pursues it, after she has been told by the phoney alternative embodied by St. John Rivers that she will soon feel "love enough" for him. St. John forces Jane to say Mr. Rochester's name in answer to what he has (incorrectly) assessed as the only obstacle to their love. It's a psychologically tarnished and unfair move, revealing his entirely superficial understanding of Jane's capacities and desires, and it's truly perfect that this verbal coercion on his part provides the graceful opportunity for Jane to float away past his limited (religious) vision. Since day one, Jane has damn good answers for every bit of hypocrisy[1] and unfathomably cruel treatment that she is faced with - they are perfectly barbed declarations (especially the little Jane - if only all kids had that vocabulary, oh that Victorian syntax!), stripping people of their facades to reveal the senseless things that they stand for. Jane longs for "action" in her life and has the integrity to tear herself away from Mr. Rochester at that devastating moment when the asymmetry unavoidably and irresolvably matters (he has a past that he hasn't been able to get rid of, she's largely gotten rid of hers). But none of this is feminist. At the same time, this film has captured almost everything that I feel about what it means to be a woman.

I haven't thoroughly read any articles about the film except for the one in the October 2011 Sight & Sound, written by Claire Monk. It's a good article. But it talks about the wrong things. It focuses heavily on how a cultural outsider of a director brings freshness to an English heritage film and calls it "an object lesson in what it means, today, to make a transnational film of an English literary classic for an expressly global audience." Who the fuck cares? I have been splitting my time between Berlin Alexanderplatz and Dame Edna in the evenings (both of which are essential to my life!) and didn't realize that I must have been waiting for something like Jane Eyre to come along. What is impressive about this film is not its transnational nature, but its ability to surprise; I don't think that the surprise is explained so readily by citing the director Fukunaga's accomplishments, though they are hugely commendable. The seed of surprise comes from Mia Wasikowska's performance. There is good reason that Mr. Rochester marvels at the fact that nothing can vitiate her, after all the twists and turns of her "common tale of woe". Wasikowska's Jane Eyre cannot be improved and for me will be the end of all Jane Eyres.  This is a commercial film with a rather serious budget, a structured narrative, and a romance involving a very handsome male lead; as it happens, I don't write about many of those sorts of films on this blog. But this is not one of those sorts of films - it comes with those features yet has none of the baggage you expect from them. It's Mia Wasikowska that makes the film so beautiful - the entire exquisite understated soulful physicality of her performance[2] which I don't think will go unnoticed by even the most clueless of film reviewers. 

I remember reading Jane Eyre as a teenager, but didn't recall that it had a transcendently joyous ending - all I remember thinking was that Mr. Rochester was a bit moody and that merry England was probably pretty damp and hard on people. If it was a rebellious character that I was needing to relate to, I had my Holden Caulfield, and if I needed a moment or two of feminist rage, then there was Sylvia Plath, sneering deliriously from the pages of her journals. The film has brought me back full circle to the novel; another surprise. I want to re-discover this purportedly traditional novel on its own authentic terms, and it makes sense, in a way, that I should return to it now . . . 

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What will happen to our lungs without Béla Tarr? They will shrivel into a deadened core like a plastic-velour air mattress that has been leaking unbecomingly for the last fifteen minutes; we need our Béla more than ever and it turns out that he may stop making films. With Turin Horse he has given us a glimpse into the unanalyzable, undecomposable structure of human will and the ways in which it slowly disappears until there is nothing left, not a handful of furiously crushed potatoes, no more wind-battered flickering light in a keyhole, not even a pair of delicate heeled shoes that remain important and mystical enough never to be worn outside of the house. The curiosity we feel as we encounter the meaning of the daily tasks endured by the two main characters, a father and his daughter, is real. It is the curiosity of a child that we feel; a form of discovery. They dress themselves and each other, socks are pulled on, boots are pulled off, water is transferred from the well to the house, basins are shifted around, and they stare out into the world through the window. There is comfort in knowing that as the father gets dressed he will violently shake his left arm into the sleeve of his shirt, that he drinks two consecutive shots of pálinka from that severe little bottle, that he will always defrock and devour his potato in that psychotically impatient manner, as though it were no different than the wood he chops with systematic fervor. There is relief in seeing the gypsies act like gypsies and the alcoholic neighbor addressing us with a torrent of desperate philosophy about the permanent degradation that comes from touching then acquiring, all that is noble disappearing until only one side in the unseen war is left. 'Come off it. That's rubbish.' But the well dries up, the horse stops eating, the darkness comes and cannot be soothed by the embers, the pálinka is had straight from the bottle, and the father weakly fondles the skin of the potato until there is no reason even to do that. There is no one working in cinema today who matches Béla Tarr.

I will be posting some images and writings here as well: http://thebigsleepdigressions.tumblr.com/

Mekas Warhol Fluxus

Knock On Any Door (1949)

The beauty of a Nicholas Ray film is that you want to watch it alone and you want to be alone afterwards too, so that none of the feelings that were stirred within you during the film have their chance to escape. A melodrama as effortlessly good as "Knock On Any Door" (1949), set in 1930s Chicago, should especially make you want to be alone - the more private the experience, the more you can savor its effect upon your mind. Any words shared about the film, or the added distraction of hearing your company react with laughter at the wrong moments of the film, will just feel as though your experience is floating past you, leaking out of your brain somehow, and after you have invested in the film emotionally and intellectually that is the last thing you want to have happen. One good cigarette on an empty stomach after the film. That'll do. So when I go to the theatre to see a Nicholas Ray film, particularly a Nick Ray melodrama, with very few exceptions I prepare to see it alone and to be by myself afterwards. That's just how it's done. And if you understand what I mean by that, keep reading.

"Knock On Any Door" also has the benefit of, in my opinion, one of the most brilliant performances of Humphrey Bogart's career[i]. You are getting two gods for the price of one. In this film Bogart plays Andrew Morton, a first-rate defense lawyer at the top of his game with a street-smart background (only gently alluded to) who navigates the challenging moral ambiguities thrown in his face by the court system, the society he is confronting when he looks into the jury's clueless eyes, and the individual complexities of Pretty Boy Romano (as played by John Derek). The film is not a whodunnit; you are aware of Romano's guilt throughout the film and you wait patiently for the betrayal to be confirmed; the betrayal of the hidden trust that Andrew Morton has over time (with his social worker girlfriend's urgings) developed for the good kid buried inside Romano. The film has the dustings of a noir, but it ain't that either. There are no femme fatales; only one beautiful, unfathomably sweet (almost maudlin) creature whose love for her husband, while effective and disarming for awhile, is finally tragically mishandled. There are many bit-part performances and minor characters who are played in great style, a wealth of miniature scenes that are given the same concentrated clean shave like the major ones. The prosecuting lawyer/District Attorney knows what buttons to push to get people talking on the stand, but his frustrated inferior energy and the scar that twists across his face like a man trying to get out of his necktie reminds you that though he is technically on the side of the truth in this court case, it must have been an accident. At the end of the case when Romano finally breaks down with a full confession, largely due to the DA's mention of Romano's wife's suicide, the DA takes credit for the emergence of the truth, apologizing for having had to do things "the hard way".

But there is something disfigured about fact and truth. Truth isn't proper. It isn't humane. It is not the whole story, or even the important story. This is evidenced by the way the film is shot. The "flashbacks" become the focus while the courtroom scenes take on secondary importance only until the end, where the deeper truths revealed in the flashbacks are given their final meaning and dramatic resolution[ii]. Although it seemed obvious to me that Romano was bound to be guilty, I think it is possible and justified to be swept up in the trust (I say trust, not optimism, because Bogart's character is a cynic) embodied by Bogart's character, Andrew Morton, such that you would want to hang on to Pretty Boy Romano's innocence for as long as possible; only relenting when the tiniest cracks start to show, such as when Butch and Sunshine each get too specific and thereby conflict about the type of beer they were drinking the night they were with Pretty Boy. Bogart as Morton gives an incredible speech after Pretty Boy's guilt has been confirmed, telling the jury and the courtroom circus that they should think twice about the meaning of Pretty Boy's sentence, that they should know better than to believe their guilt has been absolved by shifting it to someone who was placed in the hardest of circumstances. It is quite a bit like a Luke the Drifter song being played out as a courtroom scene. Sentencing Pretty Boy Romano would instead, Morton argues, convict everyone in that courtroom for creating and sustaining the environment that raised Romano up to be a cold-blooded cop-killer. This is just the problem, however; no one in the courtroom has the imagination to understand Pretty Boy's upbringing, though they are gullible enough to be told what to think about it and change their minds for a few seconds. Still, their isolation from the harder walks of life makes it easier for them to affirm their need to protect what is familiar to them. It is not about the truth, after all is said and done, but about protecting one way of life from another. The truth is what Morton reveals in his recounting of Pretty Boy's life.

While the courtroom message is moving, stylized and skillful, with Bogart delivering only the finest, there are other scenes that move me, not to a much greater extent than the best parts of the courtroom scenes, but in that new sort of way where I feel that I’ve been somehow taken off guard and, if not necessarily given an atypical insight, am suddenly required to dig a little deeper in my own bank of experiences and catalogue of miserable feelings. I appreciate this opportunity immensely. Pretty Boy Romano’s wife looks lovely, sedated and surreal as she quietly makes up her mind to take her own life, making her suicide blend in with the domesticated setting. You wonder for a second if she is going to pull a Sylvia Plath when you see the meal that has been left in the oven and watch her delicately turn the gas knobs up to full blast. When Romano renounces everything that their marriage is built upon, in particular  his job, amounting to a suffocating narrow-minded decency that threatens to humiliate and blackball him, he goes out to rob a bank, watches one of his cohorts lose his life in the robbery, and comes back to find that his wife is dead. He kneels by the bed and weeps into her body, tears glittering and pooling at the base of his eyes, “Please forgive me.” This builds up to the funeral scene. Romano, who is on the run, hides and watches his wife’s funeral procession from the top of a nearby building, the bundles of funeral wreaths moving solemnly and steadily below. As her coffin is guided along, Romano, in a fit of anguish, leans against the ladder that is propped up against the wall, his hands wrapped around the rungs of the ladder tightly at first, then there is a close-up on just his hands loosening their grip as he slides into emotional oblivion. This is one of the most beautiful, simple scenes I have seen in a long time, where cinematography, narrative and feeling meet with perfect, unstrained focus.

Pretty Boy Romano’s guilt for the crime he has committed is undeniable, but what the film succeeds in showing is that for every murder a kid like Pretty Boy commits that the public and the court expose in huge letters of scandal, there were a hundred sickening backstabbing disgraces he had to privately suffer without recourse leading up to it. This is what is important – not the message against capital punishment – and what we can empathize with because most lives contain a bit of private suffering that has never seen the light of justice. Some lives contain a lot more. The question is: why should there be an outlet for some and not for others? The asymmetry between justice on the side of enforcement and justice on the side of prevention is all too clear. To deny the force of this message is foolish because it is possible to stay neutral on whether capital punishment is an effective (or a barbaric) method of meting out justice, and it is also possible to resist the humanizing of criminals who are not meant to be humanized. I think the film leaves it open that there could be criminals who are not worth saving or redeeming, lives that are not touched by the irritatingly simplistic nature/nurture argument. It leaves it open in the sense that it isn’t about them. It is about the specific kind of “criminal” that is Pretty Boy Romano. Does a kid like Pinkie in “Brighton Rock” (the original, please) – a psychopath obsessed with control over events beyond those pertaining to his personal story and with no wounded vulnerability or crippling need for love to speak of – have to actually be in the film for us to feel safe enough that the film is avoiding such a simplistic argument and to view Bogart’s Morton as something more impressive and complex than a sermonizer?[iii]  "Knock on Any Door" is concerned with the kind of kid who is mixed up, who is more heart than head (Morton had a similar background but escaped from the slums because, we imagine, of his cool collected smarts), who has been treated raw and cruel, and – since his father died in prison from the negligence of the authorities who imprisoned him for too long on a weak ticker for a killing committed in self-defense – who has been afraid of abandonment his whole life. So afraid that he is willing to provoke its occurrence because at least that way he will have some control over his goddamn destiny. There is some ‘nature’ involved here. Nature in the sense that some kids never get on the wrong side of authority or see what authority usually amounts to. But there are other kids whom authority singles out to bring down to their knees; their spirit means something, so it has to be crushed. Romano doesn’t feel guilty for killing the cop, but what you do see is that he feels terrorized by his own guilt for his wife Emma’s suicide. When he walks to the electric chair, his calm demeanor indicates that he is willing to receive his punishment, but not for the crime as detailed in his legal sentence. Ultimately, I think this film is exactly what it should be. Its flaws are not what it has typically been charged with. It is not primarily about crime and punishment. It is a coming-of-age story – where ‘coming of age’ means an accelerated process by which you see most of what is bad in the world and can’t manage to figure out how to hold on to the little that is good – ending in loss and despair.  

I love this film, dearly.

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[i] Bogart’s character is extremely interesting, and I want to say more about it but will just touch on the subject for now.

[ii] As Geoff Andrew writes: “Romano’s guilt having been established, Ray makes his point about the responsibility of society and the state through verbal and visual means. As spoken by Bogart, Morton’s speech, eloquent and rhetorical in its denunciation of poverty, prejudice, neglect and inequality, is indeed moving, with the actor angrily spitting out his lines and bringing into play the full moral weight of his heroic screen persona. At the same time, Ray, who until this final plea for mercy has filled the courtroom with a plethora of colourful characters, suddenly adopts a far more abstract visual style to implicate us, the audience, and the unfeeling mechanism known as the state, in Romano’s crimes.”

[iii] A film is not a piece of pure analysis. If a film had to contain and impress upon the mind the director’s contemplation of every relevant theoretical stance, there would be no point to making the film left, and you have no ability to trust a director. That is the way I see it. Of course, there’s plenty interesting to say about where to draw the line. Anyway, I have been thinking about this for awhile and it never fails to come up when I watch films with other people. After seeing the photochemically restored version of “The Great White Silence” (1924), much comment was made about how disappointing it was to discover that what these burly Antarctican explorers did it all for was for the love of England, and how silly it was that they didn’t cannibalize the injured guy at the end of their journey, when clearly the injured guy should have offered them a limb or two instead of walking out stoically into the blizzard like “an English gentleman”. Nonsense! There should be some gratitude for what these films have shown us. Never mind for what else they could have shown us. How else, for example, would we have the immediacy of access to the ‘pinpoints of time’ that govern any destiny (as put by Bogart’s Andrew Morton) if not through the cinema?

Something I’ve also been thinking about: why is it possible with Capra and Ray films, both of whom I love so much more than Welles, to look past whatever obvious markings are created by genre parameters to find the real message? I think the real message is there because of the style choices, so that is where to go looking for it, as opposed to just the top layer of the prosaic details of ‘the telling of the story’ and how they add up. In other words, why is it possible with Capra and Ray films, and not with a film like “Blue Valentine”, to find the message by looking past those narrative/genre restrictions? I am supposing that it has to do with the finer elements of the way the story has been told. The film “Blue Valentine” (2010): I enjoyed the story that unfolded, and it rung true … the prosaic details did add up … but not the way in which it was told. Incidentally, I think this film has come to mind as an example because (1) it is one of the few recently (and decently!) made films I have seen in the theatres, and (2) due to the flashback narration – "Knock on Any Door" is told in flashback, as is Capra’s "It’s a Wonderful Life", even if the flashback sequencing there is more fantastical in nature, to which I think the Ray film is a kind of tragic sibling.

A follow-up to April 9th.

The Persistence of Mystery

I look to art for answers do I? But the art that keeps me is that which eludes me. Just as Linden Arden stole the highlights, as the intimacy takes on a warped intense pitch between Mac and Myles with Mac’s flesh above his snow-white collar changing pinks which strikes suddenly upon us as reader, as audience, as yes, hello, look at that picture, yes, hello, how does it seem to you now, good, thank you, yes, hello, yes, hello, yes, hello, does it seem to be persisting, drones on to the point of irritation then gives way to a curiously amused relief as the pieces put themselves together and Burroughs may or may not inject into his arm, and so we know that art, if not life, will not let us slip through the cracks. Oh anywhere but the here and now! The very best things we find in art are the qualities that take us somewhere far away. This is not an appeal to escapism, or transcendence in a spooky, ethereal sense.

However, it is not an experience that those who enjoy being limited to the mundane will have because they are not trying to get anywhere beyond what is in front of them. Strong, specific desires push a person in the direction of such art. It does not exactly get to the point, though, when people say that to appreciate art you must live a life of suffering. Starving artists are perhaps besides the point. The myth of suffering is only real when we discuss the extraordinary struggle most artists have had to push past in order to make something new. And the myth of suffering, when applied to the audience, has less to do with suffering and more to do with a willingness to plunge into the unfamiliar; suffering just happens to be one of the most surefire ways of improving upon our will. The search for new experiences, and the embodiment of mystery, are at the heart of the aesthetic experience. This is why asking an author about his novel, ‘What’s it about?’ is so crass and infuriating. A good writer will give a good answer to that inane question. But in no way are they obligated to – the question is in some important sense ill-formed. To filmmakers, or to those engaged in any art form that has a relationship with narrative, this question will be applied. My sense is that this is asked less of painters or musicians. What many have difficulty understanding is that narrative-oriented art forms are not under any greater an obligation to stay faithful to ‘aboutness’ than (static) visual or sound art. Aboutness is a place to start and, yes, the narrative often contains the structure in which the style is instantiated. But the mystery I have been speaking of cannot exactly be located. Where could it possibly be located? It is inside the artist’s long-persecuted head and inside one's twinkling cunt if one is finely tuned.

For the longest time, I think what I was looking for in various forms of art was style. A very individualistic yet informed style statement. I still approach art in this manner, looking for a sensibility weaving throughout, a certain kind of negotiation between rebellion and precision, and a masterful handling of themes, whether understated or over-the-top, classic and straightforward or postmodern and serpentine. I have heard and considered arguments regarding what art should be made of, in particular the argument that art needs to refer to other art, in contrast to the idea that art should refer to life. Thick layers of reference can appear as mystery because they draw the parameters of the audience very sharply by narrowing the aperture only to those in the know – those who have clearly invested themselves in art – and because they make the artwork increasingly difficult to decode. In fact, I have sprinkled somewhat bizarre, personally meaningful references here and there in this article. But they are not the same as mystery, and mystery does not have to be achieved in this way. Indeed, after going back and forth between these two polarities, I have decided that the choice does not mean much to me – what matters is that the art should contain a potent lingering mystery that repeats itself in your mind over the years, something that distinguishes it from the evangelical pursuit of logic, from the world as we know it in its daily senseless churnings that do more to degrade than uplift, from a great many jigsaw blades that still stubbornly and intricately give shape to the obvious in human experience. The art that moves me the most is just not that obvious, and that is a great part of what makes it important. This is the case even when the surface style statement is purposefully ‘obvious’, or by contrast, austere and restrained. It will be very personal and even open in terms of what its implications are, not a message, but just because it is not obvious does not mean that it always has to be restrained and tasteful. I do have other requirements and a certain bent (very difficult to describe it, though) when it comes to what I seek out – some sorts of mystery are more compelling to me than others. Mystery is not tied to any particular style statement, but I will own that some styles put the artist in a better position of mining it. (Stan Brakhage is my case in point, but I will leave discussion of his body of work for a separate article.) Because it just shouldn’t be an easy handout, if you see what I mean.

Nor is mystery tied to a particular spiritual agenda, historical message, and ideological profile. This is why I do not care much, as I have written in a previous article, for the accusations Frank Capra typically attracts: ‘Fascist!’, ‘Cornball!’, ‘Hollywood!’. While these accusations may have their place, they do not acknowledge what is mysterious in Capra’s work. So I claim that such mystery is beyond the spiritual, religious, and political leanings of the artist – it is not tethered to anything, and it is beyond and out of the control in so many ways of the artist himself, thus attempts to crack open the artist through a full invasive deconstruction of the circumstances of their actual life do not address the fullness of the mystery in their work. I am a compulsive reader of interviews – they are among my favourite forms of journalism – but they are more often than not a head-on insult to the artist, not because journalism is inherently base in contrast to the artist’s aims, but because journalists have trouble respecting mystery. Even when it is interpreted as an exercise in accountability to an audience that relates to the artist in a supposedly close way. In a world of question and answer, what remains? ‘Is there a way I should be reading this work of art? What is the right interpretation?’ and then you realize that these anxious sweaty questions – which often make for pained, inadequate discussion, as I have highlighted in my previous piece, ‘How should we treat art?’ – totally dissolve. This essay can be seen as my companion piece to ‘How should we treat art?’ (see Spring-cleaning 0.1, April 9th). Except that in this essay I am calling attention to what it is about art that leads us down this path of treating it a certain way. The way that people talk about and ‘treat’ art reveals a great deal, whether they realize it or not, about what they believe is on offer. The consumptive attitude is repulsive. Talking about what film is out in the theatres now is, of course, fine and we all do it, but it is more often an extension of the consumptive attitude, rather than a meaningful relationship with art. The so-called touchstones in cultural references are so unimportant, as they can block you from discovering things on your own terms. It has never made any sense to me that people insist that we all have something to say about the latest Coen Brothers film, or are shocked when I disclose that I haven’t seen Jurassic Park: I enjoy a bit of dinosaur, but where is the urgency in talking about New Babylon, a brilliant Soviet experimental film made in 1929? Am I not allowed to be offended as well? And why are people resistant to developing a lasting relationship with an artist’s body of work? This I have often wondered too, as I see it as the antidote to the consumptive atittude that poisons the environment in which art is made and shared. There are too many Dylan-haters out there that latch their hatred onto albums of his that they consider garbage (the critics do this, too) and strangely seem to relish how Dylan has deteriorated in the last decade, entirely overlooking the fact that he is one of the few in our time who has taken an uncompromising approach to his muse. As Nick Cave put it, in a 2008 interview with one of my favourite rock journalists Phil Sutcliffe: “The only periods when I get a bit uneasy is when I feel the records [here he is referring to his own] didn’t move on much, they didn’t change. My heroes of that sort of thing were Dylan and … that he could keep coming back and do something that made you think, ‘Do I like Bob Dylan?’ All over again. And sometimes you said yes and sometimes you said no.”

So what is this mystery that is not tied to statement, message, narrative, style, or even the artist and the formal groundrules that he swears by? I am not saying that it is the undefinable, the inexpressible, and so on, and I am not saying that it is (the more grounded term for the undefinable, the inexpressible) an emotion. I can only hint at what it is by saying when I know it is there. It is not located solely in any of the above things that I have mentioned, but as I have said the closest it can get to being located in anything is by floating somewhere in the artist’s head and in the audience's reactions that most closely resemble/embrace what is happening (without the artist's full knowledge of it) in the artist's head. I am still thinking about what that means, of course, as it mildly dissatisfies. There is a lot of confusion and pretension and determination in the artist’s head, so I am not talking about a honed artistic intention or the goal to do this or that on the next album or the next film – I am addressing the relationship the artist has with his muse*, that sweet and anguished line of prayer. The real artists deal directly in this mystery and do not shy away from it as the impostors do. From the audience perspective, and the critic is only another member of the audience, the most I can do is try to point to the slivers of the art-piece that work for me. I will experience something and say, ‘That works for me.’ But do I know why? The assembly of lightbulbs in Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City, 1927, the mystery in this instance created by the incredible cinematography – I credit cinematographers possibly as much as I do the directors for holding the potential of mystery in their hands); the rainy close-up upon an eerily glistening statuette of the Virgin Mary with gravediggers in the background in Новый Вавилон (New Babylon, 1929); most of Journal d'un curé de campagne (Diary of a Country Priest, 1951); and the hideously sad demise of Augusto, as though God himself had smeared him across the pavement with his boot like a crushed insect, in Il Bidone (The Swindler, 1955), and so on. A piece of art can embody mystery in one moment, tender or explosive, or it can reveal it gradually throughout. If such mystery were not important to people, I do not think they would as often go looking for it in an exotic vacation, or more importantly, in love – an area of life that most people do not feel a need to demystify and debunk. If I were to desire that my ramblings here on The Big Sleep become a locus of communication for a single something, the idea I most want to come through and to defend is that art is the greatest reliable source and protector of mystery.   



*"Here is a man who is a great filmmaker and who knows he is a great filmmaker, and who has almost no recognition and who could make some works that could attract a lot of attention for himself. And of course he must feel the temptation to do certain things that would please people, and draw attention to himself. And he disciplines himself against these seductions. And the name of that discipline is ... the theology of that discipline is, for Brakhage ... seems to be called the muse." --P. Adams Sitney on Brakhage (transcribed this from a documentary which I will probably say something about in another article).

LLSB #4

 

Who was the enigmatic figure 

on whom so much seemed to depend?

Here we go again with the pulp novels. I don't really know anything about this one, but I like the way it looks, as is the purpose of this series (e.g., shallow admiration). It was first published in July 1938; this is a 1956 edition by Hodder and Stoughton. Be assured that the "characters in this story are entirely imaginary and have no relation to any living person". Right-o I'm just curious if that's because the person in question (Mr. Zero) is dead?

A couple of close-ups on the smoking gun and the hydrangeas. Her cloak reminds me of Carmen Sternwood's in 'The Big Sleep'.

LLSB (Long on Looks, Short on Brains) #3

We have a 1946 edition printed in New York and Cleveland of Trent's Last Case by E.C. Bentley. The reason why I singled this out while rummaging through the £1 section of our bookshop is that Howard Hawks made a film early in his career (1929) based on this novel. As I mentioned in my piece on the London Hawks retrospective, the film suffered because it was shot as his first all-talking picture then was forced back into being shot as a silent. A legal screw-up over sound rights killed its commercial promise and bungled its aesthetic composition. Well, at least we've got the book here, and it makes no bones about where that bullet is headed. On the spine of the cover (of which I don't have a photo for the blog at the moment), the bullet is firmly lodged in the centre of this man's head. A bullet mid-fire has never looked so static, and yet irrationally I love the design.

Die Freudlose Gasse (The Joyless Street), silent, 1925.

People watch film for many different reasons. One of the reasons I watch film, though by no means the earliest or the most underlying of reasons, is to understand cinematographic decisions and (i) their philosophical implications for the film itself and for various categories to which the film may arguably belong, and (ii) their emotional impact upon the viewer. The close relationship, the synergy, of these elements, as well as the treatment of some of my most favored themes, in German Expressionist film and the American film noir it influenced constitutes one of the main reasons why I am so enamoured of these two film genres. Upon watching Die Freudlose Gasse for the first time (in its original cut of 150 minutes), I have to say that I was not left with much of an emotional impact but was still suitably impressed with the film, directed by another favorite of mine, G.W. Pabst, who brought the great Louise Brooks to the screen for one of her most searing performances in Die Büchse der Pandora.

The love for sideline characters that I mentioned in my New Year's post about Frank Capra is seen in a darker version in Die Freudlose Gasse: take the most amusing cameos in a Capra film and twist them ugly ... a withered old peg-leg navigating a filthy alley instead of a black man energetically selling hot dogs. One of many beautiful aspects of this cinematic style is that it allows these characters to wear their moral disfigurement on their sleeve with exuberance, as evidenced in Werner Krauss’ butcher Josef Geiringer, and Valeska Gert’s Madame Greifer, both of whom are thoroughly delighted with themselves as they orchestrate heinous acts in a Vienna that is a straight vision of corruption. Asta Nielsen as Maria is most impressive as a single performance, moreso even than Greta Garbo who looks sexily tranquilized throughout the film and achieves in her own right an ironic perfection in this role. Maria, whose every curve manages to be masculine, commits murder with a face blanched by jealousy. It is sublime. Incidentally, this film is part of a Weimar cinéma vérité series at the Edinburgh Filmhouse, meaning that the film is to be interpreted within the broader context of the Neue Sachlichkeit in which Expressionist poetic devices are shed in favor of a realist exposé of the darker truths of society that in this particular instance led to the film being cut to the point of inefficacy or completely censored in countries outside of Germany. While I am not certain enough to say that it should not be characterized as cinéma vérité, I think this film has strong expressionist elements.

I look for windows and mirrors in this sort of film. There are two scenes that made a deep impression on first viewing. The first scene – I say first although I believe it takes place later in the chronology of the film – involves Greta Garbo’s character Greta Rumfort and her exposure as a prostitute, as in the film-still to the left. Her dress is a scandalous piece of glitter, but you don’t see her in the dress at first. The exposure is done in the tri-panel mirror.

The second scene: the butcher Josef, as played by Werner Krauss, is a man who abuses his power without a second thought as all good sadists do. He loves the women who crawl to him for a pound of meat to feed their starving children. They come to him as surely as Lana Turner will collapse in your arms, as he waits and lasciviously assesses their figures (from the ankles up) through his basement window. He does not treat them with reverence, to say the least, bringing a slab of raw meat into the room where the women are waiting and hacking off a piece in front of them, blood flying as he goes through the bone with an axe that is as faithful a companion to him as his dog, who is pacing in the corner with anticipation of a leftover hunk of meat. As to be expected from a brute, Josef does not wrap up the meat and politely hand it to the women, but takes it in its raw and bloody state and slaps it into their desperate hands. This vicious and disgusting man is given his medicine at the end of the film, very quickly I might add, in a flash of a scene. On Melchior Street an angry crowd gathers under the Merkel Hotel and begins to throw rocks through the hotel window. The partiers scatter and flee from the building. A starved mob gathers outside of Josef’s butcher shop. A woman breaks into the shop after being denied meat for the last time and kills Josef. You can see him through the basement window, his face, that slaughtered look in his eyes, disappearing into his own fate.

I am still uncertain why these two scenes (and I have seen plenty of scenes of that ilk before) were so effective, in the sense that I find it strange and natural that an indirect viewing of either the exposure of or the instantiation of something taboo should be so – if not luridly – exciting.

Certainly loads have been said on this topic and its cousin “voyeurism”, but I have not systematically read up on it, so I have some extra reading cut out for me in the weeks ahead. I wonder about this even as I admit my bias in believing this to be more often than not an aesthetically superior choice compared to a direct move on the director’s and cinematographer’s part. (It is in part a bias because I arrived at this belief about the indirect generally being aesthetically superior before I could articulate my reasons for why the impact of the indirect should be so exciting for the viewer. That is not the correct order of things, and still many a worthy aesthetic judgment can probably be formed this way. Another cause for pondering for another time.) An example of a direct move that I believe to be successful would be the extreme high-angle shots, often termed “god shots”, as used by Alfred Hitchcock’s director of photography Robert Burks in Marnie. These shots still have me baffled because they strike me as a direct manifestation of the psychosis, cinematographically speaking, and I cannot figure out how it is the case except through these shots that the psychosis itself should be driving the film, as opposed to the character – who is nothing compared to the force of the actual psychosis, which seems to have chosen to land itself upon the cursed Marnie and would have had a life of its own without her blonde virgin body and mind to torture. Why are those shots so Hitchcock, so powerfully disturbing? Perhaps this is nothing at all to think about and simply reveals my most scattershot intuitions. But getting back to the “indirect” choice: there is something about seeing these violent and debasingly erotic revelations take place through or in glass. The fascination cannot be as extreme (or as extremely modernist, I would like to say) as in Marnie – definitionally, I think. The sort of fascination that occurs in the two scenes I have highlighted in Die Freudlose Gasse requires that slender bit of distance, which is explicitly rejected in Marnie. Maybe it has a softer implication, that there is a choice on the viewer’s part to fixate on what is being shown through or in the glass, whereas in Hitchcock you are thrust into the centre of the fixation – all the same, the viewer will fixate, however indirectly the invitation was sent. Does the fact that it was done indirectly make the viewer feel a heightened excitement because of having been given access to something that would otherwise be a private occasion, which sounds very much related to voyeurism (though voyeurism is tethered to an unwarranted access to the forbidden and we have yet to determine whether the access given here is actually unwarranted), or is there some other reason? Why should the abstraction – if indeed this is abstraction – of visceral things be so alluring? I end with these questions as I do not yet have the answers, but the fact that these are the questions I am raising, regarding how optical abstraction should result in a particular psychological effect, shows that there are expressionist leanings in Die Freudlose Gasse that should not be overlooked due to the overall cinéma vérité schematic. It may be structurally cinéma vérité, but it is procedurally not insensitive to expressionist technique.

The butcher says hi.

My Name Is Joe: A very skillful film, no matter at all that it is plain-looking in its cinematography and plainly transparent in its goals. For people who watch films especially to look into and live for a moment through a character, this is very much a character film and, to me, seems less of a film about "working-class life" than as is usually portrayed, although there are the gritty shots that you want if that is what you are looking for (e.g., Sabine’s shaking junky leg with heroin blood craters in them – as Lou Reed would sing, “It was very nice”[1]). Peter Mullan is a phenomenon as always. The range and authenticity of emotion that he brings to the screen exceeds the highest standard. It is not merely a delivery of feeling; it does not feel like a performance. It actually feels as though he is providing elements of the human experience that cinema has rarely had the opportunity to see. On the other hand, it feels at times as though Peter Mullan is too dominant an actor, moving too quickly and decisively through scenes – perhaps this is the powerhouse director in Peter Mullan rather than the actor that we are seeing. This is not a criticism but an observation of Peter Mullan’s gifts, still my way of making the point that he is not an ordinarily gifted actor, which is exciting for an American cinema lover to experience even if Mullan is a household name for Brits. As per the trend I am seeing in myself these days, I have scathing feelings towards the woman in the film, Sarah, because her empathy and willingness to soothe (Peter Mullan’s character) Joe is made of weak and unconvincing stuff, if not of completely dubious origin. And when Sarah proves to be uncompromising about what she won’t tolerate, she condemns him on the wrong grounds, only exhibiting the fear that comes from her blindingly sheltered nature (which is not eradicated by whatever harrowing experiences she thinks she has been through), as opposed to an assessment of the fragile combination of strengths and failings of the man before her. I would allow Sarah to be uncompromising so long as she wasn't the worst version of herself while doing so, but in applying a defunct set of standards to Joe, she has misunderstood his battle and is not prepared to help him see it through. Joe is caught between worlds, of course, and his abandonment at the end of the film raises the question of whether any of us can be caught between worlds and somehow learn to make one more important than the other when no one seems capable of truly assisting. Love cannot persist when you only see the worst in the person, nor is it located in the opposite extreme of having the sort of unthinking faith born of rock-bottom self-esteem that perpetuates your own constant abuse at the hands of the person you love – there will have to be a departure from the two pathologies in order for a woman to negotiate an appropriate response within herself to a deeply flawed but not fundamentally abusive man. In the end, I think individuals, not the universe, are very much at fault for abandonments committed in the style that specifically disgraces the optimism that love is founded upon, that twists itself into the unbearable irony of two people who can’t ever be free. It is Peter Mullan’s Joe that is the soul of the film.

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[1] No candlelight and Dubonnet on ice in this scene, though, I’m afraid.